GameSpot and IGN PC have thrown up their reviews of Half-Life 2! Here's a snip.

I wanted to make this review short and sweet, but it's hard to stop writing, even when excluding facts that could potentially contaminate an exceptionally well thought-out gaming experience. There's just so much to say. Half-Life 2 is, simply put, the best single-player shooter ever released for the PC. It does so many things right in so many ways that it might be possible to write a thesis on the topic of Half-Life 2 compared to other single player shooters.

Epic Games has released the latest patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 to upgrade their futuristic multiplayer first-person shooter to version 3339. This release applies more gameplay tweaks, bug fixes, and other changes as detailed in the release notes, and it's accompanied by an updated version 1.1 of the Editor's Choice Edition bonus pack for new users (the patch already includes the bonus pack changes).

If you have purchased a copy of Half-Life 2, we are sorry you are still waiting to play. This is not Valve's choice. Vivendi is insisting that the game has not yet been released, and has threatened that Valve would be in violation of its contract if we activate the Half-Life 2 Steam authentication servers at this time.

GameSpot have thrown up a great article called The Final Hours of Half-Life 2 ! It's pretty long at 25 pages but well worth the read! Here's a snip.

At this point, we're standing around, saying, 'Do you have anything to do? Well, I don't have anything to do,'" Newell says as he walks the halls of Valve. It's September 30, 2004, and Half-Life 2 is nearly done. A release candidate was sent to Vivendi on September 15. Now Valve is working to fix the final bugs that were found in that version. There is other good news as well: Valve is beginning to sense that Vivendi may end up shipping the game this year, mostly due to intense pressure from retailers who think Half-Life 2 could become the best-selling PC game of all time.

The playable demo of BloodRayne 2 has been released, allowing the first chance to sample the upcoming third-person horror action sequel by Terminal Reality. This demo "features 1 level of play--the Mansion. Your objective is to discover who is the Cult of Kagan and put an end to their ring leader, Dariel Zerenski."

In order to enter the following cheats you will have to activate the console by modifying game shortcut. Right-click on the Half-Life 2 icon on your desktop, select Properties and a new screen should pop up. Add the " -console" parameter (without the quotes) at the end of the target field so it looks similar to this:

A new version of Direcpll.dll file is available for download! This file is recommended to properly run AquaMark3 with some newer graphics hardware. It fixes problems like black screens, exceptions/access violations and incorrect clock speed detection.

Looks like some stores are breaking their NDA's and are selling Half-Life 2 earlier than the Official released date of 16th of November! But it still can't be played as it still needs to be unlocked at the moment.

This month a lot of new demos are released to the public, including action, adventure and more! Download links, Description and homepage links available! View the list @ OnlyNewZ

This was just sent in by one of our readers.

It would be fantastic if you could post these threads as an update on your website and this following letter to Bungie and fans, as this is an important problem that is happening with Halo 2:

For those of you who can't find or havent seen them. These screenshots were released on www.gamebiz.com, then a few hours later, this message:

When I bought my Xbox a couple of years ago, my first game was Halo. I didn?t know much about it but it had some good reviews. On the first level (Pillar of Autumn), I had to get used to the controller and it didn?t go very well, and I didn?t like the game very much at all, so I went back to my PC. Read the review at GameConnect

Onlynewz searched the web selected a lot of latest patches for games like Myst IV, RollerCoaster Tycoon and many more. In total about 10 patches has been listed. The following games have updates: Myst IV, RollerCoaster, Star Wars, Soldiers, Joint Operations, Warhammer, War In The Pacific, XIII, Kohan and Firepower.

Dragon's Lair III is the latest installment in the long-running series of third-person action adventures by Digital Leisure, naturally starring hapless knight Dirk the Daring.

Half-Life 2 Fallout reports the question that has been on everybody's lips is at what time will Steam unlock on the 16th and what will that mean for retail release times?

Valve has released the Source Software Development Kit (SDK) Tools via Steam. A precursor to the release of the full SDK, which will be released shortly after Half-Life 2 is made available, the Source SDK Tools release offers a comprehensive toolset for starting production on Source-based MODs, including Hammer, XSI EXP for Half-Life 2, compiling tools, the Source Model Viewer, documentation on programming, modeling, building materials, and more.

BeyondUnreal reports More, we want more! MaximumPC released a special edition Fall 2004 3D Tech Guide featuring a highly defined picture of Malcolm. This edition includes some exclusive photos of the capabilities of Unreal Engine 3.

Following the recent Lucasfilm Ltd. title announcement of the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith? motion picture, LucasArts already revealed that it will release the Star Wars: Episode III video game on May 5, 2005, two weeks before the opening of the film.

The playable demo for FlatOut is now online, offering the first opportunity to take this upcoming crash-prone racing simulation by Bugbear Entertainment for a spin. The demo offers three tracks: Finchley Forest (Challenge), Fairgrass Grounds (Cup) and Grand Slam Stadium (High Jump).

Ubi Soft Entertainment has released a playable demo of Alexander, allowing the chance to try out this imminent Cossacks-engine powered real-time strategy game by GSC Game World that's inspired by the Oliver Stone motion picture. This demo offers two single-player missions titled Taming Macedonia and Construction of Alexandria, along with three skirmish / multiplayer maps.

Gamer's Hell - 3D Gamers