As reflected in Rick Johnson's .plan update, Raven Software has released the version 0.57 patch for the Soldier of Fortune demo. Here's a local copy (with mirrors), and here are the details on the patch from Rick himself (the full list of changes is so long, I'll spare you all from pasting it here):

We've released the patch for the SoF Demo. This patch mainly represents things we felt were important to fix or adjust in the demo, but only if we could easily merge it back into the demo codebase (as the main game has changed considerably). Below represents my crude notes of items we addressed.

Most of these items were QA'd through the low-violence demo release (for the UK), but as a whole, this has not been QA'd. You can still connect to servers running the original version, but you may notice view height discrepencies (such as when you crouch, you're practically eating dirt). This is only a problem if the server has not been patched.

Epic's Tim Sweeney updated the Unreal Technology Page with a Q&A of sorts, covering three questions that he's frequently asked. The questions are all about mod authoring in one way or another, dealing with ways to get hired in the industry and other related topics, and there are even some links to Unreal editing resources.

A new interview with Steve Elwell, Activision's producer on Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force, the Raven-developed, Quake III Arena engine game, is up at GameFan, covering general info about the game and the Star Trek license.

Game-Interviews.com has posted a Q&A with Ross Ritchie, John Ellerby, and Harvey Randhawa, the marketing manager, project manager, and lead artist at Promethean Designs on Picassio, the Playstation 2, Dreamcast and PC first person game of fine art thievery.

Dynamix programmer Nels Bruckner updated his .plan to confirm a rumor that's been floating around lately, in that he'll soon be leaving Dynamix and move on to work for a small local startup. Here's the scoop:

Some of you may have noticed that I've been a little harder to get in touch with lately and have been a little less responsive to emails and the like. That's because I've been trying very hard to wrap up all the loose ends around here before I move on. Yep, that's right -- after almost 12 years here at Dynamix it is (past) time for me to look for a new set of challenges and see what life is really like out there. :) I'll be joining a small local startup... kinda like I did 11 1/2 years ago.

I think Dynamix has some extremely bright and talented people working for them and a whole slough of exciting projects (both in progress and soon to be started). It's hard to leave. In particular, it's gonna be really weird seeing Tribes 2 for the first time on the shelves! But, given my personal situation and my current opportunities, I feel this is the right move for me now.

Now, how am I going to fit all the "stuff" from my office into my car? ;)

GameSpot has posted a detailed preview of Might and Magic VIII, looking at the latest 3D installment in the long running role-playing series. While the game will be using the same engine as Might and Magic VII, the article outlines the new story and features, and comes with a bunch of new screenshots.

PC Gameworld has posted six screenshots of The Rift, most of them showing off new scenes from ThrushWave's upcoming space-based real-time strategy game.

There is a new Thief II: the Metal Age preview online at Gamecenter, examining the new features and improvements in this upcoming sequel to Looking Glass' stealthy action game. Most of the screenshots are familiar though.

Redstorm has posted the first U.F.S. Vanguard Sneak Peek page, offering an image and information on the Gladiator class Frigate in their recently announced tactical space combat game (story). Thanks GA-Source.

The Daikatana screenshot of the day is online at PlanetDaikatana, showing off an episode 2 level by designer Stevie 'Killcreek' Case from ION Storm's hopefully imminent first-person shooter.

A recent story on Daily Radar quoted an unnamed source at Sega who when asked if the Dreamcast port of Half-Life would include multiplayer said, "I believe it won't." After reading this, we got in touch with Gearbox Software's Randy Pitchford, who made the following statement, which says that they intend to attempt to include a multiplayer mode:

Our goal is to take advantage of every unique Dreamcast feature - from the advanced graphics capabilities to the on-board modem - in an effort to make this title amazing. As far as I know, a first person shooter has never had a robust online multiplayer component on a console, and we'd obviously like to be the first to pull that off.

It's a Tuesday, so this must be, uhm, an update on the official Summoner site. Of course there is a new screenshot of the week, featuring the High Temple of Urath, and a new entry in the character gallery shows off the Bone Knight in plain 2D or interactive 3D. There is also mention of a couple of developer profiles.

