Once again we did not get much in the way of demos this week, but the patches just kept rolling in. We were graced with the Call of Duty 4 Mod Tools patch and then received the Multiplayer patch. AO Shadowlands, Frontlines: Fuel of War, and Darkness Within also showed up in our inboxes.

Here are a few more patches that you may have missed this week:

• D&D Online: The Thirteenth Eclipse
• Conquer Online
• Madden NFL 2008 Roster Pack 3

Here are a few of the demos that landed this week:

• Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun: The Adventure Company and JoWooD have released the official demo for Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun. In the demo, players will have the chance to explore the hotel’s interior.
• Speedball 2: Tournament: A singleplayer demo version of Speedball 2 – Tournament is now available for download. Tigers vs. Brutal Deluxe: Who is going to kick the opponent out of the arena? PC players choose one of the two tough teams to play in single player knock-out mode again
• Evochron Renegades: This next update is focused on multiplayer enhancements.
• Dead Wake Beta 2 : Finnish based independent game development studio Polycount Productions has released a new beta version of Dead Wake, a survival zombie game for PC which brings barricades, blood, and weapons to zombie fans.

For the full list of demos click here, and for patches click here. Check back next week and hopefully some more demos will have arrived.

Readers who love getting a hold of the latest James Patterson book, or who are enthralled with his new ABC series based on his “Women’s Murder Club” will be pleased to know that a casual game from Oberon Media is currently in the works for this popular book title. In the game, players will be able to play as each of the founding members of the Women’s Murder Club: Lindsay Boxer, Cindy Thomas, Claire Washburn and Jill Bernhardt and will be able to use each woman’s expertise to uncover clues to San Francisco’s grisly homicides.

Patterson’s reasoning for this is the multitude of women (specifically speaking) who do not like to play shoot em up style games and are more into the cerebral side of solving a mystery or catching the bad guy:

“… it strikes me that the video game area is an incredibly lucrative niche market,” he explains, “one populated by a small number of boys — and grownup boys — who like to shoot things and spend a lot of money. But that excludes most of the universe. What I love about this project is the chance to widen the boundaries of what people can do on the small screen, sort of like what the [Nintendo] Wii is accomplishing. We’re going to give people who don’t want to shoot things … who prefer to use their brains … a chance to solve a really good mystery. This will open up a whole new arena to a lot of people who don’t play games now. I believe that market is huge.”

His first game will be an adaptation of his six (soon to be seven) book series and is being created by Jane Jensen, the person behind the popular Gabriel Knight series from Sierra Online. Jane is the co-founder of Oberon Media, a 5-year-old casual game developer/publisher who has published a couple of Agatha Christie mystery titles along with a vast number of other causal games.

“We are sort of baby-stepping our way towards a full adventure game while still keeping the elements that I believe are really good about casual games,” she says, “meaning that it has to be immediately intuitive with no barriers for entry and it has to be immediately rewarding.”

Patterson explained that he thought that Oberon Media would be the perfect partner in crime, in that he believes that they will do quality work on a title he lends his monkier to:

“Look at the book business,” he says. “The audience is 70-something-percent female. My readers are 70-something-percent female. And the majority of people who play casual games is the same. So I think the market for what we’re doing — games that are more sensitive and are centered on character, not shooting — will be monstrous. I have a huge audience … which is something ABC discovered when ‘Women’s Murder Club’ debuted and it was their biggest premiere on a Friday night in four years.”

Patterson quickly lets the public know that this has nothing – I repeat- NOTHING to do with money, because as he states so eloquently, he had loads of it:

“Look -This is very exciting. It’s not the money; I can’t spend all the money I have. But I look at the game and I think about the fact that the majority of people are excluded from games like these, and I go ‘Wow! Big, big opportunity!’ “

Either way you look at this, it is just more money in the bank for Patterson, and another thing to get his fans all atwitter about. We will keep you posted as more news regarding Women’s Murder Club surfaces.

Read the full article from The Hollywood Reporter here.

Like murder mysteries? Like point and click adventure? Like solving crimes while pretending to be a globe trotting super sleuth? Then look no further because The Adventure Company and JoWooD have released the official demo for Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun. In the demo players will have the chance to explore the hotel’s interior and step into Hercule Poirots’ hotel room to search for clues, speak to several characters and solve one puzzle for further insight into the murder of a famous actress.

Find out what it is like to be in the shoes of famed detective, and very cool customer, Hercule Poirot in the 3rd installment of the Agatha Christie Windows series. This demo gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself into a murder investigation on a tropical island during what should have been a relaxing holiday for all. Get to know a cast of characters, each with their own dynamic personality, as you scour the island for clues and solve puzzles.

Want more information on Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun? Then click here and here, and hit the badge below to download the demo.

Via: Press Release 

Coming to the Wii on February 25th is Agatha Christie: And Then There Where None, from The Adventure Company and JoWood. Using the Wii Remote controller, players will use a digging motion to unearth clues, spin the handle of a safe using the Wii Remote and participate in timed puzzles where, for example, players must race up a set of stairs from a boat docked below.

