Since the game itself will have no manual included, Prima Games and Valve today announced the availability of the first two official Half-Life 2 publications. Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar and the official Half-Life 2 game guide, both scheduled to arrive in retail outlets around the world on Friday, November 12, 2004.

Lead a four-man fireteam of US Marines through the perils of authentic, modern urban combat in a Middle-Eastern urban battleground. This is an action-oriented, first-person 3D shooter that is being developed under the direction of the US Marine Corps as a training simulation for use by the Marine Corps. Close Combat: First to Fight is as close as you can get on a computer or Xbox to being a Marine fireteam leader in modern urban combat!

Merscom LLC today announced a publishing and distribution agreement with 10tacle Studios for the developer’s racing game "Michael Schumacher’s Kart Challenge 2005". This ultimate 3D kart racing simulation for PC, endorsed by Michael "Schumi" Schumacher, winner of seven Formula 1 titles, lets you go head-to-head and bumper-to-bumper against "the world’s fastest driver".

Like its predecessor, "Rolling Thunder" also offers a campaign with 18 missions (approximately eight single missions). This time, Blitzkrieg fans can look forward to a campaign with the famous American General Patton. His crusade through seven countries, including Operation: Husky, is but one of many historical highlights.

As we announced a few days ago, Ubisoft has released the German demo for Blue Byte 3D RTS game 'Settlers: Heritage Of Kings.' featuring a tutorial and one single player mission. Fans will enjoy fully animated 3D technology and enhanced gameplay features, but still be able to relive the experience that makes the Settlers series such a big hit (thanks 4players.de). Read more for download links ...

DreamCatcher Games has released the first patch for Golem Labs' global domination strategy 'SuperPower 2.' This update brings your retail game to v1.2 and addresses the crash/bug fixes, gameplay, interface enhancements, added autosave, etc.. Read more for detailed fix list and download links.

Square Enix and Disney Interactive, a publishing label of Buena Vista Games announced today that Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories will ship to retailers nationwide on December 7th, in time for the holiday season.

Electronic Arts today announced that The Urbz: Sims in the City has shipped to retail outlets worldwide under the EA GAMES brand. Following the record-setting launch of The Sims 2, the development team at the celebrated Maxis studio today launched The Urbz: Sims in the City, the newest entry into the award-winning franchise for the PS2, Xbox, GameCube and GBA. The Nintendo DS version will ship on Tuesday, November 16, as a launch title for the new handheld system.

Wish's highly-scalable server cluster infrastructure allows the game to support tens of thousands of simultaneous players in a single shared world. Wish is the first massively multi player online role playing game that truly tells a story, and lets player actions have lasting implications on the world. Wish developer Mutable Realms informed us that the beta test has been postponed from its original Dec.1, 2004 start date to Januray 1st, 2005. Reason for the delay : "There are still known bugs that need to be fixed, and we need more time to polish several aspects of the game."

Bioware today announced the launch of its new BioWare Online Store, as well as the availability of Premium Neverwinter Nights Modules for immediate download. These modules are new professionally developed adventures that expand an already extensive Neverwinter Nights library. Three Premium Neverwinter Nights Modules will be available for purchase immediately at the BioWare Online Store.