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Another week has passed and that means I get to give you the regular list of wonderful demos and patches. Today, I cannot go much into the ins and outs of the week because I have to take my dog to his training class. Lately, he has not been minding very well and is chasing the cows and horses. Normally the fence would block the annoyance, but I would rather him learn to mind me than get kicked in the head. Plus, all he does is look at me like I am stark raving mad when I scold him. Damn dog.

Anyway, here is what hit FileFront in the way of demos this week, the most popular of which was the GRID demo with the one for LEGO Indiana Jones coming in second and Mount and Blade third.

• Heresy War- Bear in mind that this is a product in development and what you are seeing is not final product quality.What is Heresy War? Heresy War is a combat space simulator set in a future where the humanity has reborn from the ashes after a catastrophic world war. The game puts the player in the cockpit of the most technologically advanced fighters in the human military fleet (The Core) as he witnesses the start of a civil war. Gameplay features for the final version: Mission-based , story-driven gameplay, Branching non-linear campaign based on player’s actions, Intuitive interface and controls, Complete freedom across all axes, Squadron command, Sequential capital ship destruction, Self-adjusting difficulty level, Arcade and simulation control

• Battleship Chess - Combine the classic naval stategy game of Battleship with the thoughtful turn-based moves of Chess and you get Battleship Chess. Move your naval fleet of battleships, battlecruisers, destroyers and submarines in search of the enemy. Once spotted, let them have it with your guns, torpedoes and depth charges. Play this turn-based naval strategy game against computer or human opponents, online or at the same PC.

• Larva Mortus - For both Windows and Mac. Rake in Grass has released a new demo for Lava Mortus, a top down shooter, offering fast and entertaining monster-hunting gameplay.

• Supernova 2: Spacewar - For both Windows and Mac. Sci-fi strategy game featuring a main part mainly based on the macromanagement of your space empire, and a classical turn based wargame part when a fight occurs.

• Virtual Villagers: Chapter 3 - For both Windows and Mac. Embark on a new journey with a group of villagers in search of a new part of the island to populate. Land on the hidden shores of the northern side of Isola and explore what was once a secret city.

Here are the patches that hit this week, and unless you were residing in a cave in the arctic someplace, you would know that the most popular with gamers was the new WoW patch. Other patches include: Mount and Blade, GH: III for Windows and Mac, Tarr Chronicles, and Lost Empire: Immortals amongst others.

As always, for the full list of demos click here, and for patches click here. See you next week.

NCSoft has unveiled a new trailer for the next expansion to the City of Heroes/Villains universe. Issue 12: Midnight Hour will chronicle a group called The Midnight Squad and their efforts to bolster their numbers and try to stop the Rikti invasion. In addition to the new story, the expansion will also offer some new powersets, gameplay improvements, and a new Roman-themed zone that will factor into the story. The Issue 12 expansion is currently in beta and expected to release later this month.

Over on the No Mutants Allowed Fallout Forum, Brother None has announced that a modder has finally heeded the crys for better graphics on Fallout 2. A modder known as Mash has submitted a “relatively bugfree,” but not fully tested yet, patch to increase Fallout 2’s resolution.

As the title suggests this program modifies “fallout2.exe” in memory for the purposes of increasing the visual resolution. It also allows for movement of the taskbar and most, if not all menus and panels by way of variables listed in the included “f2_res.ini” file.

This Mod was made for Version 1.02d of the “fallout2.exe”.
It was compiled with “Visual C++ 6.0 -sp6″ and should work on most versions of Windows.

Another modder, Timeslip, has contributed to the patch as well to make it DirectX 9 compatible. Thanks guys. Fallout fans appreciate it.

via No Mutants Allowed 

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines fans have put out another unofficial patch for Troika’s favorite bit of the World of Darkness. Patch 5.3 restores the Jeanette scene for females and tweaks the new stealth rules among other things. The patch is available in two flavors as always. You can patch from 5.2-5.3 or from the vanilla official patch. You can grab them both on FileFront. The official unofficial patch notes follow the break.

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Ubisoft said they would be releasing a new patch for Assassin’s Creed, and it looks like they’ve made good on their word. The new patch fixes a handful of graphical glitches as well as some game-crashing bugs. Sadly, the patch also takes away support for DX10.1, as certain cards seemed unable to handle it. It’s kind of weird for them to take away some features, but I suppose this does level the playing field in terms of who can get the maximum graphical output. If you want to download the trailer, just click on the link below.

