GameSpy chats it up this morning with DarkBlack' Ltd's Tony Charlton, who talks briefly about their upcoming new first-person perspective horror-survival game for the Xbox - DARKBLACK. GameSpy has slammed down an interview with Remi Arnaud of Intrinsic Graphics this morning chatting it up with them about their plans at GDC this week, their latest technologies & partners and what Alchemy offers game developers. Dutch online gamesite GameCom has an interesting interview with El Kardian developers Codinet talking about this upcoming 2D/3D hybrid MMORPG. Action Vault's Chaser Q&A talks with Cauldron's development director David Durcak and lead programmer Marian Suran about progress on their upcoming science fiction-themed first-person shooter. There's a City of Heroes Preview on Games Domain structured around a Q&A with Cryptic Studios cofounder Jack Emmert, designer on the upcoming superhero MMOG.

We announced earlier today the release of Irrational Games, EA, Crave Ent.'s Freedom Force .. So ofcourse i had to snag it and put it to the test. Only 2 small missions and a character editor in the demo but i must say that its looking like quite a nice game. Lots of nice effects, weapons and you can pick up cars and throw them around, ripp out lightpole's etc... pretty cool ... I made a 40-some screens to let you people enjoy it while you download the demo left or right ... its worth it ;)

Addressing consumer demand for increased audio realism in gaming environments, Analog Devices today announced a new version of its SoundMAX Audio Rendering Technology Toolkit (SMartTools) - which now offers significantly improved cross-platform output capability and a more intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) to game audio developers.

Ubi Soft Entertainment, one of the world's largest video game publishers, today announced that Dark Planet: Battle for Natrolis, its futuristic Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game has shipped to U.S. retail stores with an MSRP of $39.99

As promised last night, the demo from Freedom Force, Irrational Game's now-gold superhero game, is now available for download from FilePlanet (registration required). The demo is available as a large version (87.4 MB) and a smaller version (56.1 MB), the difference between the two being that the larger version includes the music.

NVIDIA's Drivers Page now offers new version 28.32 "Detonator XP" drivers for Windows 95/98/Me, Windows XP/2000, and Windows NT (thanks Blues). As is always the case with these reference drivers, no technical support is offered, as they are to be used at your own risk.

Forget the sun block next summer - it looks like being a mud-spattered June for Gameboy Advance/PS2 gamers. Leading interactive games publisher, Infogrames, has announced that it's driving the hugely successful V-Rally brand out of the garage and onto Gameboy Advance/PS2 in June 2002; and with 4 million units already sold in the series, it's a welcome return for one of the most realistic rally games yet seen.

Mindscape is proud to announce an exclusive publishing agreement with Project 3 Interactive for the adventure game ’Schizm: Mysterious Journey’ on DVD-Rom and PC CD-Rom. The popular adventure game has already been launched as localised versions across Europe and the agreement with Mindscape secures distribution of the English version in the UK and Ireland.

A new Lara Croft for a new generation. We already told you some preliminary facts about yesterday and today Eidos Interactive and Core Design officially announce the return of the world’s most famous video game character in Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. The game will be released on PlayStation 2 and PC towards the end of 2002. Of course we added some screens for all you Lara fans out there to drool over and a photo of the official Lara model, Dutch beauty Jill De Jong.... boy oh boy ;)

Update: We just added 15 extra new screens to the article.. Enjoy!

History Patch, patched all versions of the settlers IV to newest version 1090. This SETTLERS IV improves some gameplay and balance issues, costs of certain trojan resources and some "userfriendly" interface fixes. Grab the patch HERE!!