GoG.com continues to add games from the Apogee/3DRealms line up of titles to its DRM-free library of games. Today two more games can be purchased and downloaded from GoG.com. One is Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, the 2002 3D side-scroller that has now become the last Duke Nukem game to be released for the PC (yep we are still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever). Our sister site Joystiq is actually giving away 10 free GoG.com copies of the game in a new contest

Also released today is Blake Stone, an early 1993 released first person shooter genre title that mixed sci-fi and super-spy genre. Both Apogee titles can be bought for $5.99 each at GoG.com

This demo for Major League Baseball 2K9 gives players a taste of the gameplay they can expect from the full game. The game is available now for all platforms.
Download Major League Baseball 2K9 (1.25 GB)
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Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

Sometimes, when developing a game, you come across a really good idea (or a lot of really good ideas) that you just can't incorporate into the game at release. Or maybe after release you find that your game is absolutely ridden with more bugs than a graveyard gone fallow. You have two options: Leave it alone, or bring your considerable developer muscles to bear against the problem. While each game should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, the general consensus is that no matter your position as an indie or accomplished developer, you should take control of your project after release and guide it. After all, if all developers simply abandoned projects immediately after completion, we wouldn't have such great games as World of Warcraft or Team Fortress 2!

This trailer for the free-to-play fantasy MMO Warrior Epic (currently in beta testing) demonstrates the Spirit System, which acts as a secondary game that activates after the player's character dies. Continue reading after the jump or visit the official website for more information about the Warrior Epic Spirit System.

Download HD Warrior Epic Spirit System Trailer (64 MB)
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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars developer Splash Damage has been picking up some big-name talent at their UK-based studio. The company, currently working on an unnamed project for Bethesda Softworks, has been hiring a ton of folks lately from all over the place including the lead designer for Fable II at Lionhead as well as team members from Bioware, Criterion Games and other dev studios.

Today Splash Damage announced that it has hired Neil Alphonso to be their lead level designer. Alphonso comes from Guerrilla Games where he was the lead level designer for their just released PS3 shooter Killzone 2. He also worked with Ubisoft on the original Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell game and even worked at 3D Realms on (believe it or not) Duke Nukem Forever. We bet he has some stories to tell . . .

This demo for Codename: Panzers - Cold War includes multiplayer functions for online gameplay.

Download Codename: Panzers - Cold War Multiplayer Demo (498 MB)
Download Codename: Panzers - Cold War Single Player Demo (909 MB)
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Fans of WWII strategy game should be happy to know that 1C Company is nearing completion of Theatre of War II, the sequel to their acclaimed 2007 released title. Today the publisher announced that the sequel will ship out on April 24 and will be made available exclusively via download and mail order on Battlefront.com for the US (it will be shipped as a retail game for 1C's territories in Eastern and Central Europe).

As we have reported before, Theatre at War II is set during the North Africa theater of operations in 1943 and is aiming to be more realistic in its gameplay than other WWII RTS titles. You can expect a demo of the game to be released "shortly"

Many moons ago, Atomic Games was best known as the creator of the Close Combat series of WWII themed PC strategy games. Today that developer sent out a press release announcing its reformation (actually the developer said it re-formed in secret in 2006) with the co-founders of Red Storm Entertainment and veterans of Bungie, EA, and Activision.

Atomic's goal is to "usher in a new breed of Historical Action video games" and the Raleigh NC based company is already working on an unnamed shooter title for "one of the world's top 5 video game publishers." In fact Atomic had previously been a division of the game publisher Destineer but the Atomic web site states, "As Destineer's business publishing casual games for consoles and handhelds began growing very rapidly, Destineer spun out Atomic as a well-funded independent development studio."

Our sister site GameDaily has a chat with Atomic's president Peter Tamte who says, "We see Historical Action much more broadly than just war-based titles, and certainly much more broadly than the WWII games that have dominated the category." He also mentions that the developer has been funded in part by In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm that is funded by the CIA (yes, that CIA). Tamte states, "they invested in our company a few years ago in connection with some serious stuff we do for the U.S. intelligence community. There should be some interesting video games that evolve from this work, though."

Capcom has been making waves about their commitment to PC gaming, including a recent announcement that they would be joining the PC Gaming Alliance as a full member. However, their record to date on supporting PC titles is spotty at best. Games like Resident Evil 4, Devil May Cry 4 and most recently the downloadable title Age of Booty have been released for the PC months after their console counterparts.

