PC.IGN features a new preview of DeltaForce2 which most of you military types should really enjoy looking at.

GamersCentral sends word of a new preview of Odium in development over at Monolith. It's a 3D RPG style game which I still have neglected to actually even read a preview on myself yet. Doh.

GA-Source has posted some new screenshots of Exist. It's a 3D action game which looks entirely impressive and being developed by a single guy. Wanna read an interview with him? Check out SamHell.

GameCenter has a new preview of BattleZone2, also the guys at BattleZone2 Center have the new screenshot of the week for you to take a gander at while you're at it. Thanks VE/Blue

3DRage scored an interview with Jane Jensen, writer and game designer of Gabriel Knight III.

The Ion Storm page interviews one of its own, John Romero, on Quake2 engine (hacked up and improved) based Daikatana. Here's 1/5th of it:

Romero: Since E3, Daikatana has made impressive progress. We have some new graphics features, better sound fidelity, fixed lots of low-level bugs in the game and are almost final on our major map pass.

People eager to attend TRIBEScon are now able to rent machines for the 2 days for under $100.

Riding the Rocket is offering weekly Quake 2 trickjump-related challenges and monthly bot challenges, is now offering prizes for the winners of the challenges. The first prize - a large EverGlide mousepad - will go to the player who can grab the most frags against a Gladiator bot in five minutes.

Rapture'99 (QW tourney) is this weekend. You'll find a preview, some comments from players etc on www.challenge-eu.com and www.challenge-au.com

Graeme Devine does a quick update to his .plan file regarding the Mac version of Q3Test (the same platform that had it couple weeks before the others)

Mac Users! We're not ignoring you, we're just having a slight technical problem with the Macintosh build right now. BTW, I'm in love with that new iBook! When they ship that's going to be /the/ portable.

It was revealed today at MacWorld that Bungie, the creators of the Marathon and Myth series, has been working on Halo- their upcoming product for both the Mac and the PC. What's Halo all about, you ask?

The player is a military recon unit of the human race's fledgling planetary empire. Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void, the player must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air, using the arsenals and vehicles of three distinct cultures. Using everything from composite swords to orbital bombardment, driving everything from giant tanks to agile combat aircraft, players wage intense warfare over and under the surface of this world.

The press release continues on about the Tribes-esque multiplayer. How does it look?

Screenshot

Like most Bungie games, the Halo engine shines with the highest-end realism technologies: real-time shadows, inverse kinematics, 3D positional and ambient sound effects, multipass texture mapping, scalable polygonal models, deformable terrain mesh. Enemy artificial intelligence operates simultaneously on both individual and squad levels, accounting for morale, with the result that no combat situation plays out the same way twice.

The boys in Blue report on location that the Windows version will not support OpenGL, but will be D3D-only. Also, ZDTV has posted Steve Jobs' keynote address from the MacWorld Expo (where the announcement was made). Skip about 41 mins ahead for the Bungie stuff. Also GameSpot has scored some more screenshots of the game in action.

Mortyr.net is reporting that the Mortyr demo "should" be ready for a worldwide release sometime this evening. These guys still don't have a publishing deal yet...but this demo could stir up some interest. Here's the stuff from Mirage:

I'm sure everyone knows Mortyr and all the rumors about the publisher, content of the game (symbols, violence). After few weeks of silence, when we were waiting the future publisher of the game, we decided to publish Internet demo. During this time we have changed many things (you can check the list at www.mortyr.com.pl/press/)like new levels, new graphic features, increased speed etc. You can see new look of Mortyr in our demo which will be available at 0.00 GMT on following sites:

www.mortyr.net
www.mirage.com.pl
www.mortyr.com.pl

This demo can be found only on Internet. No magazine will have permission to covermount it. Later in couple days we will publish another demo, bigger and containing more features, with permission to put it on cover CDs.

In about 2 weeks Polish version of Mortyr will be ready to sell. We still don't know the release date for Europe and US.

Dan over at SShock2 informs me that the Official System Shock 2 Site at Lglass has been updated with a few simple new things, among which are seven new screenshots. Oh, and who could miss the release date:

Shodan returns in __ days __ hours and __ minutes -
Prepare to be shocked on August 12, 1999.

Just to let you know, I just slapped up some new Tech and 'Views down below (as there weren't enough for a whole new post)

VE scored the scoop on the much hyped game Messiah, providing us with release dates for the full game, as well as the demo:

We've been working hard trying to figure out the schedules for Messiah and we finally came up with one that everyone is happy with:

Late August: Preview tour
Mid October: Demo released
November 15: Full game released

So, that's why you haven't heard anything from us for a while. Whoo Hooo! Messiah has a firm release date!!!! Sound the bells, alert the media, strike up the band!!!

Cached e-mailed Tim Sweeney with a couple of  questions about the Unreal/UT server console and making demos (both on and off the Net) with Tim's replies posted.

Question 1: Do you guys plan on fixing the problem with the Server.  I run  a server but I also like to play a lot.    When ever I join a game on a server that is also the computer that i'm going to play on, everything becomes unstable.  I can't play.  I don't want to keep running two servers.  In Quake 2,  I can play on the Server that is also on my machine w/o any stability problems, I just have a real nice ping.  Can you fix this problem?

Answer: The only way to get adequate performance in Unreal with both a client and a server running on a single-processor machine is to start a non-dedicated server.-Tim

btw, that would be in-game recorded demos, not like the downloadable and playable type demo ;)

Gamers.de has slapped up a pair of new screenshots of Gothic which look fairly interesting. Can't say I ever heard of this one.

BetaBytes has a new preview of Darkstone which is worth taking a look at. It looks kinda like Diablo, except it isnt. Keep an eye on the official Darkstone page, as a demo release is pretty darn close. While we are on the Diablo clone kick, have a look see at the new UGN3D preview of NOX.

B4Itsdone has a new Blade interview online talking with the CEO of Rebel Act Studios, Juan Diaz-Bustamante

3DRage.com interviews the guys at 4DRulers (the lead developer even) about Gore.

The Gamers.de guys send word of a new interview with a pair of developers working on Skout.