Platinum Studios and Blue Star Pictures have hired the Pang brothers to direct The Darkness, based on Top Cow's comicbook series. Majesco is currently working on an X360 game based on the same franchise, developed by Starbreeze and scheduled for 2007. The Darkness casts players as Jackie Estacado, a fearless Mafia hitman for the Franchetti crime family who is suddenly possessed by the terrifying and spectacular powers of The Darkness.

Matrix Games and Playnet are very proud to announce a partnership to bring the new World War II Online: Battleground Europe to North America for the first time via the Matrix Games digital download system. Take control of a soldier fighting in World War II in a persistent massive multiplayer world of first-person combat with infantry, tanks, planes and ships.

With RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked! the park guests will catch rays and ride the waves on more than fifty new rides and coasters including super- splash flume rides, massive water slides, wave pools and more. Atari has released a patch for RCT3 Soaked! bringing it in line with the recent Wild! expansion pack, including some features like custom billboards and tunnels etc, as well as optimizing RCT3's first expansion pack.

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

• Hammer & Sickle - Trailer
• Pursuit Force [PSP] - Trailer
• Grand Raid Offroad [X360/PC] - Trailer
• 
  
  We will update this throughout the day when new trailers become available. Read more for download links ...

Valve's SteamPowered website has been updated with details regarding the latest update for its online delivery system Steam. This release updates the DoD:Source with the previously announced new map dod_argentan, and Rag Doll Kung Fu gets fixed up so you can now play past the second level transition. Just restart Steam for the effects to take place.

Team Rainbow is called into action and unfamiliar territory to battle a bioterrorist threat but are personally targeted by an evil terrorist organization. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown will ship worldwide in early 2006 for the PC, until then, read more for some new PC screens ...

The Chronicles of Spellborn is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in the Enclave of the Five Sacrifices. Developed by Dutch studio Khaeon Games, previously known for Alpha Black Zero, Spellborn uses the Unreal 2.5 Engine. The closed beta test is currently underway, more people will be allowed to join in the coming months.

A Battlefield 2 community update reveals that EA/DICE are keeping up the BF2 patch works. "We wanted to let you know that we're already hard at work on a post 1.12 update. While we can't go into details about it, yet, rest assured that we're checking the forums, listening to our customer support teams and working hard on the features that YOU'VE asked for. As soon as we can give more concrete details, we will. Just know that we're all 100% into making Battlefield 2 the very best that it can be."

Half Life 2: Aftermath will pick up where the original left off and, as has been rumored for a while, will feature an all-new story line with the focus on Alyx, although not necessarily alongside Gordon Freeman. While no release date has been set, strong indications are that it may only be available through Valve's online delivery system, Steam.

If the "three strikes and you're out" rule would apply to games, DoA4 would be dead before arrival. Initially scheduled as an X360 launch title on November 22nd, it was slightly delayed for a week until December 1st, then another week, and now it seems online retailers have postponed Tecmo's brawler for another seven days until December 14. DOA4 features online capabilities via Xbox Live, new interactive stages, an all-star lineup of old and new favorite characters, and the most complex countering system yet.