CrossFire v1027 Client
This is the version 1.027 client for the online military shooter Cross Fire.

CTRacer Open Beta Client 2009-08-19
This is the latest open beta client of CTRacer, a new MMORPG which lets players experience real racing while speeding in a virtual world.

Dantes Inferno GamesCom 2009 Trailer
This trailer for Dante’s Inferno debuted at GamesCom 2009, and accompanied the announcement that the game will release Feb. 9, 2010 in North America and Feb 12, 2009 in Europe.

NHL10 Demo Sizzle Trailer
This trailer for NHL 10 shows off what gamers can expect to find in the upcoming demo of EA Sports’ latest iteration of their hockey series.

Age of Conan: Rise Of The Godslayer Announcement Trailer
This trailer carries the announcement for the first Age of Conan expansion, Rise of the Godslayer. This expansion will send players to the Empire of Khitai, and introduce faction gameplay.

Earlier this month, FunCom assured gamers that they are still planning on bringing Age of Conan to the Xbox 360 and it was currently being worked on and optimized. Today, FunCom spoke with GamesIndustry.biz about their other MMORPG game that has been slightly absent from the news as of late, The Secret World.

During the interview, CEO Trond Arne Aas stated that lay offs in the U.S. have nothing to do with game development only that the customer service was being consolidated to Europe. On that note, he also mentioned that the development process for The Secret World “continues and we are expanding the development team at a steady pace”. He also went on to add that the team working on it has drawn a lot of inspiration from Age of Conan along with the innovations and technology.

However, he emphasized that Age of Conan for both the console and Xbox 360 is still FunCom’s number one priority right now:

“The work with improving and expanding Age of Conan continues with relentless force, and we look forward to introducing a number of great updates in the months ahead. We are also putting a lot of effort into our launches in Russia and Poland, and we look forward to working more with the Asian markets.”

Arne Aas also stated that the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan will have most if not all of the same content as well as the improvements made to the PC version.

That is good news for those waiting on the Xbox 360 version of Age of Conan, and hopefully good news for players of the PC version. It sounds like they are at least trying to get their act together.

You can read the full interview with Trond Arne Aas here.

FunCom is recruiting fresh players for its Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures by enticing them with a Snow Mammoth mount. This new winter themed mount comes with the Bag of the Mammoth Rider. This inventory container with expanded slots completes the Snow Mammoth package.

Age of Conan got off to a great start, but stalled early on. FunCom couldn’t update and get out new content fast enough. I’m not confident an in-game Snow Mammoth is enough of an incentive to bring in gamers who haven’t already decided to try Age of Conan out. Perhaps FunCom will have more luck if and when it finally delivers on a console version.

For those gamers that have been waiting for a deal like this, the Snow Mammoth in-game mount offer complete with the Bag of the Mammoth Rider is good from December 2008 on. You can order Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures from the official website.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is gearing up to execute the promised server merges this December. FunCom has released an FYI article on its plans as well as a Server Merge FAQ.

Merges will be spread out over the month starting in the U.S. with ‘Bloodspire’ and ‘Hyperborea’. FunCom plans to have all the merges completed by the the Christmas Holidays. Detailed Server Merge Information is available on the Age of Conan Forums as is the Server Merge FAQ. Stay tuned for a list of servers merges and times to be published soon.

If you think it is funny to see a naked female “pet” running past you in Age of Conan on the PC, just wait until it hits the Xbox 360. That is, unless they cut stuff like that out–but it sure as hell would not be a “Conan” game without a bit of breasts if you want my honest opinion. Then again I have no problem with such thing, but that is for a different post.

Anyway, my inane ramblings aside, despite recent lay-offs at Funcom and no new information on the promised port for the Xbox 360, the developer of Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is sill planning on releasing it in the future.

