Empire Interactive has released a playable demo of Ghost Master, allowing you to try out this recent 3D strategy sim by Sick Puppies in which you must build up a team of ghosts to scare away humans out of a variety of locations. The demo includes the first mission ('Haunting 101'), which also acts as a tutorial Download demo here: Gamershell.com Full story: here Gamershell's Ghostmaster review: Gamershell.com

Big Huge Games has released a new patch for Rise of Nations, bringing their RTS to v1.02. This release fixes Multiplayer Lag issues, adds additional anti-cheat protection, allows you to check for updates without going into GameSpy, and more. Dowload it @ Gamershell.com.

Bioware have released a new Neverwinter Nights version 1.30 beta patch. Among other things this beta release adds stability improvements, improvements to network performance and cheat/hack prevention. You can grab it here.

3DGamers.com reports that a new patch for Devastation is now available, upgrading the European editions of the first-person shooter by Digitalo Studios to version 381 (curiously a notch over the earlier US patch). As before, this release includes sound improvements, multiplayer stability fixes, tweaks to the Territories gametype, a new server browser interface, and numerous other changes and fixes.

Muscle Car 3 is the upcoming street racing game being created at Silverfish Studios and Global Star Software.

Halo 2 E3 Video Unleashed (bungie.net) On August 8, 2002 Bungie broke the vow of silence and officially announced to the world that we were indeed working on a sequel to Halo.

Then in September of last year, the Halo 2 announce trailer (if you haven't seen it yet, stop what you're doing and get up to speed!) was released giving the first glimpse of Master Chief as he embarked on his most critical mission yet - protect Earth from the Covenant threat! Thanks to TweakHound :)

3DGamers.com reports that Codemasters has released the playable demo for IndyCar Series, allowing you to experience the high-speed racing simulation that is nearing completion at Brain In A Jar. This demo contains the Texas Motor Speedway track that you can drive in test and race modes. The original file needlessly included a DirectX 8.1 distribution, so our copy is a 32 MB smaller download by removing that.

Electronic Arts has released the E3 trailer for Need for Speed Underground, offering nearly a minute and a half of CGI footage for this arcade racing game in the works at EA Black Box.

Electronic Arts has released the eagerly-anticipated patch for Battlefield 1942, bringing Digital Illusions' WWII shooter to v1.4. This release adds two new weapons, makes several gameplay fixes, graphical improvements, adds some new client & server features, fixes a few bugs, and more (read full story for details). A new dedicated server is also available for download.

Spong.com have news that the next Xbox will be powered by ATI and not Nvidia. You can get the full scoop here.

Next up is news that there will be a Doom 3 playable demo for the public, to test out for the first time at this year's QuakeCon, and the ever-productive id rumour mill mentions interestingly, id will host the full unveiling of the firm's latest multiplayer offering, Quake 4 at QuakeCon as well.

Of all the things developed for UT2003, the stats page was by far the largest disappointment for many people. Introduced as an answer to the realtime ngStats feature (which was bought to Microsoft and then discontinued), the Epic UT2003 stats debuted with a new site and a new look and hopes were high right out of the gate. However, the stats started falling behind almost immediately, ranging from a couple of days to a couple of months late, were reset at one point, and then taken down altogether when it was clear that they weren't working.

GameSpyDaily has a report up quoting Valve's Doug Lombardi as he confirms Half-Life 2 production for the Xbox gaming console:

Lombardi today told GameSpy Half-Life 2 is certainly in development for the Xbox. "Half-Life 2 is planned for the PC and Xbox. We've announced the shipping date for the PC version [September 30, 2003 - ed.], and we'll announce a shipping date for the Xbox version later in the year.

Quicksilver and Atari have released the first official beta patch for Master of Orion III.

This patch is incompatible with the previous data patch (see the enclosed read me for full installation instructions). The installation validator will be updated, possbily by next week, in order to accomodate the patch.

3DGamers.com reports that an updated playable demo for Will Rock is now available that was released right before E3 but slipped through the cracks so far (understandably, with all the media mayhem at that time :) to offer another chance at trying out this imminent fast-paced FPS by Saber Interactive. The demo contains a single-player level called The Tholos Temple and now also a multiplayer map called The Rotunda. The original file needlessly included a DirectX 9.0 distribution, so our copy is a 32 MB smaller download by removing that.

Battlefield 1942 mod Eve of Destruction has been released.

This release will contain not only new skins, vehicles and new objects, it features 8 complete new custom maps. Each map is different in their own way (from realistic to fun maps) and partially adapted to the Indochina Vietnam Conflict. Infantry Combat in EoD is more realistic and more action than in Battlefield and similar to more infantry-based games like Raven Shield or Counterstrike.

This is the ultimate modding competition brought to you by Nvidia in association with Epic Games and Atari Inc. There are prizes to catch up worth more than $1.000.000! Included are a full prepaid license of the Unreal Engine - worth $350.000, a couple of high-end PC's, and loads of cash prizes in the different categories. The contest has 3 phases for all categories. The idea behind having three phases is to encourage people to enter early and often, and to keep improving their mods over time. You can enter the same mod in all three phases of the contest but, in order to be judged, there must be noticeable improvements to the mod upon the second or third submission. Grand Prize finalists will be invited to collect their prizes at the Game Developers Conference on March 22, 2004. Epic will fly, at least one team member from the five Mods chosen to GDC, all expenses paid, to compete for Grand Prize consideration.

Take2 and Pterodon studio have finally delivered the second update to the recently released tactical first person shooter settled in the Vietnam conflict 1967. This new multi-region patch updates and improves numerous features of the retail game, too many to mention here. For a full listing of the updates, click here to see the patch's readme file. Read more for download locations and the Freelancer patch.

GGmania.com reports that a new downloable level for the Xbox version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Tides of War is now available for download via Xbox Live. The new map thrusts Tides of War players into a winner-take-all battle to locate and destroy a cache of ammunition secretly held by Axis forces, who intend to re-supply battle-weary troops on the front lines. The Allied squad must use well-coordinated teamwork and overwhelming firepower to infiltrate the Axis held barn and destroy the weapons cache.