Bits And Bobs: Monday News Roundup

Although we'd left for the pub by the time it landed in our digital laps, Ubisoft did make good on its promise last Friday to release a 1.1 patch for Crytek's tropical FPS Far Cry, which includes a number of key additions (not least of which, in gameplay terms, are toggle options for the aim and crouch modes) and minor bug fixes. It's 26.5MB, but with an install footprint of 4GB for the main game you've probably already got the kit to cope...

Last week saw the release of the Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer demo, coincidentally also from Ubisoft, and believe it or not that has also been patched to address a couple of network crash issues (there are further instructions in the readme file) that were sending people tumbling back to the desktop without explanation. While we're on the subject of Pandora Tomorrow patches, we've also confirmed that the Xbox Live Optimatch issue we mentioned last week does apply to the PAL release of the game, and a patch for that issue is expected shortly. The PC version of Pandora Tomorrow is due out this coming Friday. Bleh. Who needs cover-ups when it's complicated enough to put us off in the first place?

It may not sound like the most exciting thing to do with your hands - or even with your Game Boy Advance - but anybody who ever got their hands on the GBC Mario Golf (or the Neo Geo Pocket Colour's Neo Turfmasters, for that matter) will be able to confirm that golf on the go is an absorbing sin. Indeed, it's rather telling that we're more excited about the Game Boy Advance's Mario Golf: Advance Tour than we are about its GameCube cousin Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, which is due out over here this June. And that's before you consider that Advance Tour will probably be one of the first Western titles to ship with the handheld's wireless link adapter, too. In fact, we're so overly excited that we've almost run out of space to mention the very reason we're mentioning all this in the first place: a Japanese trailer for the game (direct link), which shows off some of the RPG stylings up close whilst shouting "GBA!!" every so often. Not that big a file and worth watching.

Following the release of its Beyond Divinity demo last month, developer Larian collected a lot of valuable feedback from Divinity followers, and sends word this week that the game has been set back until late April in order to facilitate a few changes. Along with North American publisher Hip Games and UK publisher Digital Jesters, Larian is committed to fixing a few things - employing high quality voice actors in Toronto to smooth over any story-telling issues, and introducing a way for people to play the game either as an action RPG or a tactical RPG, which sounds like an interesting blend of approaches. We shall see sometime beyond the start of April.

Finally, you may already the accompanying screenshots, so here's a brief summary of what you can expect from top-down PS2/Xbox/PC racer Mashed, which is in development at Supersonic and has apparently been hailed as something of a future classic by the UK's Official PS2 Magazine, or so the press release says. The feature list meanwhile reveals an up-to-four-player racer with 13 tracks, weapons and an 'airstrike' system that allows players knocked out of a race to rain death on their adversaries. The game is due out in June from publisher Empire, who probably signed the game because it's such an obvious excuse for a royal launch party piss-up, which is apparently on the cards for later in the week. But will we go, or will we send an airstrike instead? Aaaahhh...