Eidos today announced Hitman 3: Contracts is being developed by Io Interactive and will be available for PlayStation 2, the Xbox and the PC in spring 2004.

Hitman: Contracts takes you into the mind of Agent 47, the most ruthlessly efficient contract killer in history. The game begins in Paris as Agent 47 finds himself wounded and trapped in what is a dangerous situation, even for him. Hitman: Contracts explores the dark psychology of killing for a living and promises to be the darkest, most disturbing episode in the series.

Here's some of the latest games patches that are doing the rounds on the web.

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Computer And Video Games have snagged a trio of new Half-Life 2 Screenshots showing off in-game action from Valve's upcoming shooter.

Ubisoft released the promised Rainbow Six 3 : Raven Shield 1.5 patch December 9th, but they failed to mention their new copy protection scheme. It turns out that Ubisoft implented code into the RVS 1.5 patch which checks PCs for ANY clone or virtual drive programs and then fails to launch the game if such devices or programs are found. What this has in turn done is disabled thousands of consumers who use programs like Daemon Tools, CloneCD or Alcohol 120% from playing their Ubisoft games even if they have their own physical cds in an actual drive. More at EvilAvatar.

Blue's news reports that an Armed & Dangerous Demo is now available from FilePlanet (registration required) as one of their exclusive dealies for registered users. The demo is a 172 MB download, and to install and ruin the demo you will need a unique key generated during the download. As is the case with these exclusives, the file will be made available to the general public at some point down the road.

Eidos has issued the first patch for Deus Ex: Invisible War, updating the futuristic first-person action RPG by ION Storm to version 1.1. This release offers a dozen performance, control/interface, gameplay and other improvements as listed in the patch documentation.

The Matrix Online.com has released some screenshots today of its online MMORPG game. To see them go to their screenshots section. Besides DOOM3, I think this is the most anticipated game release awaited by game lovers all over the world, but since its a online game, only people with decent (read high) broadband connection will be able to enjoy it to the fullest.

3D Gamer's reports that Raven Software has issued a bonus map pack for Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, expanding their recent sci-fi 3D action game. This pack sports half a dozen new multiplayer maps, distributed across one Duel map, one CTF map and four Free-For-All maps.

Here's some of the latest games patches that are doing the rounds on the web.

Read More

UnrealII XMP has been released. This addon for UnrealII adds multiplayer support to the game.
It is getting rather good reviews, so if you own UnrealII you should download this addon. It wil also be availible with UnrealII Special Edition that is due to come out any day now.

So 'Read more' and see what is included and download.

3D Gamers reports that an updated version of the E3 movie trailer for DOOM 3 is now available, celebrating this Wednesday's tenth anniversary of the original first-person shooter by id Software. There is no new footage in this release, but it comes at a notably higher resolution than the previous version of last May.

From today and several days ahead the registration to the FarCry public betatests are open.
When the registration period is over the developers will select 5.000 happy gamers from all around the globe to participate in the tests.

You can sign up from here: FarCry Homepage

GG Mania reports that LucasArts has released the first patch for Knights of the Old Republic, updating this BioWare's Star Wars role-playing game to version 1.01. The patch fixes a rare crashes on startup under Windows 98, some memory leaks, gamma issues after movies finish playing and adds two new "swkotor.ini" sound options: Environment Effects Nonstreaming=1 and Environment Effects Streaming=1".

GSC Game World has released a playable demo for FireStarter, their first-person shooter.The demo includes a level from the first game episode and one playable character - Policeman. Both single- and multiplayer modes are available. A valuable addition to the demo is a benchmark mode providing you with a possibility to test the performance of your machine.

Just spotted this bit of info over at 3DGPU.com!

Kaptain Kangaroo posted a scan of PC Gamer in our forums, showing a page with some games on there, and one of them is Half-Life 2, with the logo "Only On Xbox" stamped on it. Now we shouldn't jump to conclusions, but I think a lot of people still remember how Microsoft snatched Halo from us PC gamers, and if they managed to somehow wrangle Half-Life 2 away from us, I can't begin to imagine how many upset and very disappointed people there will be all over the world.

Neowin.net reports that confirmed tonight by several Microsoft Xbox insiders; the 4th of April 2004 will mark the date for the widely anticipated Xbox game - Halo 2.

The official Doom 3 website has been updated with a new version of the E3 2003 trailer , screenshots and wallpapers!

Gamer's Hell reports that City Interactive has also released a playable demo of The Chickenator, allowing you to try out this funny 3D action shooter. Different chickens on each, wacky level: fat chickens, skinny chickens, robo chickens, army chickens, ninja chickens and even more stupid chickens.

The eagerly-anticipated playable demo of Broken Sword: the Sleeping Dragon is now available, offering an opportunity to try out the new 3D adventure game by Revolution Software. Unlike the German version that's also floating around, this demo is completely in English and pits you in the shoes of George after having crash-landed in the Congo jungle at the beginning of the game.

The promised XMP (Expanded Multiplayer) demo for Unreal II: The Awakening has been released, allowing you to try out this imminent multiplayer expansion to the originally single-player only FPS by Legend Studios. This demo offers the XMP-Garden map and two of the three new vehicles.