IGN Gear have thrown up their Half-Life 2 Optimization Guide! Here's a snip.

Half-Life 2 finally looks like it's just around the corner. In anticipation of its release, gamers everywhere are pre-loading the game via Steam and clearing off hard drive space. But is the rest of your PC ready for Valve's next masterpiece?

It seems like Nintendo yesterday started a big media offensive, now that everyone knows all about the Nintendo DS storm it is now time for two other platforms, the GBA and the GameCube. For the last one Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is one of the most anticipated titles of the year. One of the biggest hits for the last game.

LucasArts has issued new patches for Star Wars Battlefront, empowering the English, German, French, Italian and Spanish editions of the sci-fi 3D multiplayer action game by Pandemic Studios to version 1.01. This release adds planet names to the Planet Loading screen, fixes an issue with connecting via GameSpy Arcade, and addresses an issue with losing connection to the host after Task-Switching.

Electronic Arts has released new patches for Battlefield Vietnam, bringing the 3D multiplayer action game by Digital Illusions to version 1.2. This massive release adds three new maps (titled Operation Cedar Falls, Saigon 1968, and Fall of Saigon), eight new vehicles, a new spectator mode, unique colors for individual buddies, mobile spawn points on the 3D map, balance tweaks, bug fixes, and more. Note that it's recommended to install the WWII Mod before the patch.

Valve responed to a question as to what happens with your old cd keys eg: hl1, cs:cz, etc...

You will lose your old keys if you use the same account to purchase hl2! (read more for more info and the only solution)

NGO posted new screenshots pack of the NEW maps (aztec,dust2,cbble,italy) in HL2/CS:S engine.

Counter-Strike: Source has now been unlocked for Steam users. A small update is required to unlock CS: Source.

Will cs:s be available this week?
Follow link to read directly from the steam forum: http://steampowered.com/forums

Quote:
When will I be able to play my games?
º Counter-Strike: Source will be unlocked this week. This means you can play the full version of CS:S within another week! (posted on 1st of october '04)

Gameconnect made a complete overview of the upcoming game Start Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. There are story details, 24 screenshots, 20 concept arts, release date and character info.

Thanks to CDFreaks for the Heads up!

Womble used our news submit to inform us that the game "Knights of Honor" by Black Sea Studios/Sunflower contains a copy-protection that seems to remove the file deamon.dll from our harddisks. This file is part of the DAEMON Tools software, an application with which you can emulate certain copy-protections. Futuremore, the game requires a "burning software clean" system. So what does this mean for us? Is it legal to force customers to uninstall software? What will come next?

GameConnect received emails from all over the world with a lot of new ingame screenshots of HalfLife 2, we published them all in our local gallery.

PC Perspective have thrown up their new article which looks at the first 64-bit game to have hit retail shelves Shadow Ops! Is the 64-bit gaming revolution really here? or a AMD/Atari scam?

If you have been following PC games at all recently, you'll have noticed AMD getting into a marketing swing promoting 64-bit gaming. As the new Microsoft XP 64-bit edition comes closer to availability, AMD is getting more and more anxious to show off their 64-bit advantage before it disappears with the arrival of Intel's desktop 64-bit processors

The multiplayer demo for Men of Valor is now online, offering the first opportunity to try out the upcoming tactical first-person shooter by 2015 that's set in Vietnam. The demo features a large urban map and a smaller jungle map, playable in Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Multiplayer Mission modes using three player classes (rifleman, machinegunner, and sniper).

After a slight delay, the promised multiplayer demo for Tribes: Vengeance is now available, allowing you to take the futuristic first-person shooter by Irrational Games into the online arena. This massive demo offers five different gameplay types playable on four maps: Cavern, Emerald, Isle, and Winterlake

Just spotted this bit of news over at Half-Life 2 Fallout!

As promised, subscribers to PC Gamer and others are starting to receive their early copies of the magazines containing the first Half-Life 2 reviews. Halflife2.net forum member Scrop has reported back on the first review from PC Gamer (UK)'s November issue.

The fifth phase of the Half-Life 2 preload begins to Steam account holders today. This will allow users to download the Counter-Strike: Source maps in encrypted form. No purchase is required to pre-load Half-Life 2, but is required to activate the game. The moment the game is made available, those who have pre-loaded and purchased the game via Steam will be ready to start playing.

Our Doom 3 tweak guide will take you through every option available in the game, the console, config files, graphics, audio and input settings.

Our guide is ready to be used with the latest version of Doom 3 1.10.

Thankfully, all is well with the world. Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War does indeed contain violence, large men of the military persuasion, disgusting mutants, and so much more. What one could never assume just by looking at the title, is the sheer excellence of the game within, or that the era of total suckage for Warhammer 40000 titles is over. Relic Entertainment, after turning the RTS world on its head with the award winning Homeworld series, has managed to produce a Warhammer 40000 title that people will actually want to play.

Half-Life 2 Fallout has received word from Valve's Gabe Newell revealing the much anticipated Half-Life 2 retail and Steam (info) packages. Also revealed, the full version of CS:Source will be available to Steam purchasers next week!

Activision have released a new retail patch for DOOM 3, updating id Software's horror first-person shooter sequel to version 1.1. This non-beta release addresses a wide variety of issues with stability, interface, networking / multiplayer, rendering, localization and more (including one new single-player fix compared to the beta patch), as detailed in the accompanying release notes.