The second in GameSpot's weekly look at the gods in Sacrifice is online this evening. This edition examines James, the god of Earth that looks remarkably like Earthworm Jim (an earlier Shiny creation) and like their previous one, features a rundown of his spells and a WAV where he explains his domain.

As promised, Raven has released the Soldier of Fortune Gold patch, available for download from FilePlanet. This 26.5 MB file adds 18 new maps and two new deathmatch modes, as well as new single- and multi-player features, bots, skins, and bug fixes. It brings any previous retail version of the game in sync with the just-released Gold Edition version 1.06. Here is a local copy with mirrors.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Westwood Studios, GameSpot has conducted a massive interview that chronicles the history of the company. They interview cofounders Brett Sperry and Louis Castle, and talk about the early days of the company, the wildly successful Command & Conquer and Dune games, their adventure titles (Blade Runner, Lands of Lore) and more, including some questions about their future projects. The duo confirms that they are currently working on three new games (not including Red Alert 2, which recently went gold): a non C&C strategy game, a Playstation 2-exclusive title, and a persistent world game. They also hint at a new Dune game, the chances of a Blade Runner sequel (not likely), and what's in store for the C&C franchise.

Here's a trio of developer's diaries for you this evening: AO Vault's Anarchy Online Developer Journal has been updated with a new status report from lead designer Tommy Strand. Meanwhile, the official Master of Orion III site has a new diary from designer Alan Emrich that contains updates on various aspects of this upcoming space-sim (thanks A Talent For War), and lastly, Chris Taylor, designer on Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel has made an update to their official page with a brief report on the game.

GameSpot has posted a demo for Microsoft's PC port of Metal Gear Solid. The demo weighs in at a reasonable 48 megs, and lets you play up to the point where you rescue the DARPA Chief. Mirrors are available at Stomped, DemoNews, and 3D Gamers.

GA-Source has posted three new screenshots of the teamplay mode in No One Lives Forever that was unveiled yesterday (story), which goes by the name of HARM vs. UNITY. Additionally, there are new details on some large terrain maps that will be included, and on a taunt feature.

Atomic Games and SSI have released a playable demo of Close Combat: Invasion Normandy, available for download from SSI's ftp server (thanks AVault, which has a mirror here). This is the fifth installment in the top-down real-time wargame series, and the demo clocks in at 57.6 MB.

GameSpot has written a new hands-on preview of the still-untitled expansion pack for Diablo II. The preview is based on what they were able to see during their recent trip to Blizzard's offices, and contains a lot of new gameplay details along with 10 new screenshots. Thanks Ant for the tip.

Beta 1.0 of glDuke has been released, and is available for download at its official site. glDuke is an OpenGL version of Duke Nukem 3D, and naturally the game is required in order to actually use it, as the minuscule download consists only of the executable file.

Raven Software has released a Bonus Holomatch Pack for Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force. The pack, which clocks in at 4.8 MB, contains two new Capture the Flag levels, and one new Team Holomatch map, and is available for download at FilePlanet.

WON.net's Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption site has conducted a new interview with Nihilistic's Steve Thoms. Steve reflects on the Vampire development cycle, mentioning his favorite parts of the game, and how smooth everything seemed to go (considering they had to build a company, engine and game all at the same time) and he curiously links to the recently released list of Xbox developers (which includes Nihilistic) when asked about their next project, saying, "some hints may be dropped from time to time." This could suggest that their next project is being designed specifically for the upcoming console system.

Computer Games Online has posted a playable demo of Escape From Monkey Island, the 3D adventure in the long running series by LucasArts. This is an English demo (rather than a French edition that is floating around) which comes in three different formats from 35.2 to 117 MB (as well as a separate 48 MB cutscene movie), catering for your available bandwidth, and it will also be available on the cover CD-ROM of the December issue of Computer Games Magazine. Downloads appear to be slow though, so we'll list some mirrors once they become available. Update: mirrors are now slowly surfacing: FragZone.se and Gamecenter have copies of the complete demo, and Adrenaline Vault and Gameaholic have mirrored all three demos.

A new image of Savage Skies has been released on the site of developers iROCK. Savage Skies is a 3D action/adventure designed in collaboration with Ozzy Osborne, and the image shows his alter ego in three stages of decomposition.