The storyline revolves around ten people, all strangers to each other, who are invited to a lavish estate on an isolated island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his ‘guests’ of murder and proceeds to exact justice by becoming judge, jury and executioner… The tension mounts and dark secrets are revealed as one-by-one the number of guests systematically dwindles according to the ingenious plan of the unseen killer.

For more information on And Then There Were None, check out our previous posts and enjoy the trailer.

Sometimes even in paradise… evil can exist.

A new trailer from The Adventure Company’s latest installment in the Agatha Christie series, Evil Under the Sun for the PC was delivered to our inboxes today. The game offers players the ability to step into the shoes of literary favorite Hercule Poirot for the first time in the Agatha Christie PC gaming series. With a diverse cast of over 20 characters, players scour the island for clues as they attempt to solve the shocking murder of a famous actress vacationing on the island. The cool thing about the game is that the character Hercule Poirot looks exactly like the actor David Suchet from the awesome PBS Mystery! series.

Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun has been available since October.

The point-and-click genre seems to be making a come back as of late. Not only do we have Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie mysteries to solve, along with our favorite detective of all – Sherlock Holmes, we now have a creepy abbey to add to the picture.

Crimson Cow and Alcachofa Soft plan to tread new paths in the narrative of this new point-and-click adventure called The Abbey. The storyline for this “whodunit” adventure reminds me of “In the Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco – not the horrible movie starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, but the novel – which apparently was a bit of an inspiration for the game. Featuring new technology which allows camera angles and action scenes that until now have only been seen in movies, The Abbey is a clerical mystery with suspense that goes beyond that of a conventional adventure.

Game Features, Storyline, and Screenshots after the break.

Read the full article

Everyone loves lists, and within this list is something everyone can love. Below you will find complied release dates for games coming out in October. The dates listed are as current as possible, so if a publisher changes the date we will try our best to update the list. We are well aware that September still has a couple of weeks left, give or take, but we just want to help plan your lives for the next month or two. Who loves you baby?

10/1/2007

Backyard Basketball 2007 —- GameCube
Field Ops —- PC
Heavy Rain (working title) —- PS3
Hot Shots Golf 5 —- PS3
MLB Power Pros —- PS2
Popx3 —- Wii
Race —- PC
RACE 07 – The WTCC Game — PC
The Chosen – Well of Souls —- PC
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass —– DS
Ultimate 3D Pinball —- PC, Wii

MORE AFTER THE BREAK

Read the full article

Agatha Christie is getting exposure in a whole new media outlet, casual video games. Although I don’t see the comparison between Christie and Lara Croft or Zelda, considering Agatha Christie is a writer not a character, the article in the Times Online does point out a growing niche of games. Oberon’s Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile, released as an internet download, has become one of the top ten games played on personal computers.

Don Ryan, of Oberon Media, the parent of Oberon Games, said: “The Agatha Christie stories and her audience are, as the figures show, a perfect fit for casual games, and we know that both mystery buffs and casual gamers are delighted with Death on the Nile.”

Where as gamers are statistically 60 percent male, Agatha Christie’s fan base is from the “non core gamers” with 60 percent female players. Casual gamers are gaining influence in the industry daily. A study by DFC Intelligence, the researchers, predicts that by 2008 there will be nearly 200 million casual online gamers globally downloading between five and ten million games a day. That’s an estimated $2.5 billion in revenues worldwide for casual online gaming by 2011.

Jane Jenson lead designer on Death on the Nile and writer of the Gabriel Knight series said, “I’m pretty sure that we haven’t yet seen the last of Monsieur Poirot in the casual games world.”

Poirot isn’t the only Christie staple being developed for gaming. An adaptation of Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None will hit retail shelves in November for the PC and the Wii. Gamers interested in getting a first hand look at the game can peruse screenshots and download the PC demo here on FileFront.

via Times Online

The Adventure Company is quickly becoming one of my favorite publishers of PC games; they seem to specialize in investigative games with a hint of mystery to them. This is why Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None encapsulates their gaming mantra so well, and is sure to deliver plenty of enjoyment for fans of the genre on the Wii.

The storyline revolves around ten people, all strangers to each other, who are invited to a lavish estate on an isolated island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his ‘guests’ of murder and proceeds to exact justice by becoming judge, jury and executioner. The tension mounts and dark secrets are revealed as one-by-one the number of guests systematically dwindles according to the ingenious plan of the unseen killer. Mwah ha ha ha! The player is the thrown into intrigue as the new 11th character, Patrick Narracott – the boatman who takes the guests to the island and ends up trapped there himself. Solve the mystery and find the killer before you become the next victim.

Look for Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None to hit retail shelves in November for the PC and the Wii. Until then, FileFront has the PC demo hosted here, and plenty of screens here!

via: Media Release from The Adventure Company

Set to release worldwide in October 2007, Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun is the third installment in The Adventure Company’s Agatha Christie video game series. New in this installment, players will step into the shoes of Hercule Poirot, to play the role of the famous detective as he scours a tropical island for clues to solve the murder of a well-known actress, during what should have been the start of a much needed vacation. A number of added features and improvements have been made to Evil Under the Sun based on player feedback, including a more streamlined inventory system, character dialogue choices that will impact events as the player progresses in the game, less repetitive detective footwork, and more diverse environments and locales to explore.

Check out the FULL PRESS RELEASE after the break.

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