You may recall awhile back that some observant PC gamers noticed an odd thing about their version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Namely, they noticed their hard drive space was slowly dwindling because every time the game crashed it would create a crash log file that took up almost 1GB of space. Well, PC gamers will be happy to know that Ubisoft has finally released a new patch that should fix that issue as well as a few others. Besides the crashing problem, the new patch fixes bugs involving lost XP and connection issues; plus it adds some KillCam options and better speech recognition to the game. To download the patch and stop your computer from being slowly dissolved from the inside out, just click on the link below.

A New patch for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has been released for the PC and Mac versions of the game. Fixes include a new “Front Row Cam” option which allows better performance on low end configurations, with smoother gameplay, laptop specific optimizations for better performance, Intel X3100 graphics chips are now supported, a battery meter icon will display remaining battery charge on supported laptops, and a Wifi meter will display signal strength during multiplayer games on supported laptops.

For the patch, hit the badges below for the windows and mac versions, respectively.

FileFront has a demo of Mount and Blade available for you to download today as well as a patch for the full game. When downloading the demo, please note that what you download is not technically a demo, it is the full game. There is, however, a level limit at 6 and when your character reaches that level you can start a new game or, if you decide you like the game well enough, go on and buy a license online.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mount and Blade, it is a third-person action RPG combining a sophisticated, dynamic game world and intense medieval swordfighting action. The game takes you through a world filled with not only enemies but also brings you into contact with friendly groups that will come to your aid or need yours. The land in the game is torn by constant danger, raids and skirmishes, you will raise and lead your own war band, commanding dozens of soldiers to help you hunt down your enemies by following the tracks they leave behind.

While you can indeed purchase the game online, I will be getting a box version of the game when it is released. I have heard nothing but good things about this game, and what I have heard is not from any other gaming site or a press release but from people who have played the beta themselves. You can’t argue with that.

You can get the demo and the patch by clicking on the badges below.

Awhile back, Criterion rolled out the newest update for Burnout Paradise with the Bogart patch…and then they quickly rolled it back up again. Turned out patch gave users some serious frame rate issues, so they recalled the patch, stating that they would fix it and re-release it within a week. Well, apparently their definition of a week differs from ours — since it’s been three — but now they have announced that the Bogart update has gone live once more. This one doesn’t really add too many huge new features itself, but it is supposed to pave the way for future major updates to the game. he new patch should auto-download as soon as you log into the game.

Via Criterion

So I am off work for a week due to moving and I come back hoping that my usual Saturday post would give me something actually exciting to write about. Sadly, I was mistaken because there are little demos that are new this week. Seems like a growing trend as of late, but I digress.

The only really hyped up demo that was suppose to hit this week was the GRID demo from Codemasters, but unfortunately yesterday after it was put up, it was quickly pulled due to blackout issues. We received an email stating that it would fixed by later that afternoon, and then another email saying that it will be fixed by Monday. Therefore, if you are still interested in the demo, check back with us Monday and hopefully any outstanding issues with it should have been fixed.

Here are the demos that hit FileFront this week:

• Dead Wake Beta 4: Dead Wake zombie survival game is in production. The game brings barricades, blood, and weapons to zombie fans. Headshots and physics play a major role when player attempts to survive against the zombie hordes.
• The Amazing Brain Train Windows Demo: Grubby Games has released a Windows demo for The Amazing Brain Train, a title that offers 15 different brain games in 5 categories, three different ways to play, 32 unique trophies to unlock, and more. Also available for Mac and Linux.
• Droid Assault Windows Demo: Puppy Games released the Windows demo for Droid Assault, a modern-retro arcade shooter game which is aiming to capture the raw feel of 8-bit games such as Paradroid and Quazatron, with a slick shiny sheen of modern graphics and sound. Also available for Mac and Linux.
• Overclocked: A History of Violence English Demo: Created by award-winning developer House of Tales Entertainment, players will delve into the world of Overclocked to explore the deranged minds of three of the five patients admitted to the Staten Island Forensic Hospital. This highly anticipated Adventure game on PC DVD-ROM is available in stores now.
• Lights of Dreams Demo V2.15: This is the demo version V2.15 of Lights of Dreams : The Angelical Blade… It is free to play…Play as Xylvan to find a way to save the future Earth of 3800…
• The Lost Cases Of Sherlock Holmes Demo: Legacy Interactive release a demo of The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, a whodunit casual computer game of theft, espionage and murder in which the player must tap their own powers of observation to solve puzzles and identify the culprits.
• Bee Oh Bee Demo: LunaKite has released a demo for Bee Oh Bee, an adventure casual game where you play as a God-bee, bees that live above in the sky to help homeless cute earth-dwelling honey-bees.