Raven's Rick Johnson updated his .plan to announce that the full source code of their fantasy first-person shooter Hexen II, which is based on the Quake engine that saw its source released last year, will be released sometime within a month. Here's the scoop:

It looks like we will be releasing the Hexen2 full source code sometime within a month. Details will follow once I put together the archive and get the appropriate license agreement.

Creative Assembly has released a new patch for Shogun: Total War, bringing their 3D real-time strategy game to version 1.12. The patch, which is for the English edition of the game, "significantly improves online play from the release version" as well as including all changes from the previous version 1.11 patch (story).

• Giants
  There is a new Giants: Citizen Kabuto preview on 3DGPU, examining a preview build of Planet Moon's third-person action game from which they've snapped over 20 new screenshots.
• Arcatera
  Blurring the line between Adventure and RPG kicks off CGO's preview of Aractera: The Dark Brotherhood, looking ahead to Westka's hybrid game (which is already out in parts of Europe) in words and a handful of new images.
• Red Alert 2
  GA-Strategy has posted a hands-on preview of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 based on a visit to Westwood's offices, though the included screenshots look familiar.
• Incoming Forces
  Zocks.de has posted a brief look at Incoming Forces in German, so stick a Babel Fish in your ear if you like, but the four new screenshots are in that universal language called Pixels.
• Scars of Velious
  GameSpy.com visited Verant Interactive and came back with a look at EverQuest: Scars of Velious, featuring Q&As with the developers and a bunch of new screenshots.
• Zeus
  Also on GameSpy.com is a brief preview of Zeus: Master of Olympus that includes three new screenshots of the city-building strategy game set in ancient Greece.
• Kingdom Under Fire
  A hands-on preview of Kingdom Under Fire on Gamer's Pulse is accompanied by a few more screenshots of Phantagram's role-playing RTS.
• WWII Online
  GameScreenshots has posted a bunch of new World War II Online screenshots, illustrating this massively multiplayer title by Cornered Rat Software.

Ritual sends along these nine new screenshots from Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale, their Nocturne-engine title that will be released later this year. The shots show off four different locations, including the interior of a church and a corpse-ridden graveyard.

With the news that came out last week that Ritual's next project will be published by a company other than Gathering of Developers (story), a rumor was circulating that they might be making SiN 2 for Activision. FGN Online has posted a quote from an unnamed representative for Ritual, who says that while they might revisit SiN again in the future, there are no plans to do so at the moment, and that since they own the full publishing rights to future games in the series, it could be published by anyone (not necessarily Activision). He also says that future FAKK games will be simultaneously released for both PC and console systems.

Dynamix' Dave Georgeson made a post to the Tribal War forums with the happy news that TRIBES 2 has officially gone beta. Here's what he has to say:

Yup. We finally made it. 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning and we're making the final beta burn to send up to Sierra QA to begin beta testing.

We're on the Road to Gold now, baby! The game is looking great. There's a ton of polishing to do on it, but the frame rate, stability, compatibility, fun, and general gloriousness of the darn thing has morale pretty high. We all can't wait until External Beta so we can put this in the hands of some testers and get the newness knocked off it so we can polish it up some more.

It's going to be a really good game, folks. But I'm gonna go sleep for a couple days now, so I'll be back later to talk about it more.

Just passing the good news on.

As noted by this press release at the game's official site, Space Empires IV, the turn-based space strategy game from developers Shrapnel Games, has gone gold. The game (and manual) are off to duplication, and it is expected to ship on November 1st.

Epic Games has released a new version 432 Win32 patch for Unreal Tournament. Here is a local copy of the patch, along with the usual list of mirrors. If you are interested in what's changed, as mentioned yesterday (story) there's a list of what's new on Unreality. Here are a few of those changes:

- faster server browser initial pinging of servers. Added a new default property to [UBrowserServerPing], MaxSimBroadbandPing, which defines the max number of servers to simultaneously ping if your netspeed > 6000.
- team scoreboard holds more players (no more names dropping off the bottom for 32 player games).
- fixed grenade smoke in OpenGL - fixed some D3D compatibility issues - faster server ping response for servers with mutators.
- admins lose cheats and die when they log out as admins.
- fixed bug causing player team choice to be overriden (also cause maxteamsize not to work when 2)

Gamers.com's Deep Space Nine - The Fallen preview is online, recapping their hands-on experiences with a beta version of the upcoming Unreal-engine game. The article offers impressions, a gameplay movie in a larger (.mpg) and smaller (.asf) format, and a batch of 50 screenshots. Also on the subject of DS9, Stomped's interview with Dan Mycha is the second in their week-long series of conversations with the gang at the Collective at work on The Fallen. In addition to the Q&A, the article also has some new screenshots as well.

