A few weeks ago VIS Entertainment closed its Dundee office and laid off several people at its other remaining Edinburgh studio, virtually halting all production on its titles in development, State of Emergency 2 and Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer. Today DC Studios announced that it has acquired the rights to Rockstar's 2002 sequel and will resume development on State of Emergency 2, which is now schedule for late this year, PS2 confirmed, but no other platforms are specified at this point in time. DC Studios most recently finished Ubisoft's Rayman DS and is currently also developing a multiplatform title for Konami of Europe.

Chaos League: Sudden Death, developed by Paris-based Cyanide Studios, takes up where the original Chaos League left off, bringing with it a host of improvements and enhancements which make take the real-time, role-playing strategy sports title into a whole new bloody battleground. Here are the first ingame screens ...

While Phantagram announced it a few months ago, Microsoft announced today that it will distribute the next saga of the epic action-strategy game Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes exclusively for Xbox in late summer 2005. Read more for details & the very first screens ...

SpecForce is Techland's latest futuristic tactical shooter with a plot connected to already known Chrome. Using an optimized Chrome Engine, the gamer acts as an operative of future's special forces unit - SpecForce. Established to fight crisis situations that threaten the Federation's peace, equipped with the latest combat gear, the unit is the Federation's elite rapid reaction force.

A new development studio has been launched - fronted by ex-Team 17, Ocean and Infogrames veteran, Jon Oldham, and fifteen members of Acclaim's Manchester studio, who were working on Interview With a Made Man. Fund4Games has secured the rights & assets to the title, and SilverBack Studios have reprised development for current and next-gen consoles, and it is now scheduled for 2006. Read more for details ...

Valve and Vivendi today announced the settlement of a pending federal court lawsuit filed by Valve in August 2002. The parties have resolved their differences, and the settlement provides for the dismissal of all claims and counterclaims. VUG will cease distribution of retail packaged versions of Valve's games, including Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source, effective August 31, 2005, and notify distributors and cyber cafes that were licensed by VUG that only Valve is authorized to distribute Valve games to cyber cafés and grant cyber café licenses. All previous license agreements made by Vivendi are being terminated. Needless to say, settlement or not, this is a huge win for Valve.

Already revealed a few months ago, Nival Interactive today officially announced Hammer & Sickle, a new tactical role playing game set in the Silent Storm universe. The game is being co-developed by Novik&Co and Nival Interactive.

DreamCatcher Games today announced Dungeon Lords has reached gold status worldwide. To mark the occasion, DreamCatcher has released the intro-cinematic for Dungeon Lords, created by Brain Zoo Studios, giving fans a taste of what to expect when the game ships on May 4, 2005.

ForwardGames' Notcom Racing is a next-gen futuristic racing game with more than a twist. Race among beautiful, highly detailed environments, over the magnetic track at insane speeds, find your way out among track-traps of any sorts, change vehicle configuration on the fly and do not, do not use wisely your lethal embedded weapons arsenal!

2K Games today announced Vietcong 2 for the PC, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Vietcong and the expansion pack Vietcong: Fist Alpha.

Cyanide Studio today announced the development of their latest cycling title, Pro Cycling Manager. PCM will have more detailed animations, an experience system, stage editor and also several multiplayer modes. Cyanide Studio is using the GameBryo engine, and the Paris-based developer of Chaos League has also recently licensed SpeedTree for use in Pro Cycling Manager. Read more for the first screens ...

The Hostile Intent team has released a new version for their Half-Life mod, bringing it to v1.4 (requires v1.3.5) and has a slew of bug fixes and game tweaks, new and updated maps, new weapons etc. Read more for details and download links ...

The newest PSM issue reveals the first details about Activision's latest Spider-Man game. Several big changes over the previous Spider-Man 2 title have been made. First off, the game graphics will be more true to the actual comic book style, referred to as 3D comic inking, and include cinematics via a "comic panel" presentation. Ultimate Spider-Man will have a less expansive game world, but Treyarch made up for that by increasing the detail of the environment, adding a "threat assessment" feature which forces you to prioritize tasks, added more mission variety and a new combat system, and allows you to play as Spidey and Venom. The game story is written by comic book author Brian Michael and picks up after issue #39.

Another day, another batch of game trailers were released. Instead of giving them all their own posts, we grouped them, and so far there are trailers for :

• Black & White 2 - Trailer
• Dungeon Lords - Trailer
• Grandia III - Trailer
• Pariah - Trailer (Part 1)

Get behind the wheel and experience the sensation of racing actual cars. As in the real world, Enthusia emphasizes pure driving skills and ensures that winning is a result of ability rather than how much money has been spent tuning a car. Maintaining a subtle balance between the power of the car and the driver’s skill, Enthusia promises to deliver the ultimate driving experience for racing fans of all abilities.

Phantasy Star Universe is being developed for both the PS2 and the PC, offering two complete RPG experiences - a single-player action adventure spanning multiple planets, and a robust online multi-player component.

Today Ubisoft announced results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2004-2005, which showed an 8 % sales growth over last year's results. The included release schedule shows that Rainbow Six Lockdown has once again been delayed, this time to Q3 (July-September). More curious is the lack of PC specifications for Lockdown and 187 Ride or Die, something we experienced with Ghost Recon 2 right before its cancellation. The announcement also revealed two new titles, Surrender: Battle for the Bulge, and Firefighter Command: Raging Inferno. Read more for detailed financial results ...

The game will provide players with extremely dynamic gameplay of fast and tough combats, where players are to oppose dangerous and wise enemies, a large set of multifarious weaponry, possibility to control various machinery, incredible detailing and game world interactivity, story-driven single player with original team gameplay, a well-balanced multiplayer with numerous modes: DM, CTF, Co-op, various team games and much more.