id Software has issued an updated Software Development Kit for DOOM 3, their recent sci-fi first-person shooter. This version 2 release brings the promised support for vehicles, bug fixes and more, and it now comes in Win32 and Linux incarnations.

Thanks to Voodoo Extreme for the heads up!

There's a nasty Half-Life 2 bug out there that is stopping people from playing this seminal shooter. Valve's Erik Johnson sent out this to help those folks:

For people that are running into the bug on startup that looks like:

Fido over at The Inquirer reports HALF LIFE 2 is finally with us and we've had sight of some benchmarks of ATI products with the long-awaited game.

Today, November 16th, is the official release of Valve's greatest game ever, Half-Life 2. Though we've all been waiting impatiently for the game, the early release didn't happen like we all had hoped. Well that's life I guess, we can't expect much, other than we're still breathing and enjoying the sun (for those of us who do leave our homes).

Half-Life 2 is available now for purchase and to play. Those who pre-purchased their copy via Steam may access the game by restarting Steam, then double-clicking on the Half-Life 2 icon in their Steam Games directory. To purchase your copy via Steam, get Steam now.

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?