Games Domain.com have posted their look at the Xbox version of the racing game of the year TOCA Pro Race Driver.

Right after 2D fighters, racing games currently seem to take the brunt of cracks about the shallowness of videogames. Even first-person shooters (which, God knows, can be bad enough) still seem to fare better overall in terms of play value. Racing games these days had best bring something new to the table. UK developer Codemasters has long been known for its nigh-unwavering, passionate attention to racing games of all kinds, but it's been argued that the human touch in racing games has been... lacking.

Craig Lafferty, associate producer at Legend Entertainment, has just announced on the Infogrames community forums that the highly anticipated patch for Unreal II: The Awakening is now available for download. To update select the autoupdater in the start menu. The file is about 4MByte in size. A manual download is being set up at the moment.

As everyone's busy hunting down the Nvidia Detonator 50.xx drivers we seem to have missed this UT2003 2218 Beta patch that was available to download @ Beyondunreal.com.

Arush Entertainment and Digitalo have made the first fix available for the Devastation MP demo that was released yesterday. It addresses the extreme frame rate loss and connection lags that people are experiencing. Digitalo's Vic DeLeon posted on the Bluesnews message boards that a complete patch fixing server browser issues, miscellaneous gameplay issues, physics, and other problems will be released soon.

Independent developed online racing simulator Live for Speed! Free demo testing.

Soon to be available commercially. Live for Speed was developed by 3 guys with two of the guy's coming from the Black and White team. This game is an UNBELIEVABLE driving sim. Gran Turismo3 meets Nascar 2003.

Chrome is a tactical shooter that brings a new twist to the FPS genre with its unique combination of established FPS standards and truly innovative elements. Players take on the role of Logan, and using a system of implants, are able to alter his abilities in order to survive the 14+ action-packed missions. Logan will take part in breathtaking chases in futuristic vehicles, become a silent assassin striking at unwitting enemies, and use his heavy plasma gun and implant enhanced muscles to storm through enemy lines. Publisher StrategyFirst has opened up the public beta application form. The open beta will begin on April 7th and will run until May 9th. Apply here

Activision has unveiled the box art for the highly-anticipated game "Star Trek ? Elite Force II." The first person action game allows players to resume the role of Alexander Munro, chief of Starfleet's elite security unit known as the Hazard Team.

The Multiplayer Demo for Devastation is now available for download! Featuring awesome weapons, cool in-game physics and both Death Match and Capture the Flag gametypes, the demo will give you a good taste of what Devastation Multiplayer is all about.

3DGamers.com reports that there is a tiny patch for IGI 2: Covert Strike, addressing graphics problems in the stealthy first-person shooter by Innerloop Studios. The safemode fix changes "DirectX settings in your computer's registry related to graphical performance," is unsupported by publisher Codemasters, and is "intended for advanced computer users only" in case you can't play the game or experience "critical graphical issues".

I have been waiting for Freelancer since I heard about it. It has the possibility of being the best game ever, but it falls short. Read the review to find out why.

Codemasters has released an upgrade patch version v1 for Innerloops tactical shooter IGI2: Covert Strike. The update mainly focuses on netcode and adds a new multiplayer map while about one dozen bugs are ironed out. It's also accompanied by an updated dedicated Win32 server. Updates are available for UK and Nordic versions of IGI2.

IEBeta writes: "Yes, thats right we managed to get our hand on the new americas army beta patch 1.6. You'll need to have 1.5 patch installed before trying to install this new patch.

YOU NEED TO REGISTER TO BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD.

A new movie trailer has been released for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the 3D sci-fi role-playing game being crafted at BioWare. The movie sports a minute and a half of in-game footage, and comes in regular and high resolutions.

We've released an update to address some load balancing issues on the Steam backend.

If you shut down Steam and restart you will automatically recieve this update.

Gamestar.de have posted details of valve upcoming first person shooter Half Life 2! as the sites in German, here's a quick Babelfish translation but I will try and get Rancho* to do a German to English translation. which should be a lot better.

we expect 2003 a good year for GPUs. The enthusiastische use of DirectX 9 and Cg ( meant: C for graphics ) by [ play ]Industrie will support the spreading of Geforce FX class GPUs. With hot desired NEXT generation titles such as Doom 3, unreal 2 and half Life 2 the DirectX-6-Klasse-Technologie in current environments becomes increasingly more mismatching for such modern titles.

Seems Ubi Soft will be releasing a bonus mission for Splinter Cell but only for Microsoft's Xbox Live! Gamespot had a sneak look at the bonus mission! Here's a snip.

This Friday, Ubi Soft will offer those who own the original version of its hit stealth action game Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell a chance to download a brand-new, full-length mission for the game via the Xbox Live service. Set in a fortified stronghold in the Kola Peninsula in Russia, the mission takes place after the events of Splinter Cell, putting you back in the role of ultrasecret operative Sam Fisher. Fisher is hot on the trail of a criminal computer hacker named Phillip Masse, a character briefly seen in the original game and one who helped orchestrate the cyberterrorist threat that's the focus of Splinter Cell's storyline. Neutralizing Masse is Fisher's primary objective.