Fileplanet has a new Soldier of Fortune 2 trailer, showing more from Raven's upcoming shooter game. There's a 45.1mb AVI version, a 29.7mb Quicktime version and a 11.5mb Quicktime version. If you have a Shacknews account, we now have a mirror of the AVI version as well as the high-res Quicktime one.

More from Soldier of Fortune 2 tonight as Games Fusion has ten new screenshots from the upcoming action shooter.

GameSpot has posted new screenshots and six new movies showing more from Raven's upcoming Soldier of Fortune 2. The movies are all about 6mb in size, and available in streaming formats only unless you have a Gamespot account.

There is a single Soldier of Fortune 2 Q&A on Action Vault, asking nine developers at Raven what they think is the best change or improvement in the game compared to its prequel.

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra sent an email to us saying that Raven is looking for a new sound designer/music composer. Not too surprising seeing how the previous guy recently quit. It's a fulltime position.

Games Fusion is the latest site with several new screenshots from Soldier of Fortune 2, the action shooter nearing completion at Raven Software.

IGN is offering up a pretty lengthy in depth hands-on preview of Soldier of Fortune2 for the weekend. If you havent checked out the multiplayer test yet I highly recommend it. It's easily the best new multiplayer experience this year.

The random mission generator rounds out the single player package and provides an objective-based play that can be tailored to suit individual tastes. Think of each round as a standalone mission. None will look nearly as good as any of the ones incorporated into the storyline, but nor should they, as so much more time and polish goes into each of those. But, the random mission generator is a nice inclusion. I can see it mainly as a way to kill time or challenge a buddy. Ask him if he can beat a jungle prison escape called DeezNuts on the hardest difficulty, and so forth.

I've been trying to really imagine how this whole random map / mission generation thing is gonna work out. Still freaks me out.

Another Soldier of Fortune 2 preview is up at UGO. They offer more impressions from the full version of the game, also including new screenshots.

JCal managed to get his hands on a preview copy of the full build of Soldier of Fortune 2 and has written up a preview. Several new screenshots are included.

Zachary Quarles let us know that he's quitting Raven to start his own freelance music and sound company. Normally we don't really cover that kind of news, but his page features various audio demos including music from the upcoming Soldier of Fortune 2.

GameHelper has several new screenshots from Soldier of Fortune 2, showing more from Raven's upcoming first person shooter.

Raven programmer Rick Johnson updated his .plan file saying that he's posted a cvar / commands list for the Soldier of Fortune 2 test. This will tell you how to change player speeds and available weapons among other things.

For the fans of colors, there is a new Name Maker Studio. It now adds support for Soldier of Fortune 2, so you can have up to 10 different colors in your name.

A new version of QTracker has been released, adding Soldier of Fortune 2 support server browser/server admin/HTML server list generator. Thanks Blues News.

PC.IGN got their hands on a beta build of Soldier of Fortune 2, and they have some multiplayer impressions. They talk about the weapons, tech, game types, levels found in the full game and more.

I saw on Blues News that Worthplaying has 28 new screenshots from the full version of Soldier of Fortune 2. Haven't checked the test yet? Get it!

So now that a lot of folks have gotten a chance to download the SoF2test and play last night, I suppose it's about time to share some impressions of the game. I played it for about an hour or so total I think before finally getting some sleep. I liked it. There were certainly some Counter-Strike overtones but that's pretty hard to avoid really, if you're going to use present day weapons and have any sort of teamplay modes you're gonna get that. It was easily a huge improvement over the SoF1 multiplayer, as I'm actually looking forward to playing some more this evening. Cant say that about too many games. Need more time to figure out why it's fun, and get past the whole initial "just playing something because it's different" phase. Looking at the poll, quite a few other people enjoyed it to, care to share why? Here's the download link and the supercool nationwide Shack servers we got going through the Speakeasy folks

• Shacknews - Atlanta - 216.27.175.136:27962
• Shacknews - Los Angeles - lax.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Boston - bos.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Philadelphia - phl.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - New York City - nyc.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Washington, D.C. - wdc.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - San Francisco - sfo.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Denver - den.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Chicago - chi.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962

For those who didn't attend yesterday's Soldier of Fortune 2 chat on Gamespy Arcade, there is a chat log on Planet Soldier. All kinds of Soldier of Fortune 2 questions are answered as one would expect. One of the things mentioned is that an official demo for the game will be released in May.

Raven's Kenn Hoekstra updated his .plan file with a few notes on the Soldier of Fortune 2 test (story). You might want to check that out if you're concerned about player speed, gore, invalid game version or if you want to know how to run a dedicated server.

So the Soldier of Fortune 2 multiplayer test will be released today. It should be out in an hour or so. Gamespy Daily has an interview with Raven's Kenn Hoekstra and Rick Johnson, asking what we can expect from this multiplayer test.
So where will you play when the demo is released? We got you covered with nine servers around the US.

• Shacknews - Atlanta - 216.27.175.136:27962
• Shacknews - Los Angeles - lax.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Boston - bos.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Philadelphia - phl.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - New York City - nyc.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Washington, D.C. - wdc.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - San Francisco - sfo.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Denver - den.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962
• Shacknews - Chicago - chi.sof2.speakeasy.net:27962

It's out! You can download it from Fileshack here (note: we seem to have some speed problems for about 10% of the people, and for more fun , our single test Fileshack server is overloaded it's being worked on. sorry, but its uh.. free!) Some more mirrors: BluesNews , 3DGamers , BonusWeb , SoF2Files , FilePlanet