From Blizzard.com "At 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday, January 28th, the signup period for the World of Warcraft Beta Test will officially begin. We will provide a link to the beta-test application right here in the news section at that time. Testers are not going to be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, so you will be able to submit an application and receive equal consideration anytime during the signup period, which will end on Wednesday, February 4th at 6:00 pm PST. Please note that multiple submissions from the same household will result in complete disqualification.

FileShack reports that we have a Bink format techo demo, showing the "unified real-time per-pixel lighting and shadowing engine" created by Irish developer Torc Interactive

Natural Selection version 3.0 promises to be a giant leap forward in the evolution of the Half-Life Mod with new levels, new abilities, and significant tweaks to game-play balancing.

OnlyNewz has been searching the web high and low for the latest game patches to have hit the web and grouped them all together on one page! there's about 8 in total.

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New S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gameplay movie, revealing more from the new generation of multiplayer first-person shooter. This movie runs for nearly three minutes, showing off the game's physics and gfx core in plenty of action-packed, high-resolution gameplay footage ...

Here's a list of Mirrors for those peeps still having problems downloading the Demo!

3D Gamers AusGamers Adrenaline Vault

The Far Cry demo is now available for download, allowing you to try out this upcoming FPS developed by Crytek. This massive single player demo offers "a full island, several weapons, and plenty of enemies.

3D Gamers reports that as promised, the sadly-defunct Legend Entertainment has released a new patch for Unreal II - the Awakening XMP, upgrading the recent free multiplayer expansion for their sci-fi first-person shooter to version 7710. There's a small patch from the XMP edition included with Unreal II Special Edition and a full patch for the downloadable edition that offers a huge number of changes as detailed in the accompanying release notes. Finally, a corresponding standalone server is also available.

Ubi Soft has released the playable demo for Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, offering the opportunity to try out last months's third-person acrobatic action adventure. Details on the demo's contents are scarce but it appears to contain a level from the early parts of the full game.

A big thanks to Nick Katselapov from Wargaming.Net for hooking us up with 3 new artworks for its global domination strategy game Massive Assault.

Gamer's Hell reports that Konami has released a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, offering no less than 27 minutes of in-game footage for this upcoming stealth action game. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes will be published in March 2004, exclusively for GameCube.

Finally, the review is online. ACCLAIM has some nice features included in Turok Evolution. I have :

350 Screenshots available
8 DivX movies available
11 Funny details :)
And ofcourse more!

Read the eight pages review!
View: Turok Evolution Review

Star Wars: Battlefront looks to combine the multi-vehicular action of games like Battlefield: 1942 with the laser-blasting intensity of the classic Star Wars films.

A playable demo of Conan has been released, offering a chance to try out the third-person fantasy melee-combat action game by Cauldron and TDK. This is a beta demo containing two levels set in Kordava City that requires a modern graphics card with Pixel Shader 1.1 support.

Empire Interactive has released a playable demo of Crazy Taxi 3, offering an opportunity to try out the console arcade racing sequel developed by Hitmaker/Sega and ported by Strangelite. This demo features the Glitter Oasis area where you can "work for 3 minutes" in a choice of four cabs.

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

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Gamer's Hell reports that Electronic Arts has released the fourth patch for Need for Speed Underground, the urban racing game by EA Black Box. Just like the previous updates, this patch is only available via the game auto-update feature (select 'check for update' in your start menu) or at this page. The patch "improves performance" and "fixes many cheats/trainers.

3DGamers Fenimore Fillmore: the Westerner is a recent 3D adventure game by Spanish developer Revistronic that's set in a cartoony Wild West. 3D Gamers game section for this title is now online, serving up the newly released playable demo that allows you to try out a portion from the beginning of the game (but it's entirely in Spanish so be prepared for some guesswork), as well as a patch to update the full game to version 1.2.

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

update: Read More for the Half-Life 2 dev kit coming soon?

Ubi Soft has released a new movie trailer of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the "rolling demo" is a looping Bink movie! offering nearly three minutes of high-resolution in-game footage to introduce the game's premise and features.