Even more Black & White screenshots can now be viewed at Lionhead's official site. While the rotating images in the center are already familiar (story), the square of screenshots around them now offer new glimpses of this upcoming strategy/god game.

A new version 1.29 pre-release 3 of DooM Legacy is now available for download. This release will be the last public one before the final 1.29 version, and adds dedicate server support as well as fixing various bugs. Additionally, the source code of DooM Legacy has been made publicly available by way of a CVS repository on the Source Forge.

French developer Gamesquad has opened an official Devil Inside site for their upcoming third-person horror action game. While part of the site is still under construction, there is some information on the game (in French only, so try AltaVista Translations if that's not your "tasse de thé"), and also three screenshot galleries that speak lots of words in any language.

The official Hired Team: Trial site has been updated with a pair of new screenshots, showing off more Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) supported scenes from New Media Generation's upcoming first-person shooter.

The Mac port of Roger Wilco, the popular real-time voice communication software for multiplayer games has been released, and is available for download at its official site (thanks MacGamer's Ledge). This version is an Alpha build and requires a PowerMac running System 7.1 or higher.

incitegames, has posted five more screenshots from Black & White, Peter Molyneux' oddball strategy game that lets you play as god and recruit worshippers.

Gearbox Software's Patrick Dupree updated his .plan with a status update on the Linux dedicated server version of Half-Life: Opposing Force (as well as the news that OpFor is currently on sale at several retailers for less than $30). Here are the details:

A while back we talked about releasing a Linux dedicated server version of Half Life: Opposing Force. I wanted to post an update on how that's going. We've had the "port" done for quite a while now and it's been tested and works just great. The only problem is that, since we're a commercial add-on, we need to put WON net support into the Linux dedicated server. This is turning out to be a harder to deal with issue than I originally anticipated. Some changes to the WON libraries since we released Opposing Force, plus the basic differences between the Windows and Linux versions have been delaying the Linux dedicated server.

I'm still working on the Linux version when I can and I would like to get it released ASAP, but unfortunately I have to resolve these WON issues before I can get any farther.

On the brighter side of things, it looks like Sierra has dropped the price of Opposing Force. The product description on their web page store has it listed at $29.95, and the current weekend ad flyer for Best Buy has it listed for $24.99.

AVault is reporting (by way of Interplay's Philip Holt) that a new version of Freespace 2, titled "Sim of the Year Edition" (no doubt a response to the success of last year's Half-Life "Game of the Year Edition") will be released in the near future. This new retail version of the game will include 10 new user-made missions, some levels from the first Freespace that have been converted to use the new ships, a new multiplayer mission, user-created campaigns, and lots more.

ActionTrip.com has posted a Q&A session with Toby Gard and Paul Douglas, two of the original Tomb Raider designers, who are now working on Galleon, a swashbuckling third person action game. There are also two new, high-resolution screenshots up, as well as a collection of previously released images.

A new interview with James Thrush, one of the designers at ThrushWave on The Rift, is up at 3dfxGamers. The Rift is a space-based RTS title like Homeworld, although James describes the pace of the gameplay as being "much faster" than its competition.

Monolith's Jason Hall updated his .plan with a clarification regarding his earlier statements about the feud (or lack thereof) between his company and Epic over their respective game engines (story). Here's the scoop:

Quick update for clarification -

Some people have read my last .plan and understood that I was trying to say that I realized that things had gotten out of hand, and that I was apologetic for my participation in the events, and that going forward I will be more attentive to matters like this.

Others have read my .plan and feel that I'm trying to be "innocent" and that I'm acting like I'm "unjustly attacked." This is not so. To me, the coloring of my character may have been a bit much, but I certainly see justification for the healthy competition I've received back! All I am saying that I'm done participating, that there really is nothing left to say, and that this whole thing has run its course.

That's it!

