At a recent event, Intel demonstrated Enemy Territory: Quake Wars with ray-tracing. ETQW reportedly ran at 14-29 frames per second in 1280×720 on a 16-core (4 socket, 4 core) Tigerton system running at 2.93 GHz on a 64-bit Linux operating system.

Trendwatch reports seeing physically-correct refractions of water as well as incredibly detailed glass reflections. Intel supports ray-tracing on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Linux and Windows operating systems.

Check out TGDaily for a gallery of exclusive screenshots from ET: Quake Wars.

For those of you who are not into the Metal Gear Solid Series and could care less about the the fourth installment causing a huge media storm across the globe, or if you happen to be a PC gamer who is lamenting the the fact that nothing really worth mentioning was released this week, there may be a demo or two here for you to play.

The following PC demos should keep you occupied until Spore Creature Creator Complete is released next Tuesday:

• Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice: In Nancy Drew’s most exciting adventure yet, players will work to uncover the mastermind behind a series of unsolved thefts that have taken place in Venice — one of the world’s most unique cities known for its interlocking canals and sleek gondolas.

• Fishdom: Build up and develop your Fishdom! Progress through challenging boards and solve immersive puzzles to earn cash. Use the money to buy eye-candy fish and attractive ornaments for your dream aquarium. Get accessories and supplies to create the perfect conditions for your finny pals and ensure their comfort. Win awards and upgrade your virtual tank as you perfect your aquarium design skills and have fun with the lovely fishy sims. Being a unique fusion of classic game play with brilliant new ideas, this game with unlimited replayability will bring you lots of joyful moments!

• GRID eBay Motors: Codemasters has released a free playable two track demo exclusively provided by eBay Motors featuring the eBay Motors Muscle Series.

• Aces of the Galaxy: Aces of the Galaxy is an old-school arcade thrill-ride! This pick-up-and-play game thrusts players into the midst of epic space warfare as they experience over-the-top action in a battle for survival! Play in the 3rd person viewpoint flying through intense dogfights. Take control of your spaceship and aim the reticule to vaporize waves of enemies.

• Legend of Zelda – Dragon Blade: Demo of a new Zelda game, created by Astral Gaming Corp. More info on this game can be found in the “read me” file, so I apologize for the lack of information on it.

• Supreme Ruler 2020: Supreme Ruler 2020 is a strategic and tactical geo-political game where direct control of the military and the policies of a nation becomes the key to survival.

• Simcity Societies: EA has release a demo for its latest city builder, up to date with the latest code after several patches, and includes a tutorial, a scenario and two major disasters.

Here are the latest patches to hit FileFront this week:

• Universe at War: Earth Assault Patch 3
• CoD4: Modern Warfare v1.6 Patch (Direct2Drive)
• Mount & Blade v0.955 Patch
• TrackMania Nations Forever Patch
• Race Driver: GRID v1.1 Patch
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5 Mac Patch

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

See you next week.

All sorts of downloadable goodness has been added to the PlayStation Store today of both the free and premium variety. Syphon Filter 3 for PSone is now available for $6. It’s not a terrible game, but it’s not nearly as good as the earlier Syphon Filter games. Also in the land of playable games is free demo of Quake Wars — from having tried the demo out on 360, I can pretty safely say that the game did not translate all that well to consoles. It’s still worth checking out if you never got to try the PC version, but chances are you’ll find it to be an overwhelming experience.

In the land of rhythm games, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band each have a handful of tracks now available. Guitar Hero got the Isle of Wight Festival track pack and Rock Band got the MTV2 Pack 01, plus an additional track.

There’s plenty more, including an MGS4 theme and all sorts of trailers. Hit the break for a list of all of the new content.

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Finally, we get a chance to check out the new Enemy Territory: Quake Wars on the Xbox 360. Um, if you missed the retail release the other week, that is…or the PS3 version…or the PC version that came out eight months ago. But that’s not important. The point is: free stuff. Everyone loves free stuff, even if it’s late free stuff that probably should have been released a long time ago. Anyway, the demo for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is available on Xbox Live for the four of you that haven’t seen the game yet. Enjoy.

Via Major Nelson

I would really criticize this week’s update, but at least PlayStation 3 owners are getting something. PSP owners are unfortunately SOL this week.

The main addition this week is “The Cars” album to Rock Band’s catalog of downloadable music. Each track is $1.99, or you can get all nine tracks for the standard album price of $14.99. A pair of tracks — “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Dirty Little Secret” by All-American Rejects — can be purchased at a discounted price of $0.99 until June 5.

Quake Wars and Battlefield: Bad Company each have a pair of new videos, and there are various other videogame and movie trailers and wallpapers for you to download. You can get the full list of content after the break.

