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Bits And Bobs: Monday News Roundup

Perimeter expansion circles, Black Hawk Down on its way to PS2, and there's a new area of Final Fantasy XI to explore. Or will be.

K-D LAB is working on an expansion for its warmly received sci-fi RTS of yester-May, Perimeter, featuring a 25-mission single-player campaign, three new multiplayer maps, improved visuals, new buildings and units and a new soundtrack. [Shifts out of cruise.] Reps for UK publisher Codemasters, which released the original game outside Russia last May, could not confirm any release plans for Perimeter: Emperor's Testament today, but 1C Company is publishing it in Russia. The story stands fairly impenetrable on the press release page, so we'll just C&P it for Perimeter fans instead of trying to sound clever by paraphrasing it: "Whereas the Spirits are on the way to their destination and the Harkbacks are seeking the mythical Earth, the Emperor builds up his Sponge Empire using automatic bases - his Vice Frames. He creates the Mechanical Spirit to help him discover new Worlds. One of the Vice frames starts the testing of this mechanism, this leads to appearance of the super mind - Mechanical Messiah and the discovery of the parallel Chain of the Psycho-sphere Worlds. We also meet the "lost" Exodus Frames and find traces of the mysterious alien race. The sides are in the middle of the deadly battle - who wins? The player will find out the answer during 25 missions of the Single Player campaign." Nicely rounded.

Despite still having not released the Xbox port of the game, NovaLogic is nevertheless planning to release Delta Force - Black Hawk Down, the game that took a hyphen when all around were colonic, on PlayStation 2 in Q2 2005. As you must know by now, BHD is based on events as they unfolded in Somalia in 1993 as Delta Force and US Army Rangers fought Somali warlords in wartorn Mogadishu. British dev Rebellion is redesigning the game for PS2 (whereas Climax is handling the Xbox port) giving it a redesigned single-player mode and new multiplayer features including 32-player online games. Nova also notes that a portion of the proceeds from the US PS2 version will be donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which provides university scholarship grants, financial aid and education counselling to the children of Spec Ops personnel killed in an operational mission or training accident. Although we're not sure whether that makes up for a game that's ostensibly about mowing down hordes of nameless foreigners. What do you reckon about the Black Hawk Down game?

Finally, there's exciting news from Japan, where it's emerged that Square-Enix's MMORPG Final Fantasy XI will soon find itself home to a new area called Al'Taieu, featuring round-surfaced buildings, lakes and ancient ruins. Pictures and such here. Riveting.