This week's feature on loonygames is an interview with Terminal Reality, talking to Jeff Smith and Jeff Mills about all things Nocturne and Blair Witch Project (well, at least the things they're currently willing to divulge). Included with the article is a ton of concept art, most of which hasn't appeared online before, and there is a lot of info on their upcoming BWP game, so here is a quote to get you going:

Can you tell me about some of the enhancements you're making to the Nocturne Engine for the Blair Witch?

Mills: Yeah we've taken all the feedback we've gotten from the hundreds of people, a lot of Nocturne fans on the fan sites have given us good feedback about what they liked and didn't like about the game. Controls are going to be a lot friendlier than they were, you'll have those 180-degree turns so you can spin around real quick and easily. Opening doors, picking up items, climbing ladders, all the action things that we had a problem with before, are being fixed now, so that in addition to them working better, just by default we'll also highlight the item to show you what you're targeting. So if you walk up to a door and there's a light switch beside it, if you turn a little bit to the right, the light switch will light up. If you turn to the left, the door will light up. So there's never a question as to what's going to happen when you complete the action. There are no jumping puzzles at all. We left the ability to jump in even though you're not required to jump at all. I hate jumping puzzles.

JackChaos.com ("The Freak of Geeks") has updated every one of their 45 guides to Ultima IX: Ascension. The guides cover everything from specific dungeon walkthroughs to spell locations and all the dirt on different people and towns.

French games site GameData has posted a massive preview of BioWare's MDK 2. The text is entirely in French (so be sure to jam a BabelFish in your ear if you're planning on reading it) but the preview features a huge number of impressive new screenshots and concept art (including some storyboards from the game). MDK, as everyone knows, stands for "kibble magnifiques de chien."

ChessMess.com has posted an UnrealScript Q&A, that features over 30 questions about UnrealScript, the Unreal engine programming language, compiled from the UnrealScript mailing list.

GA-RPG has posted a Q&A with Logic Factory's Todd Templeman, talking about the current status of Seeker, their first person action title. According to Todd, the game is still set for a Fall release, and they are testing their "Alpha Arena" version (a multiplayer demo), and that they expect to do a public beta test of the full game as they near completion.

Computer Games Online has posted a preview of Dogs of War, a 3D real-time strategy game by Silicon Dreams and TalonSoft that is also known as Warmonkeys. A handful of new screenshots illustrate the 3D landscape, the graphical extravanganza, and multitude of units this game aims to provide.

The official Messiah site has been updated with 14 new screenshots of Shiny's imminent third-person action game. Also, an update by David Perry provides insight into just how imminent a release is ("So basically the team can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel..."), as they are stamping out bugs by the dozen.

There is a preview of Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord on Games Domain, examining a recent beta of this upcoming 3D wargame. Set in World War II, this strategy game takes a "simultaneous turn-based" approach, rather than today's more prevalent real-time systems, with the 3D view handled by "camera positions ranging from ground level (zoom 1) to eye in the sky (zoom 7 or 8)." The article also features quotes from Steve Grammont, assisant designer at Big Time Software which is developing the title.

GA-RPG has conducted an interview on Anarchy Online, talking to Funcom's support manager Tor Andre Wigmostad about their upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing game, or MMORPG for short. There are more details about various gameplay aspects, such as the clan system and character interaction, and a full beta of the game is expected to commence later this Spring.

Daily Radar's Deus Ex Week offers a preview and new screenshots of Deus Ex, ION Storm's upcoming science fiction RPG. The exclusive screenshots kick off their Deus Ex Week, which will continue with original character art, development details, and an interview with Warren Spector and the Deus Ex design team. Thanks Shugashack.

id Software's Robert Duffy updated his .plan with word of a new version 1.16j Quake III Arena beta release on id's FTP site. Here are local copies of the Win32 version (402 KB), the Linux version (625 KB), and the Mac version (387 KB), each with a list of mirrors. Here's the .plan update with the skinny on what's new:

New executables for the point release beta are on the FTP.

-Zombie/Ghost unpure clients no longer remain connected.
-Recursive File System error corrected when running mods with logfile set to 1
-The Auto-download rate is controlled by 'sv_maxRate', specify this value in bytes per second. The maximum band rate caps out around 25K per second.