Here are the patches that hit this week:

• Harpoon: Advanced Naval Warfare v3.9.2 Patch
• Battlefield 2142 v1.40 to v1.50 Beta Patch
• Fury v35256 to v35416 Client Patch
• Albatross18 S3 Revolution v4.14 Client Patch
• Conquer Online v5021 to v5023 Patch

As always, for the full list of demos and patched available, click here and here.

Rockstar has the new Grand Theft Auto IV patch 1.0.1 up. There’s no official patch notes to go by at this time. However, word out is that it will most effect multiplayer. Some gamers are happy to now be able to get online with their PS3. However, there still some complaints with type 2 freeze. It seems there are a lot of mixed results being reported, but really if you want to play online with your PS3, you have no choice but to patch.

via US Playstation Boards - GTA 4 Patch 

Wow. Mr. Driller Online has been out for over a month now, and Namco Bandai is just now announcing a patch to fix the utterly unplayable online portion of the game. Really, at this point, this seems more like a move to avoid a lawsuit over false advertising, since most people who bought the full game (*kicking myself once more*) probably recognized this as one of the worst titles available on Xbox Live. Besides adding broken new features, the developers also decided mess with the classic gameplay, turning the whole thing into an annoying race against the clock. I could seriously go on and on about the problems with this game (and I did). At any rate, if you’re still miraculously interested in playing the game online, the patch is due out at the end of the month.

Via Joystiq

Remember that Flash version of Portal that came out shortly after the actual game? Now it looks like the developer behind that, We Create Stuff, has ported the levels from the Flash game into the actual game. That means there are now 40 new maps you can work your way through in Portal,which is probably the closest thing we’ll get to an expansion pack for awhile. Plus, the developers are saying these maps will add up to 3.5 hours of extra gameplay, which is about the time it took most people to beat Portal the first time. To download the new maps, just click the link below, and then be sure to check out the details of the file for instructions on how to get them working.

Valve has announced that the Gold Rush update for Team Fortress 2 is now available free of charge through Steam. The update introduces the new Gold Rush map along with the new Payload gameplay type, which has one team trying to move a mine cart through several control points, while the other team tries to stop them. The update also brings some new achievements and unique items for the Medic class. Players who unlock a certain amount of achievements will be able to equip alternate versions of the Medic’s three tools, each of which has their own special abilities. A new syringe gun takes away your ability to score critical hits, but will draw health from enemies with each hit it lands. The new medigun will no longer give another player invulnerability with it’s uber-charge, but will grant constant critical hits for a short time. Finally, the new bone saw will fill your ubercharge a quarter o the way for each hit it lands. I haven’t tried out these new feature yet — too busy with GTA IV — but I’m guessing there’s about five or six medics on every server right now.

For more details on the update, you can check Valve’s official page.

As Big Tuesday looms over us, three days from now GTA IV will hit the world upside the head with a baseball bat. While this game is indeed the most anticipated and hyped game to headline gaming news since Halo 3 - I for one will not get to play it with the rest of the world on Tuesday because I am in the process of moving this week. I have sat at my computer for a couple of weeks now, listening to my boyfriend play GTA 1-3, Vice City, and San Andreas in anticipation of his pre-order and while I love the GTA games, I am sick to death of hearing about GTA IV, and because of this franchise hogging my television screen for the past few weeks - I could care less about the launch.

Ok, I am lying. I am just bitter because I will be too busy moving to play the game - and I am sure the folks I work with will rub it in my face like a banana cream pie all next week. They better not though, because I have a general idea of where they all live.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings - which are nothing more than a distraction from the fact that the demos that hit FileFront were nominal again this week. Studies may show that trailers work better when promoting a product than demos, but I personally think that it is only because once a gamer plays a demo, they know how crappy the game is and refuse to buy it. With trailer, you have no idea until it is too late - just like a bad boyfriend or girlfriend.

