Gold

• Ultima Online Third Dawn: UO was released buggy and unplayable, UO: The 2nd Age was released buggy and unfinished... what are the odds this one is ready for primetime?
• Rune: Halls of Valhalla: It adds more multiplayer fun and even female character skins! With big breasts, presumably. But that's about it. Are they out of their Viking minds?
• Air Command 3.0: It's an Air Traffic Controller simulation folks! Play the game, watch your blood pressure go up and up and ... pop!

Released

• Serious Sam: Try it in Hippie mode! Hey, I'm serious man!
• Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle: Every wargamer must meet their Waterloo one day.
• Evil Dead: Hail to the King: Duke Nukem stole all of Ash's one-liners! Now he's stealing them back....
• Tribes 2: Wide open spaces, wide-open carnage, and lots of jetpack jumping around.
• Sims: House Party: "Gonna tear, this PC game, out! Aw, we got the funk..."
• Black & White: Kneel! Bow before the awesome might and power of my Turtle!

My spider-sense is tingling! Activision announced that they got the rights to do up console and PC games based on the Spider-Man film, which looks excellent (judging by the test footage) so stock up on web fluid and leave the snappy patter to me. Sierra announced Homeworld 2, but didn't reveal any details... so I'm going to report that it's going to be a role-playing game which casts the remnants of humanity on a quest to kill Yes for sucking since 1981 or so. Interplay's Black Isle Division, which brought us Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale announced Torn, a game by Natalie Imbruglia...er, I mean a full 3D fantasy RPG apparently based on the popular Fallout skills system. Infogrames torpedoed and scuttled Harpoon 4 this past week, much to the dismay of the many fans of the series. The makers of Imperialism and Imperialism 2 announced that their next game will focus on industrial resource allocation and trade, the game will be called Trade Empire. The Sovereign State of New Hampshire proposed a tax on violent video games and movies. The tax would pay for victims of sexual assault and other violent crime. I'm all for helping out victims of horrible crimes but... come on, this is a political ploy. Any lawmaker in New Hampshire who votes against this unconstitutional tax will be branded "pro-sexual assault" come election time. Meanwhile the Sovereign State of Indiana had their incredibly expensive Violent Video Game ban overturned on them by an appellate court. Just think, instead of spending money fighting to preserve an unconstitutional ban on violent video games, Indiana could have helped a whole lot of victims of sexual assault instead. And, as mentioned above Ultima Online 2-Origins got the rune inscribed axe because EA decided it was more cost effective to keep bilking the 240,000 UO fans each month instead of trying to attract new suckers into the fold.

Maybe you caught Alex "Sharky" Ross' fond farewell last Friday: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/private_eye/9/ At the time of this writing I haven't heard from Internet.com regarding the future of my cute little column here. That means... this could be the last Beatdown here at SharkyGames. Scary that next week would have been my one year anniversary here. Don't worry though, you can always check www.beatdown-news.com, I promise to try my as hard as I can to keep it afloat. Now, what can you do? You can post on the SharkyExtreme message boards, and you can email me. I promise to forward all (non-offensive) Beatdown support mail to the appropriate persons. Thanks for reading and "Here's looking at you kid."

See you next issue? Until then, remember, you can't leave without your buddy Superfly.

Andrew is a professional freelance writer working in the PC entertainment biz. He mocks because of his abiding love for the industry and his wise-ass upbringing. So, keep a sense of humor, even if you find his lacking. Comment? Critique? Vendetta? News Tip? Write him.