There are three new Devil Inside screenshots 3D-Unlimited showing off action from Devil Inside, Cyro-Interactive GameSquad's upcoming horror game that plot-wise sounds a bit like The Blair Witch Project meets Night Stalker (doesn't someone need to do a Night Stalker movie?), though visually, the shots (the first one in this group in particular) look very Matrix.

There's a Picassio FAQ on Game-Interviews.com discussing Promethean Designs' upcoming game of art thievery. While it does discuss many aspects of gameplay, the FAQ reads as much like an interview as a list of frequently asked questions, but is called the official FAQ for the game, and an actual interview about the game is promised as a follow-up.

• The Guillemot North America website has new version 3.77 drivers for the Hercules 3D Prophet and the 3D Prophet DDR-DVI. Thanks CLuTcH.
• This page has the release of SoundFX NT version 1.09, a DOS sound card emulator that allows DOS games to run with sound under WinNT4 and Win2000.
• A new version 4.14 of the Motherboard Monitor is now available.
• There is a new AMD AGP miniport driver (direct link). According to Tom at AMDZone, "This appears to fix a problem I had with Quake Arena crashing on my MSI K7Pro with an Asus GeForce DDR when AGP 2X was enabled."
• There's a new GeForce-TNT tweak guide on 3D Spotlight.
• Intel Developer Forum 2000 Part 1 on Thresh's Firingsquad.
• The Weekly CPU Price Chart on the Tech-Review has been updated.
• The Future of RAM: RDRAM vs. DDR Explained on HardwareCentral.
• Leadtek Winfast GeForce 256 is reviewed on Maximum Hardware.
• Creative Annihilator Pro is reviewed on The Tech Zone
• AOpen AX63 Pro motherboard is reviewed on Digital Clips.
• AMK's 18 Inch "LAN Party" case is reviewed on Overclockin.Com.
• Athlon Overclocking Guide Outside Loop Afterburner! vs. TS Electronics K7OC Card on Sharky Extreme.
• Six Golden Fingers Athlon overclockers compared on the Tech-Report.
• System Cooling and Case Cutting on Tweak3D.net.

Monolith CEO Jason Hall updated his .plan with a reluctant response to the most recent reply (story) to his most recent interview (story) stating that "there is no 'engine war,'" and that he is "just trying to answer interview questions as best as possible and as a separate task I'm trying to communicate information on LithTech and what we are doing with it." The update goes on to discuss how he will attempt to remove "potentially inflammatory comments" from future updates. Here's a bit:

Anyhow, the conclusion that I draw from this turn of events is that the aggressive nature of my approach has some people feeling "backed in" to a corner where their conversation has digressed into a mild character assassination of me, and I feel that now would be a good time to just step out of this whole debacle, as I don't have the time or will to defend against this stuff.

So, I apologize to this company for whatever it is/was that I have done to make them feel the need to proceed in this manner. I certainly did not intend to create such hostility. I feel that I have always kept the discussion to the relevant topics, and I feel that I've made valid and provable arguments that potential licensees can be the judge and jury on.

Everyone can rest assured that I will be spending EXTRA time tying to make sure that whatever further information we release is carefully screened for any potentially inflammatory comments. I thought we were already doing this, but some companies feel that I am specifically focused on them. I'm not.

I will do better in the future to remove any potentially perceived "slams" from my comments, but some companies have got to understand that everything that comes out of my mouth is not about them. If they can get past that, then there should just be smooth sailing from here.

Human Head Studios' Tim Gerritsen updated his .plan with a lengthy piece that eventually mentions plans to show off RUNE at this year's E3, as well as plans to offer the Rune technology enhancements to the Unreal/Unreal Tournament engine "for a fairly reasonable rate" (the next best thing to a reasonable rate). These enhancements are detailed on this webpage, for a price quote, e-mail Tim or www@humanhead.com.