Here is a list of the demos with the most downloads this week:

• Conflict Desert Storm: A demo version of conflict desert storm, just extract it, some video bugs.co-op. The PC version does not support co-op. The game begins shortly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. During an attempt to destroy one of the bridges crossing the Iraq-Kuwait border, sniper Paul Foley is captured, while his other team member is killed. The next morning, John Bradley, a rifleman, and later on, squad leader, is sent in alone to rescue Foley and complete the original mission of destroying the bridge. Shortly after landing, Bradley comes into a firefight with a small force of Iraqi mechanized infantry. Shortly after rescuing Foley, Bradley completes the mission of destroying the bridge, thus slowing the Iraqi advance. From there, the squad carries out various missions, such as rescuing the Emir of Kuwait, engaging Iraqi forces in the Battle of Khafji, destroying Iraqi early-warning radar, rescuing POWs from Baghdad, and leading an advance element of U.S. cavalry in a fight with the Tawalkana Division of the Iraqi Republican Guard. Also the player protects a scientist whose purpose is to disarm a nuclear warhead for an ICBM, collect plutonium to prevent the creation of more nuclear warheads and later go after General Aziz who at least in the game is the Iraqi Supreme Commander and who’s death will shorten the war as he doesn’t want to give up.

• I Wanna Be The Guy Demo: I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game is a sardonic loveletter to the halcyon days of early American videogaming, packaged as a nail-rippingly difficult platform adventure. Players fill the role of The Kid, a youthful, vaguely Megaman-esque protagonist on a quest to become The Guy. This inscrutable plot, however, is just a vehicle for a wide variety of inventive, well-designed and frustrating jump-and-shoot challenges that pay homage to many of the games you loved as a child. The ever-fragile Kid explodes in a shower of red pixels at the slightest brush from the game’s many obstacles, from traditional spikes and bottomless pits to more unconventional killers, such as plantlife and puzzle pieces. You’ll die a thousand deaths and know you deserved every one of them. All the NES references, like the hundred foot tall fire breathing Mike Tyson, are just icing on the killing-the-hell-out-of-us cake. This demo lets you face 3 bosses.

• Baseball Mogul 2009 Demo: Baseball Mogul 2009 gives you complete control on the field, combined with an easy-to-learn interface and thousands of stats at your fingertips. With customized ratings and head-to-head stats for every player, you have everything you need to win the battle of wits between batter and pitcher.

• WorldShift Multiplayer: Black Sea Studios has released a multiplayer demo for WorldShift. The demo contains two cooperative multiplayer maps (The Lost Coast and Tay-Rammin tundra), also playable 1vs1.

• Voxelstein 3D : FPS game inspired by Wolfenstein 3D. The game uses Ken Silverman’s VOXLAP engine to render voxels in software. The levels in the game are fully destructible - and by fully we mean fully.The game world is built from tiny cubes called voxels. There are over 37 million in the first level. Rendering a world like this is slow (especially without hardware acceleration), but there is an advantage: voxels can be added, removed or otherwise altered very very quickly. This enables all kinds of cool stuff, including fully destructible worlds. Features: Weapons: knife, pistol, chaingun, grenades, C4. Enemies: guard, officer. Many treasures to collect, fully destructible world: blow holes in walls, ceilings, enemies, anywhere. Loads original sounds and music from Wolfenstein 3D. P.S. Check the game directory for a demo of the original Wolfenstein 3D.

Patches are listed below, but I must warn you, there are not too many of those either. The largest ones to hit this week were LotRO: Shadows of Angmar Book 13 and Hellgate: London (single player patch). As always, for more demos and patches, hit the respective links.

The Golden Horde, Seven Kingdoms: Conquest v1.04 , Fate of Hellas, UFO: Afterlight v1.6 , Cabal Online US (04-21-08), and Frontlines: Fuel of War v1.0.2 Ded Server Hotfix

Ubisoft recently released a new title update for the Xbox 360 version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which feature a lot of fixes and general improvements for the game. Most of the fixes address the many issues reported with unlocking some basic achievements, eliminates one infamous “XP farming” area in the story mode, and corrects some general graphical glitches and bugs. Some of the more notable improvements include faster respawning, random respawn points in Team Deathmatch (to reduce spawn camping), and some changes to the XP modifiers. You can check out the detailed list of changes by clicking the link below. Ubisoft is also currently working on a similar update for the PS3 and PC versions of the game. Now if they could just make a patch to eliminate all the d-bags on Xbox Live…

Via Ubisoft Forums

It appears that the gates of hell have opened yet again as Hellgate:London prepares for the latest content expansion to the pseudo-MMORPG. Patch version 1.3 the patch before the upcoming Abyss Chronicles is set to go live today for multiplayer fans. The upcoming 2.0 patch promises to expand the story of the game much like the earlier “Stonehenge Chronicles” patch did a few months ago.

