This And That: Wednesday News Roundup

Far Cry is still a couple of days away from its European release, but, having shipped in the USA just t'other day, there's already talk of a patch. According to reports, the patch will repair multiplayer issues and sort some compatibility issues between localised versions. Publisher Ubisoft also plans to release an online tutorial for the game's Sandbox editor sometime today, as well as a quick-save patch in mid-April. Cuh, whatever happened to finishing games before releasing them?

In other Ubisoft patch related news, Raven Shield and newly released expansion pack Athena Sword have been patched again - to versions 1.56 and 1.02 respectively. In Raven Shield's case, the new patch locks debug commands that were foolishly left unlocked in the last patch, while the Athena Sword tweak alters a couple of very minor issues. So minor you don't even want to hear about them, and probably wouldn't be able to pick them out in a month of rainy Sunday afternoons.

In, believe it or not, yet more Ubisoft patch related news, the Xbox Rainbow Six III has been updated with a couple of new maps and some bug fixes. The new maps - Sharins and Close Quarter - join last week's release of Meat Packing Plant on the Downloadable Content roster, and the new Auto-Update #2 apparently fixes a few Xbox Leaderboard issues and a see-through-walls peeking bug. We'd tell you what all this stuff is like, but our copy of RS3 has gone prone somewhere under the couch and we can't seem to fish it out. It's a pain in the foxhole.

Guh, and the patches just keep on coming. This one concerns BioWare's Neverwinter Nights, and its Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, and brings the whole caboodle up to 1.62. What does it do? A truly bewildering number of things, which we will proceed to sample at random. "Fixed some memory leaks." "DMs can now attack things again." "Added support for adding and installing custom .tlk files." Right, that's enough of that.

Phew, after all that talk of patching, we feel like letting off some steam! Hrm. That's odd. Normally something happens when we forge tenuous links like that. Let's try again. Why! After all that talk of patching! We feel like letting off some STEAM! [Fired -Ed] Wahey, there it is. Steam, then. Valve's content delivery whatsaflip for broadband whoosawuzzles. With it, you can download Counter-Strike: Condition Zero on its US release date, as we told you some time ago. And, low and behold, that was yesterday, so assuming you feel like paying $29.95 for an arena-based Counter-Strike-derived FPS run-around, you are now able to do so via the mighty power of Steam.

While we're stating the obvious, we're feeling a bit left out having not reported that Final Fantasy XI has shipped in the US on PS2, and that if you live in the land of liberty you can now trundle off down the shops and buy a spangly new PS2 HDD unit with a copy of the game pre-installed for just $99.99. Obviously you will need a Network Adapter to do so, but then again you probably already knew that. Much like everything else we've just said.

Browser-based detective game Gumshoe Online is currently looking for beta testers, developer Hiding Buffalo informs us. You're promised compelling storylines, mind-bending puzzles and an authentic film noir feel, which ought to be interesting to see done well in an IE window. Can't fault the inspiration though - the press release mentions LA Confidential, The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown... You can sign up to beta test the game over yonder.