Electronic Arts Drops Splinter reports The Adrenaline Vault News, saying "Electronic Arts has dropped the 3D shooter, Splinter, from its product slate. Caz Derby, associate producer at Australian-based Stromlo Entertainment on the project, said the title is still in full development and 'so close to beta, [they] can smell it.' However, Stromlo is in the process of shopping the project around for a new publisher." GA-Source's What Happened with Splinter and EA is a brief Q&A with Stromlo that discusses this, saying this was the result of "The low sales of the latest Descent episode" and EA having "lowered their priority on all PC products - in particular the 3D flying shooter genre. Unfortunately, that meant Splinter had to go."

The Assimilation 2 website has the preview edition of Assimilation 2, a teamplay mod for Quake III Arena that supports up to seven(!) teams, where fragged players are assimilated to the team that frags them until one team remains. The mod also offers a couple of last man standing type modes.

The Scissors Quake3Arena site has the debut release of Push Button Arena, a simple Quake III Arena mod that offers a button on the roof of a structure in the map that awards 30 frags when pressed (the button resets once per minute). The mod is actually just a map, there is no code used beyond what id includes in the original game.

A new version 0.96a of the Q3Log log parser is now available on the site's newly relocated homepage. There's nothing new in the update, which is described as bug fixes.

As an aid to skin artists, Painful Detail has posted the complete set of Grid maps for the male and female Unreal Tournament Commando models, showing the skins with no textures, just every polygon mapped in a 2d image. Also, Graphtallica has released their eighth texture pack, free for use in any project, commercial, or not.

A story posted for a while yesterday titled Could Microsoft open source code to settle was old news, already refuted by a report later that day: Microsoft denies Gates made key concession in antitrust case. Thanks Brendan Reville. Sorry for the confusion.

The Auran BIG Weekend on aussiegamer.com is a write-up of The Auran Big Weekend gaming event in Australia from April 29 to May 1. The Razer-CPL Qualifier Coverage Eurogamer.net is now complete, all 39 pages worth.

• 1602 A.D. on 3DGN.
• Airport Inc on Future Gamer.
• Everglide Giganta mousepad on Exxtreme3D.Com and Speedy 3D.
• Nox on GamesFirst.
• Pharaoh on PC Gameworld.
• Ratpad mouse pad on Rush3D.
• Razer Boomslang 1000 mouse on GA-Source.
• RollerCoaster Tycoon: Corkscrew Follies on Adrenaline Vault.
• SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle on PC Gamer UK.
• The Sims on GamesMania, GamePower, and Electric Playground.

• GreenMarine's .plan mentions an update to the Unreal Technology page that mentions the announcement of Action Unreal Tournament, the planned UT follow-up to Action Quake 2 and Action Half-Life...
• Speaking of UT mods, there are now 83 UT mutators in the Mod Central Unreal database.
• A new weekly installment to GA-RPG's RPG Mythology with BioWare Corp. offers thoughts from Trent Oster, producer on Neverwinter Nights on how Player Killing will be dealt with in this upcoming multiplayer-based RPG...
• The Crystal Space site has the release of Blocks, a Tetris-like game (source included) that uses the Crystal Space 3D engine...
• Overdrive (Working Title) Revealed on GA-Source offers some development details and screenshots of this upcoming racing/combat game that was originally planned as a Quake conversion, but is now using a proprietary engine...
• The DpDesigns page has a massive team colors skin pack for Quake III Arena...
• The Qualcomm website has a version 4.3 patch for Eudora for Windows, which includes a new "sponsored" mode that's "free," although there's no patch yet for those of us who have already paid for the program (now doesn't that just warm my loyal customer's heart?)...

The audience here is quite international, so I take pleasure in offering the occasional irreverent (and sometimes even informative) reference to goings on here in the US, so I was a bit surprised when it was a couple of "local" readers who mistakenly tried to correct my reference to Andrew Johnson yesterday, thinking I meant Andrew Jackson. Here's Yahoo's Andrew Johnson directory in case there are others unclear on this (President Johnson's impeachment was quite a fascinating episode in American politics). My favorite of the corrections came from a student who complained that his college (which will go unnamed) did not give the holiday off... hopefully there was a mandatory US History class .