According to a recent interview with Funcom Product Manager Erling Elligsen on MTV Multiplayer, the game is still in production for the console but they not “committing to any specific dates” at this point. Also Elligsen wanted to reassure players that the lay-offs happening at the company will not have any impact on the further development of the PC or console version:

“Our aim is for this to not affect development of Age of Conan, or any of our other games, at all. We are sticking firmly to our plans.”

Hopefully Funcom can fix the major gaming woes that players have experienced and get the console version of to a bang on launch day. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

(Thanks Shacknews)

Frogwares Studio and Focus Home Interactive have sent us the very first screenshots of Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper, the new game that will be released for PC in March 2009. This time, Sherlock Holmes is back and in it the player will launch into a hunt for the most nefarious serial killer in England’s history.

The game will offer players two different 3D view modes, a third-person view in the purest sense of a point and click style adventure, but also in a first-person view should you choose. The player will be able to play in one or the other mode or even combine them for greater immersion along with the introduction of a new system for piecing together crimes. This should give players who have enjoyed Holmes’ other PC adventures a nice bit of change to the game without taking away from what made these such fun adventures in the first place.

It is worth noting though, that the events in the game never actually happened in literature. Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote a novel or short story about his famous sleuth investigating the dastardly Jack the Ripper, a movie called Murder by Decree was filmed starring the great Christopher Plummer and depicted such an event for celluloid in 1979. This must be where the idea for the game stemmed from, because it was indeed a great film and who would not have wished for Holmes to have gone after the creep of London? Furthermore, the idea is such a good one that a remake of the movie was made in 2001 by the Hughes brothers titled From Hell starring Johnny Depp, which understandably left out the great detective and replaced him with another sort of investigator instead.  Both were very good movies, but highly fictional accounts of the real story and neither involved Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Be that as it may, if you are a fan of Holmes and his deductive reasoning like I am, and you also enjoy immersing yourself in his world a bit on the PC, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper may just be a nice bit of escapism for you.

To view more screens, hit the link posted at the top of the post.

MMO Portal is offering up the MMO Calendar 2009 to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The third calendar comes with art from some of the most played MMOs out there. As an extra incentive, MMO Portal will be giving away prizes including boxed copies, premium accounts, 30-day passes, 60-day passes and closed beta accounts for the participating MMOs. Each calendar you purchase nets you one entry.

MMO Calendar 2009 proudly includes:

• Age of Conan
• DC Universe Online
• Dofus
• Eve Online
• EverQuest II
• Free Realms
• Guild Wars
• Pirates of the Burning Sea
• RuneScape
• The Agency
• Warhammer Online
• World of Warcraft

To get your copy of the MMO Calendar 2009 and do your part for St. Jude visit the MMO Calendar website. Don’t forget to check with your accountant to see if it’s tax deductible.

FunCom has rolled out a major content update for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Players levels 55-63 will now find Ymir’s Pass open. This new outdoor area features quests that include new storyline elements. The Amphitheater dungeon has been added as well. FunCom is promising the Age of Conan community “one of the most epic and memorable monster encounters ever created for the game.”

“This is an important update that opens up a lot of new gameplay content for players who have already passed the level fifty mark,” says Game Director Craig Morrison. “In the months ahead we will introduce even more new content, and coming up soon are two exciting new high-level dungeons intended for players who have reached the maximum level. At this stage adding more content and keeping people entertained is very important to us!”

There are many other tweaks including a solution to female avatars squinty eye issue. Its not as big a deal as the earlier breast reduction bug, but I’m sure it will be appreciated. Full update notes follow the break. Read the full article

Satirical rock band Tenacious D, featuring Jack Black and Kyle Gass, will be on Xbox Live November 20 to play with members in Rock Band 2 and to celebrate the recent release of The Complete Masterworks 2 DVD . If you’re a Gold member, and you want a chance to play with Tenacious D, send a friend request to the Gamertags JBTenacious and KGTenacious and be sure to be online early–and this means by 7:30 p.m. EST (4:30 PST).