One of the key features for subscribers of the game includes the ability to share the stash of items between your various toons in the Hellgate world. No longer will you have to scrap that Cabalist Rare item just because you happen to be playing your Hunter. Now you can simply store the opbject int he game’s stash, log out and log back in as your demonic Cabalist and gain the reward. The 1.3 patch also offers some new tweaks to existing skills and gameplay. The patch is expected to go live around noon Pacific time today.

Singleplayer fans will also be pleased to see that the final release of the 1.2 patch has made its way to the Internet as well. Many of the stability improvements from the multiplayer fixes are now live for those who prefer to do their demon hunting solo.

Both patches can be accessed through the game’s launcher by simply connecting to the multiplayer or choosing to update the singleplayer. Note that most of the new content in the Abyss Chronicles is aimed at Hellgate: London subscribers only, so if you are not a subscriber many of these features are not for you.

For more details on the two patches, head on over to the Hellgate: London website.

Details on the 1.3 patch are included after the break

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Criterion has announced — and I quote — “the biggest news in Burnout history!” What could they possibly be talking about? Why motorcycles, of course. Yes, it seems the Davis software update for Burnout Paradise in August will add motorcycles to the list of vehicles populating the game. The bikes will also come with special challenges, game modes, and locations specifically tailored for them. Criterion also mentioned that a new night-time mode would soon be added to the game as well, which will also offer gameplay with reduced traffic.

I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around this concept. The whole Burnout franchise is practically based on brutal crashes and being able to take down other cars. How are they going to maintain either of those using motorcycles? Well, unless they somehow slipp into “M” territory, in which case things could get interesting, not to mention messy.

Via Criterion

Criterion has apparently identified some frame rate issues with the recently released Bogart patch for Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360. Specifically, they noticed some problems whenever the player reached high speeds, which is kind of the point of the whole game. As such, they’re planning to recall the patch on Friday until they can fix the frame rate problems, which should take about a week. Yeah, it’s quite an inconvenience, but I guess it beats having to wait for a patch for the patch.

Via Criterion

Wow. We only received five demos this week and that is pretty weak considering we normally get at least six. Ok, I am kidding - but seriously we usually get more than this. The most interesting, and surprising demo was the one for the upcoming CG movie “Kung Fu Panda” which stars Jack Black. Angelina Jolie also lends her voice to the movie and her character is “Master Tigress”. I don’t know if you will actually get to hear Angelina Jolie’s voice in the game demo or not, but if you are fantasizing about her as a pixelatd tiger - you have got some major issues dude - so put the bottle of lotion down and back away from it very slowly.

Here are the demos that hit FileFront this week:

• Caribbean Pirate Quest : Spell of Play Studios announced the release of Caribbean Pirate Quest, an adventure puzzle game where you will have to use clues to navigate your ship on several different maps and find the treasures.

• Lights of Dreams Demo V2.10: This is the demo version V2.10 of Lights of Dreams : The Angelical Blade. Play as Xylvan to find a way to save the future Earth of 3800. Walk, Run, Jump Fly in 50 (3 available in the demo) flowers and grass vasts inspirational worlds to find 10 Spheres, 11 Parchments and 10 unique Elements and more than 20 unique items to accomplish your mission. This version provides more lifelike effects including potion, magic, regeneration and mass attack.

• RedLynx Trials 2 - Second Edition v1.06 : Version 1.06 of the game has been released. The new version contains lots of technical enhancements to improve compatibility, and five new tracks for the owners of the full version. Trials2 provides Trials-game fans even further developed physics model and core gameplay-features. Trials 2 two also takes advantage of RedLynx’s further developed RedLynx Theathre - game engine: Trials2 has ultra-high quality graphics mode, that uses deferred rendering to deliver impressive effects, including depth of field, ambient occlusion and per pixel realtime lighting and shadows. In addition to addictive single-player mode, Trials 2 allows players to compete with each other with global highscore lists, and allows replaying and viewing trials rides - in order to learn from the more experienced players.

• Kung Fu Panda: A demo from Kung Fu Panda, based on Dreamworks’ upcoming CG-animated comedy about a lazy, irreverent slacker panda, Po (voiced by Jack Black), who must somehow become a Kung Fu Master in order to save the Valley of Peace from a villainous snow leopard, Tai.

• Night of a Million Billion Zombies! v1.11: PowerUp Studios has released an updated demo for NOMBZ: Night of a Million Billion Zombies! This is a 3D action shooter that challenges the player to lead a posse of survivors through a zombie-infested city.

For the a list of the more popular patches that hit this week, click through the jump.

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