Link of the Day: Shields UP! Thanks Hal. This is Steve Gibson's (the original SpinRite guy, not sCary) Internet Connection Security Analysis site. I've actually been sent this before, but being paranoid about Internet security, feared clicking a URL with a .dll in it. But rather than fear it, I recommend everyone visit this site and see how secure their home machine or network really is.
Bonus Link: CIA Homepage for Kids. Thanks North*Pole. Continuing the security theme...this one is apparently for real!

In what has become a sort of tradition, Epic's Tim Sweeney made a post to the Unreal Technology Page, directly rebutting statements made earlier today by Monolith's Jason Hall (story). Specifically Tim addresses the accusation that they are neglecting their licensees, and he repeatedly points to the success of Unreal as a game as an example of their model working. Here's an excerpt which sums up Tim's position nicely:

Our engine licensing business has always been driven simply by people seeing our games and tools and saying, "Wow, that's exactly the kind of engine I need!" All our early licensing success, with Legend Entertainment and Microprose, occurred before we realized that a viable business called "engine licensing" even existed. The Unreal community online developed the same way -- we never said "let's recruit web sites for our game", we just released a cool game (early on, just cool screenshots), and the community happened. Our philosophy is "Build it, and they will come".

UnrealEngine.com has posted Q&As with Andrew Scheidecker and Gregory Wood, two members of the team working on UnrealtyED, the customized version of UnrealED for the Unrealty real estate visualization project. Andrew is responsible for rewriting the editor in C++, and Greg is the author of the new documentation for the project, which he describes as "voluminus."

According to this news story on AVault, Terminus, Vicarious Visions' massively multiplayer (and singleplayer) space sim will be released for Mac, Linux, and PC (in the same box) in April of this year. In addition to that, they've posted six new screenshots from the game.

Also new on AVault are two screenshots from Dark Reign 2, complete with detailed descriptions from Greg Borrud, the director of the game at Pandemic Studios.

PlanetDaikatana has posted a brand new screenshot from Daikatana that features the "Deathsphere and Ragemaster" with more promised tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. We missed their previous three screenshots from last week, which are still available on their news page.

Hot on the heels of the new release (story) comes a small patch for JHexen to fix two problems with its Doomsday engine. Also available is the source code of the JHexen DLL, which allows the creation of JHexen mods, or even of a new game DLL on top of the Doomsday engine.

GameSpot UK has posted an interview with Steve Pearsall, the project director on Thief II: The Metal Age at Looking Glass Studios. The interview covers the new features added since the original Thief, both in terms of technology and new gameplay features as well.

The Windows 2000 compatibility update that was released last Friday (story) on Microsoft's Windows Update site, has been posted as a separate download (thanks Oleg Troyko). The update adds compatibility with a whopping 48 programs, many of which are popular games.

AVault has posted a 360-degree, panoramic screenshot from Monolith's LithTech 2 engine, or more specifically their E3 '99 demonstration level. The shot was compiled from high resolution BMP files, and is presented using a Java applet, so a Java-capable browser is required.

United Recammers have released a new Quake II demo movie titled United Recammers: Recamming Time, or simply URRT. The demo is a composition of some of the most popular Quake II deathmatch movies, including the CPL's Extreme Annihilation final demos, Makaveli vs Destrukt, and GeekFest '99. It's available for download at Machinima.com.

RPOV has posted an interview with Jason Hall, Monolith's CEO (and resident ShadowMan lookalike), talking to him about the history of the company, and their future, focusing largely on their LithTech engine (which has been getting lots of press lately). Jason is quite vocal about the company's plans for making LithTech the core of their future plans, as shown in this excerpt:

Quite frankly I find it unlikely that some of our main competitors will step up to the challenge [of providing support for engine licensees]. Competing with us at this point is going to be extremely expensive and most of our "competitors" aren't specifically focused on engine licensing. Most of them are focused on making "games first" and then "licensing second."

...With LithTech, our licensees are the top priority. Nothing else comes before them, period. The engine licensing business has evolved into a technology AND service oriented business, where as you know, in order to be successful, the customer always has to come first. And for LithTech, the licensee always does.