There are four new Sacrifice Screenshots on Sharky Games taken from the beta version of Shiny's upcoming action/strategy hybrid.

Rowan's Battle Of Britain preview on Sim Arena offers a look ahead at this game that recreates the RAF's "finest hour," showing off the flying combat it recreates with a whole load of new screenshots.

• Q3A Stress Demo
  There's a new Q3A Stress Demoloop on RIVA Station that will allow you to run a continuous loop for benchmarking.
• Voodoo 4-5 Tweaking
  3D Spotlight's 3dfx Voodoo 4-5 tweak guide is online.

A new version 5.6 of the TeamSound free voice conferencing utility is now available. In addition to what's described as "lag-free" voice conferencing, this utility also provide Internet telephony, and a computer-generated text-to-speech function.

A new Linux server for the Rocket CrowBar Half-Life Mod is now available. This is not a client, so only server admins planning on running this Half-Life mod need apply.

NetImmerse 3D Inside on Xbox.IGN.Com announces that the NetImmerse 3D engine becomes an Xbox tools partner. Also, Daily Radar's Sony Launch Gallery offers box art from the titles to be available at launch of the upcoming PlayStation 2 console system, including the cover of PS2 Unreal Tournament. Finally, DailyRadar previews Commandos 2 looking at the upcoming squad-based shooter.

• Age of Empires II: the Conquerors on BarrysWorld.
• Army Men: World War on Enfused.
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn on GamePro.
• Battleship: Surface Thunder on PC.IGN.com.
• Blair Witch 1: Rustin Parr on Beyondtron and (in German) on GameSurf.de.
• Crimson Skies on Computer Games Online, Gone Gold, and GameRush.
• Deep Fighter (in German) on Gameplex.ch.
• Deus Ex on Jumbo.
• Gift Demo on 3DActionPlanet.
• Homeworld: Cataclysm on GameRaiders and (in German) on GameSurf.de.
• Icewind Dale on BarrysWorld.
• KA-52 Team Alligator on IntelGamer.
• MDK2 on Intelligamer.
• Midtown Madness 2 on FiringSquad, Gone Gold, and EuroGamer.
• NASCAR Heat on Operation Sports.
• Panzer General III: Scorched Earth on Gamecenter.
• Rollercoaster Tycoon: Loopy Landscapes on Game Over.
• Sanity: Aiken's Artifact on ActionTrip.
• Star Trek: Klingon Academy on PlayNOW.
• Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force on GameAddicts.
• Superbike 2001 on GamePower and Game Over.
• The Moon Project (in German) on SpieleCity.
• Vampire: the Masquerade - Redemption on Stratos Group.
• Warlords: Battlecry on 3D GameForce and Review Vortex.
• Wizards & Warriors on Daily Radar and GamingBliss.

• 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 (Mac) on MacOS3DRetreat.
• AMD Duron CPU roundup on Review Zone.
• Creative 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 video card on Sharky Extreme.
• Linksys Cable-DSL Router on nV News.
• Maxtor DiamondMax VL40 34098H4 hard drive on StorageReview.com.
• DFI AK74-SC Socket-A motherboard on PC Roddin'.

Well, I never got to try that Priceline groceries dealie, and now that it's shut down, I may never get the chance to see how naming one's own price for these will work. The odd thing is I heard the news on the radio yesterday, and one of their sponsors was, in fact, Priceline, so right after the news report on the end of the groceries and gas portion of their business was ending, on came Bill Shatner, literally singing their praises. Oh well, it's an interesting time to be part of this here Internet...

Link of the Day: Jar-Jar Binks-The E! True Hollywood Story. Thanks hiredgoons.
Story of the Day: Gambling with the Earth, another revisit of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, which, as noted previously, "could put the Earth in peril" (story). Thanks frederik.
Bonus Story: Stephen Hawking: 'My fears for human race'. "Hey, Larry Flynt is right!" Thanks again frederik.
Super Bonus Story: Missing Boaters Lived on Pop-Tarts, Beer (ABC News). Encouraging news in case the above stories get your survivalist urges in gear. Thanks Oleg Rekutin.