It's a free game!

Last year's release of the full Quake 3 source code, available under the GPL licence, has seen an explosion of free standalone games being released by small development teams. Tremulous is one of the more interesting, having recently made the switch from a Quake 3 mod to a standalone release.


I know what you're thinking: it sounds like a Natural Selection knock-off, right? No. Tremulous has made it quite clear that this is not the case, stressing that both mods began development around the same time, with Tremulous taking much of its inspiration from Gloom for Quake 2 more than anything.

What the heck are you waiting for? Download Tremulous and give it a go. It's free and it's 95MB - what do you have to lose?

Developer Bizarre Creations has requested that the freely downloadable game Grid Wars be removed from the internet, accusing its creator of infringing on Bizarre's intellectual property.

Bizarre is the developer of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, a highly popular Xbox Live Arcade title for the Xbox 360. Concerned that Grid Wars is affecting sales of Geometry Wars, Bizarre sent an email to creator Mark Incitti, requesting he remove the game from his website. Incitti has complied.

As the news broke and controversy stirred, Bizarre issued a statement defending its decision:


Eurogamer got in touch with Mark Incitti, who says he created Grid Wars after hearing Geometry Wars would not be released on PC. While his game originally had numerous distinct features, it eventually "evolved into more of a clone than anticipated". Incitti says he offered to change the name and graphical style of his game, but when the request came to remove Grid Wars from his website, he yielded.


In the end, it's almost a win-win. Bizarre protects their IP, and an unknown solo programmer gets a lot more visitors to his website.

With the release of Broken Sword: The Angel of Death just around the corner, Revolution Software is letting out some more details about the game.

Revolution recently released a trailer for the game consisting of in-game footage and, quite surprisingly, narration by Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil. The trailer is intended to give long time fans of the series some insight into the key characters of the game, as well as quash the speculation that French heroine Nico had been replaced by a new character to the series.


You can download this 60mb trailer of adventure gaming goodness from the WorthPlaying site.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a list of the top selling PC and console games in Australia for the first half of 2006, courtesy of market researcher GfK. GfK monitors retail stores, so their figures don't include online distribution.

According to the figures, Australians spent $225 million on PC and console games between January and the end of June.

The country's most popular PC game was actually an expansion pack, The Sims 2: Open for Business. As for the rest of the top ten, it's quicker to list the non-Sims titles: World of Warcraft, and Age of Empires III. That is all.

To see various Sims expansions duke it out, or to see the more diversified console top ten, check out the SMH article.

Release date for POE2 announced!

Along with Forgotten Hope 2, the European-themed Point of Existence 2 remains one of most eagerly anticipated mods for Battlefield 2. So with the second year anniversary of the original Point Of Existence mod approaching, the team has decided to let the community in on a little tidbit of information:


Okay, that wasn't exactly a little tidbit of information - it was huge! The release of Point of Existence 2 is set to become a monumental milestone within the Battlefield 2 community; one that we hope the community can get behind. If players cannot support a mod like Point of Existence 2, what hope do local mods like Australian Forces have?

Fans needing a fix before the release of Point Of Existence 2 can drop by the official website, a one-stop-shop for all your eyecandy needs.