New Devil Inside Screenshots on GA-Source show off nine new in-game shots of Gamesquad's upcoming action/adventure game as well as three in-development shots in 3D Studio Max. The shots are accompanied by a brief blurb from Designer Hubert Chardot, author of the Alone in the Dark series.

WarCentral.com interviews Kelly Hoerner talking with the producer on Daikatana, ION Storm & Eidos Interactive's upcoming sword-wielding first-person shooter. The Q&A gives a basic rundown on what to expect from the game, and the WarCentral folks' expectations are obviously high, as one question begins "Daikatana possesses some of the best AI in the history of First Person Shooters..." Thanks sCary.

• RIVA 3D has a post up with links to new ELSA Win2K drivers for the Elsa Erazor X & X2 and a new Erazor X BIOS for all OS's.
• Intel Developer Forum Coverage in Sharky's Private Eye Volume 7.
• Voodoo 3 3000 PCI is reviewed on Eurogamer.net.
• Guillemot 3D Prophet DDR/DVI is reviewed on Beta Bites.
• EPOX EP-7KXA motherboard is reviewed on Gamers Depot and Overclockers Australia.
• SiS630 Chipset is reviewed on iXBT.
• Enlight EN-7233E case is reviewed on CTNews.

There's a new piece of Soldier of Fortune concept art on SoF Operations showing off the squad known as Red Guard, captioned "not the nicest army in the world."

A new version 0.98 of Fists of Fury for Quake III Arena, the mod for Quake III Arena where you put down those guns and fight like a man, is now available. The new release adds a new custom HUD, a new Kamikazi Death ("bind a key to kamikazi...muhaha"), a "functional" jump kick (when you have long jump), and the removal of the Gauntlet Grapple (said to be "laggy...and almost useless").

A new version 1.4.2 update for LxDoom, the Linux port of the Doom source code, is now available. There is nothing new in the new release except for bug fixes, some portability improvements, and a fix for some problems with "the network code not being compiled right on many systems."

Stomped @ E3 is offering the opportunity to win Diablo II, Halo, and Team Fortress II, to be awarded to the best "why I should win" essay. Cached has posted results from the Cyber-Arena tourney, sponsored by CompUSA among others: congrats to the winner, nb.fatal1ty, and all the other participants. Also, the UK qualifier for the Razer-CPL event in London is complete, with Blokey taking the first prize, winning a trip to Dallas and an automatic seeding in the final 64 at the tourney this April. Quake 3 skills earn Blokey a shot at $100,000 CPL prize on gameplay.com, and Eurogamer.net's Razer-CPL Qualifier Coverage is now under way, with reports on four of the seeding free for alls and three of the first round matches already up, and more planned on the way.

• Close Combat Trilogy on The Wargamer.
• Nox on Thresh's FiringSquad.
• Pharaoh on GA-Strategy.
• Rising Sun on CheckOut.com.
• Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear on GameSurge.
• System Shock 2 on 3D Game Gear.
• The Sims on Glide Underground and GameLinks.Net.
• The Sims versus Real Life on CheckOut.com.

• Grandpappy's Cabin has a pack of a "fistful" of textures for Unreal Tournament map authors...
• Farewell To Thrustmaster on GamingChronicle.com says so long to the venerable joystick brand after the death of mainstay Buzz Hoffman and the sale of the company to Guillemot...

Today is President's Day here in the US, where we celebrate our great leaders of the past by taking off from work and buying sheets and towels at low, low prices. There used to be separate holidays here for Lincoln and Washington's birthdays, but apparently there were concerns that another leader warranting such treatment might come along some day, so the holiday was opened up to all, though it doesn't seem very effective at ensuring that the likes of Millard P. Filmore and Rutherford B. Hayes are not forgotten. Since the holiday covers the whole gamut, just to be contrary, I'm going to spend the day remembering Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton for their brushes with impeachment.

Link of the Day: RiksJotto II, "the different soccer game." Thanks Are Nyseth. This has no socially redeeming values (you are a sniper shooting at soccer players from the stands), but a great web-based shooting game. Like many of the playable Links of the Day, I hesitate to admit how long I played it once I tried it.