Read the full article

Its Memorial Day Weekend folks and so you can hurry up and get to the family picnic that you are dreading more than a cavity search, I will get right to the offerings from FileFront this week.Other than the highly anticipated Penny Arcade demo, here are some of the other ones you can check out this weekend:

• Mount & Blade – Thanks to user feedback on the past two versions, the devs have been able to fix a number of bugs and improve the performance of the game and hope that version 0.952 will be more stable and more fun to play.

• Virtual Villagers 3 (PC) – Guide a tribe of castaways as they live, breed, and discover secrets about their mysterious home in this real-time sim adventure. Embark on a 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. Find new sources of food to nourish your villagers and help them rebuild the remains of this mysterious city. Who lived here before? Where have they gone? What is the secret of Isola? Featuring real-time gameplay: new surprises every time you turn the game on, discover who among your tribe is destined to become Chief, ivestigate and rebuild the remains of a ruined city.

• Little Farm – Have a down-home good time at Little Farm, where you’ll use your puzzle-solving and matching skills to help The Normans adjust to farm life and grow truck-loads of vegetables! The Normans left the city to retreat to Uncle Nate’s farm-but this isn’t a farm of leisure! Battle insects, animals and weather as you race against the clock to grow your harvest. Match like-colored patches in your farm field to create squares to water and grow plump pumpkins, excellent eggplants and tasty tomatoes! The further your territory expands, the more veggies you can sell, and with the extra income, you can spend your earnings on tools that will make life easier on Little Farm.Earn extra points by finding the largest Best Match in the field. Or, find Uncle Nate’s lost coin, and he will help you find the five best puzzle solutions. Make matches quickly to find the Wild patches of fertilizer that will help you make better matches! Fun game modes let you defend your crops against insects, and harvest your crop in a limited time to earn extra points.

• Chaos Theory - Chaos Theory, an innovative puzzle game, now available via Steam. Chaos Theory leverages Steamworks to offer achievements as gamers play through a mix of arcade-like dexterity tests and challenging puzzle elements, packed into an atmospheric environment. The main objective in Chaos Theory is to fill “Collectors” with magnetically charged particles. These particles move freely in the environment and are influenced by other objects and their magnetic forces. To avoid a Déjà-vu effect, Chaos Theory offers over 50 diverse levels, and homemade levels may be exchanged via the blurredVisi.

Here are just some of the patches that hit this past week: Mount & Blade v0.952, The Settlers: Rise of an Empire v1.6, Armed Assault v1.08 to v1.14 , Enemy Territory: Quake Wars v1.5 Full Patch, and SimCity Societies v1.04.243 Patch.

As usual, for the full list of demos and patches click here and here.

Have a great and safe holiday weekend everyone!

This week’s update is a fairly tame one, although I believe some new ground is being broken with the release of a game’s soundtrack on the PlayStation Store. $2.99 will net you the original soundtrack to PixelJunk Monsters, which includes 24 tracks in total. That’s not a bad deal for $3, but if you want music you can actually do something with, there are nine new Rock Band tracks for $2 each, or you can find two songs — “We Care a Lot” by Epic and “All the Small Things” by Blink 182 — at the discounted price of $0.99 each.

There’s also the usual assortment of trailers and themes. Get all the details after the break. Read the full article

It’s always a little strange to see a new trailer for a game released long after the game as hit store shelves. So it looks like whoever was given this task at id decided to spice things up a bit. Thus, there are three new trailers for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, delivered in an infomercial style format. The one above addresses the dangers of “projectile dysfunction,” while the other two advertise a “human juicer” and the game itself as if it were a monster truck rally. You can check out the other two trailers after the break.

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According to Nerve Software designer Greg Stone, Activision is planning to release playable demos of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for both the PS3 and 360. No date as to when the demos will be made available or whether they will hit before the console versions this summer, but we will keep you posted.

ET: Quake Wars will contain all of the classes, key features and maps that the team-based multiplayer FPS had on the PC version and will also include bots and usability issues for the port to consoles has been addressed.

For more information on ET: Quake Wars, check out our previous posts.

Thanks: Eurogamer

Aspyr has announced that Enemy Territory QUAKE Wars is coming to the Mac. This shooter built on id Software’s MegaTexture rendering technology offers strategic game play and story-driven military missions. ET QUAKE Wars follows Neverwinter Nights 2, The Sims 2: Bon Voyage and Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock all developed for the Mac by Aspyr.

Traditionally gamers have invested in PCs because gaming has been limited for the Mac. With more games in development for the Mac now, I wonder if we’ll start to see a shift in numbers of PC versus Mac sales among gaming enthusiasts.

via Aspyr