An update to the Counter-Strike: Source beta has just been released. Steam will update itself automatically when you restart. Here is a list of the changes:

The eagerly anticipated playable demo for Rome: Total War is now available, allowing you to try out the upcoming 3D turn-based and real-time strategy sequel that is nearing completion at Creative Assembly. This demo contains a tutorial playable as the Roman Julii Family, and the historical Battle of Trebia map playable as the Carthaginians.

GGMania reports that GameFusion has released a sound pack (v1.0) for Counter-Strike: Source which replaces most of the weapon sounds within the game.

Joel Hruska from sudhian.com wrote an article about gaming today, and expresses his concerns about the possible future of gaming. While most of you guys will say "Joel who?", his views are interesting and the article is well worth a read:

Electronic Arts has now released the World War II mod for Battlefield Vietnam, expanding Digital Illusions' recent 3D multiplayer action game with three maps from their earlier game Battlefield 1942. Included in the hefty download are Invasion of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Wake Island, complete with all the vehicles and weapons from the original game, all tweaked for the BFV engine and adding that game's flamethrowers into the mix.

Wargaming.net releases new Butterfly planet for its online strategy game Massive Assault Network, making total number of planets 11. This is a small planet shaped as butterfly. It has moderate resources and little natural obstacles. It has been designed for fast World Wars with massive armored strikes - the open ground does not favor defensive tactics.

Today VR-Zone Hardware brings you part two of their three part series on benchmarking using the Source Engine. Today we use Valve's Source Engine Stress Test to show how ATI and NVIDIA's high-end and mid-ranged cards will perform in Half-Life 2. Also included are benchmarks with NVIDIA's beta 65.62 drivers.

This is a AVI demo in 640x480 of the Half-Life 2 Stress test that has been loaded with the Counter-Strike: Source beta.

Just spotted this bit of Info over at 3DGPU.com

You may remember I had posted details last week that UltraShadow II wasn?t being utilized for Doom 3, like most of you had expected it would. John Carmack mentioned that it can be enabled, but it may require unreleased drivers.

Gamers Depot have posted their early benchmarks of the newly released Source Engine Benchmark tool in the Counter Strike Beta.

Steampowered: Counter-Strike: Source Beta Opens
The second phase of the Counter-Strike: Source beta has opened and the game is now playable for owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and the ATI/HL2 bundle. During this limited-time beta, issues can be reported using the in-game bug-reporting tool. In addition any crashes will automatically generate a report back to Valve's bug database.

Gabe Newell himself has posted a topic on Half Life 2 Fallout saying that HL2 will begin pre-loading tomorrow!

Today VR-Zone Hardware brings you the world's first Counter-Strike: Source benchmarks. In part one of our three part article on Counter-Strike: Source, we take a look at how ATI and NVIDIA's latest high end GPU's perform in real world Counter-Strike: Source gameplay.

Kristen Perry, one of Valve's extremely talented artists, has kindly granted HL2mods UK permission to showcase some of her Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 artwork, which most people will not have seen before at this resolution. They're certainly worth a look for anyone interested in the illustrative side of these games.

Bob Mandel over Avault gave the Highest Rating "SEAL OF EXCELLENCE" to Doom 3. This review characterizes as unfair some negative critics about the game's gameplay and gives right to all gameplay design decisions made.

"Without being revolutionary (except technologically), this offering provides a fresh and overwhelming experience that makes me forget about everything else. I like virtually every design decision id made, and count this as my favorite PC first-person shooter and one of my top computer titles of all time in any genre. If you love monsters, machines and mayhem, as I do, this is your game."

On the eve of the open phase for Counter-Strike Source BETA, Game2XS have 4 new movies showing off Valve?s awesome new shooter. The movies are quite short but give a good idea of what preloaded players can expect tomorrow. Download them here.

Valve released Counter-Strike:Source Beta pre-load to CS:CZ/HL2 vouchers. tomorrow the beta will be unlocked.

At the Siggraph conference in Los Angeles, Valve's Viktor Antonov participated on a panel entitled, "Next Generation Game Visuals." he discussed world creation, research, architecture, lighting, and concepts for the art direction of Half-Life 2. Viktor showed some of the HL2 demos from this year's E3, and a Powerpoint presentation featuring references used in the creation of HL2 along with the end result screenshots from the game.

Update: PlanetHalf-Life have also thrown up their chat with Valve software:

Q: When will the Benchmark tool be released, or is it still planned?

File Rush has a mirror for the Half Life 2 E3 2004 Trailer in a ultra Hi-res Bink format.

A playable demo of Street Legal Racing: Redline is now available, offering the opportunity to try out this urban racing simulation sequel by Invictus and Activision Value. This trial version allows you to play for up to a generous 60 minutes, but also includes all content of the full game that you can activate after purchasing a license key online.