The Complete Masterworks 2 DVD of Tenacious D is a follow-up to the group’s first platinum-selling DVD. The new 2-disc DVD includes a full-length live concert of the band at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, a one-hour documentary about the making of their movie Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny and bonus features including music videos and the band’s appearances on the MTV Awards, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Xbox Live Game With Fame featuring Tenacious D

WHEN: November 20th

TIME: 5:30PM to 7:30PM (PST)

GAME: Rock Band 2

GAMERTAG: JBTenacious, KGTenacious

If you get a chance to play with Tenacious D, we want to hear about it–so send us an email or post something about your experience in the comments section below. If you can get screenshots of you going up against Tenacious D, we will even post them here on Gaming Today.

Interesting news for fans of author Robert Jordan and his epic fantasy series “Wheel of Time” was broke this morning by Venture Beat. Seems that the movie studio Red Eagle Entertainment who owns the film rights to the series plans on making videogames based on the series, to coincide with the films as they are released.

This would not be the first time that Jordan’s books were translated into gaming–some of you may recall Legend Entertainment’s critically and gamer acclaimed PC title The Wheel of Time back in 1999 which had the misfortune of being released around the same time as Quake. The first-person shooter/role playing game was based on the Unreal Engine and could be played either in a linear single-player mode or through multiplayer deathmatches or capture the flag type gameplay. The Wheel of Time MUD, created by former MUME (Multi-Users in Middle-earth) is an online game based on the series and “The Wheel of Time” was also published by Wizards of the Coast as a tabletop RPG similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Robert Jordan’s eleven books in the series sold over 44 million copies worldwide, and a twelfth is planned to be released posthumously by author Brandon Sanderson sometime in 2009. Red Eye Entertainment is currently at wok on a movie based on the first novel “The Eye of the World,” and according to Variety, it is rumored that Universal is behind it with a $150 million dollar budget.

Although laden with elements of Asian mythology combined with themes of Buddhism, Daoism and Hinduism the books have been compared as a cross between “Lord of the Rings” and “Road Warrior” which Red Eye Entertainment feels would transfer well into videogames. The company is even talking about the possibility of a “spin-off franchise” for a future massively multiplayer online game.

Red Eagle Entertainment was formed by former IBM executives Rick Selvage and Larry Mondragon in 2003 and according to Rick Selvage, they have huge plans for The Wheel of Time series:

“We’ve got a huge running start with this property. We expect to have a game based on every movie, and we expect no less than three movies, though that depends on how well each does.”

Since the games are planned to be launched at the same time as the films, Selvage plans on hiring people soon to start work on the games and the company has budgeted hundreds of millions between the games and films. Since, according to him, the project has been met with enthusiasm, he hopes that the prospect of working on a Robert Jordan game will draw in the creme-de-la-creme of programmers because he “wants to hire the rock stars”. This will be exactly what the company needs if they are to succeed in translating the series onto PCs, consoles and handhelds like they plan.

If they can bring the “Wheel of Time” series to videogames and the silver screen without gutting what made the novels popular in the first place, this could be a great thing for fans of the series and gamers alike. However, with the bad translation of games turned into movies and vice versa, it is only natural to be concerned when a fantastic and much-lauded fantasy series is being exploited in such a medium. Hopefully, Red Eye Entertainment will not fail us on this, and despite being tied to a movie, the prospect of actually playing a new game based on the books is exciting indeed–especially an MMO teaming with Myrddraal and Trollocs to fight to the death.

Let’s just hope it will fare better than the Conan books did at the hands of Funcom.

By the way, I know this is off the subject a bit, but whatever happened to the possibility of R.A. Salvatore’s Dizzt books being turned into a videogame? After seeing the awesome Drow, and my personal hero, make an appearance in the console version of Baldur’s Gate, I have not seen hide or hair of him. Maybe it was just a rumor after all, but if anyone else has heard anything about this, please drop us a line.