Ubi Soft has now released the first patch for Far Cry, bringing the new first-person shooter by Crytek Studios to version 1.1. This release adds toggle modes for Aim and Crouch, adds All Seeing Eye and Punkbuster support, applies a series of multiplayer improvements, fixes numerous minor bugs, and more.

Although the promised patch for Far Cry doesn't seem to have materialised just yet, we do now have an official list of fixes and enhancements the update will contain.

Some interesting news from the graphical side of things, most notably the addition of 3.0 shader support, and (perhaps more importantly) large improvements to shader speed on GeForceFX boards.

ExtremeTech have thrown up a new article called GDC 2004: Multithreading in Games! Got a Hyper-Threaded Pentium 4? Wondered if it's any use at all when you play PC games?

Here's some of the latest movies and screenshots for the XBOX from GDC 2004!

Unreal Championships 2 Rallisport Challenge 2 Rise of Nations Thrones and Patriots

Ubi Soft has now released the eagerly-anticipated multiplayer demo of Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, their newly available stealthy first- and third-person action game. This demo contains the Mount Hospital map playable in Neutralization mode with a selection of the weapons and gadgets from the full game.

PC.IGN have thrown up their impressions of Valve's Half-Life 2 Source Engine Demo from this years GDC!

The demonstration was split into several parts, highlighting the renderer, physics, AI, character expression/emotion, sound and multiplayer features of the Source engine, as well as highlighting some of the built-in world creation tools available to developers.

Fido over at The Inquirer reports that Valve Presidnet Gabe Newell has been talking about Half Life 3, apparently. A French site B4G News says he said that some chick called Alyx who appears in Half Life 2 will be "playable" in Half Life 3. And that's about it. The site doesn't mention the who, when and whyfores concerning this earth-shattering utterance. They say no launch date has yet been fixed. Maybe around 2030, we suggest.

HomeLan Fed have thrown up some info on Epic's upcoming UnrealEngine3! Here's a snip.

When we entered the Epic Games meeting room at GDC on Wednesday, we saw some pictures on the way that we thought were either some very detailed artwork or real 3D models of the characters and environments in Epic?s next game. Nope. According to what Epic folks told us, we were looking at actual in game screenshots from UnrealEngine3, the next generation game graphics engine from the Cary, NC based developer.

Unlike other free game modification utilities, the XSI EXP for Half-Life 2 gives full access to all the professional features available in SOFTIMAGEXSI. Everything you need to create Half-Life 2 characters, models, and environment elements is here.

FarCry Patch
Nun stehen Informationen zum (womöglich) 2. Patch für FarCry, dem Actionhit aus deutschen Landen, fest. Es soll eine Quicksave-Funktion eingebaut werden. In der Originalfassung speichert das Spiel selbstständig an vorgegebenen Stellen.
Nach dem 1. Patch, welcher in Kürze online stehen sollte soll der (womöglich) 2. Patch Mitte April erscheinen. Quelle: GameStar FarCry Sandbox Editor
Heute hat Crytek ein 180 Seiten starkes Manual zum Sandbox Editor zu dem Spiel FarCry rausgebracht. Der Download wiegt 7,6MB und liegt als PDF-Datei vor.
PS: Der Download auf der offiziellen Seite ist falsch verlinkt. Der richtige Link befindet sich eine Zeile tiefer. Download

Der Betatest zum kommenden MMORPG-Hit von Blizzard läuft auf vollen Touren.
Auf der GameStar-Seite wurden nun 192 Bilder aus dem Betatest veröffentlicht. Quelle: GameStar Screenshot-Gallerie

Valve just released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero which is available now via Steam.

If you pre-ordered your copy of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ) over Steam, first restart Steam then double click the CS:CZ icon in your Steam Games list to begin playing. Those who did not pre-order the game over Steam can purchase CS:CZ at any time.

3D Gamers reports there's a new but unofficial patch for Will Rock, upgrading the OEM edition of Saber Interactive's fast-paced first-person shooter that came bundled with Gigabyte ATI video cards to version 1.2. That edition couldn't be updated with the regular patches, and this release insures multiplayer compatibility of the Gigabyte OEM game (including the Italian and Spanish language variants) with the original game, along with making several other changes.

Gamer's Hell reports that a story on Swedish site GameReactor.se brings word that designing of guidelines and ideas for a third title in the serie has started.

DesignTechnica reports that Microsoft Europe has issued a surprise statement that categorically denies the rumoured unveiling of Xbox 2 at the Games Developers Conference next week.

GameSpy have thrown up a new article that tells you, a bit about the time they spent with the guy's at id as they did the DOOM 3 voiceovers for different characters.

It's worth noting that we got to see many bits and pieces of the DOOM 3 script while watching the various actors do their thing; we didn't see too many spoilers throughout the day (we were only there for one day of a four-day shoot), but we did watch one of the more important plot points being explained.

Kuma Reality Games has released a public beta client of KumaWar, allowing you to try out their imminent reality-based 3D tactical action game. This beta client offers two missions set in Afghanistan and North Korea, driveable vehicles, and new weapons and other improvements over the previous closed beta.

There is a new multiplayer map for Unreal Tournament 2004, expanding the just-released futuristic first-person shooter by Digital Extremes and Epic Games. This is an Onslaught map called Icarus Plaza, and while not an official release, it was created by UT2004 level contributor Chris Blundell.

[H]ardOCP have an internal memo from Best Buy, dated 2/12/04, indicates a July ship date for DOOM3.

The single player demo of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell® Pandora Tomorrow features:

The complete ?Paris-to-Nice train? mission. The mission is located on a high-speed French train between Paris and Nice. Your objective is to locate and question a man called Norman Soth.