VideoGamer.com has a new chat with Capcom VP Christian Svensson on why exactly this happens. Svensson basically says that it takes more time to develop a PC port of a game, particularly when it has content that is not in the console version. Testing of PC games also takes a lot of time, according to Svensson. He admits that on the subject of the timing of their PC game releases compared to console ports, "The sad news is we're not going to be consistent about it for a while. So while it's a message I'd love to get across we're not quite walking the walk yet." He also goes into some detail on their views of PC piracy, why they don't work with Valve's Steam service more and other subjects.

Midway may be teetering on the edge of financial oblivion at the moment but at least one of the game publisher's movie properties may be getting a new lease on life as a movie. That game is the 2007 release of Stranglehold, a (sort of) sequel to the classic Hong Kong action film Hard Boiled.

Buried in a Hollywood Reporter story about a new Missing in Action movie comes word that the two screenwriters of that flick, Jeremy Passmore and Andre Fabrizio, have also written a script adaptation of Stranglehold. The script itself is for the Lion Rock Entertainment movie company which is headed up by the director of the original Hard Boiled John Woo. He also served as an adviser of the Stranglehold game. It's unclear how much involvement Midway will have in the movie adaptation; indeed the company isn't even mentioned in the Hollywood Reporter story.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest, summer movies of 2009 is set for release on May 8 when Star Trek heads to theaters. The new adventures of the original crew of the Enterprise (with an all-new cast) has generated ton of press months before the release.

Now comes word via fan site TrekMovie.com that an upcoming game based on the movie is in the works. The site has posted up a flyer (reproduced here) that will be included in the Blu-Ray release of the Star Trek Season One TV series. It shows a game being announced called Star Trek D-A-C with a picture of the movie's version of the Enterprise firing at alien ships. The flyer shows a May 2009 release date and a logo for Naked Sky Entertainment. The developer's previous game was the 2006 released downloadable title Roboblitz (one of the first games to use Unreal Engine 3). It also shows a ParamountPictures.com/games URL that, for the moment, just feeds into the main web site address of the movie studio.

So what exactly is this game and why has Paramount decided to basically publish this game itself instead of working with another publisher? Stay tuned.

It's been a while since a PC graphics company has made a big challenge to the big Three (Intel, Nvidia, ATI) in terms of supporting games. The last such company was 3dfx who championed the 3D acceleration movement in the late 1990s but couldn't keep up the pace and was sold to Nvidia.

Today a new company called Caustic Graphics has officially announced its presence with claims that their PC graphics product will be able to out perform current solutions by up to 20 times. It also claims that their second-generation product, due out in early 2010, will have 200 times (and that's not a typo) the performance of current solutions. Caustic Graphics will base their graphics product on raytracing, a graphics technique that allows for highly realistic looking 3D graphics. Raytracing has also proven to have issues with performance in the past but Caustic claims their technology "enables highly parallel CPUs and GPUs to massively-accelerate raytracing, putting it on par with rasterization and resulting in cinema-quality 3D delivered interactively on low-cost PCs."

The San Fransisco-based Caustic plans to reveal more info about their first product in April 2009. At the moment they are targeting high end computing needs but we suspect that PC gaming is also in their plans.

It seems like more and more people want to be able to find the next indie game that can break through into the mainstream like AudioSurf or World of Goo. Today our sister site GameDaily Biz has broken the news that a new indie game publisher has revealed itself . . . and it comes completely out of left field.

GamePro (yes of GamePro magazine and GamePro.com) has announced that it has launched GamePro Labs, their move into the game publishing business. The new venture will concentrate on publishing indie games that are developed on Microsoft's XNA platform (that means PC and Xbox 360 titles) along with Apple's iPhone. GamePro is trying to "find the unrecognized talent out there and give them the keys to publish their game", according to the article. The company's official web site has already launched with a form for developers to submit their games for consideration. Indeed some game have already signed with GamePro Labs and they should be announced sometime during GDC later this month.

Warhammer Online started out like gangbusters when it was first launched last September. Now developer Mythic Entertainment is working its subscribers to get their family and friends to try out the fantasy MMO title. If you are a subscriber to the game and manage to get one of those kinds of folks to subscribe as well you will get 30 more days of free play in the game.

That's not all, though. If you get two subscribers to join you can also get an in-game pet lilke the Warlord's Fell Hound above. Four new recruits nets you an in-game magic item (The Rod of Service of The Collar of Servitude). Yes it's pretty mercenary but we don't think most will hold it against you.

Relic's latest RTS game is showing signs that not only it is selling well it will continue to sell well. The sci-fi themed game Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II has stayed on top of the latest list of the best selling retail PC games in the US, this time for the week ending Feb. 28.

This is the second week that the game from publisher THQ has been number one on the charts, keeping Blizzard's fantasy MMO expansion pack World of Warcraft: Wrath of the the Lich King at number two. F.E.A.R 2 and Crysis Warhead depart this list this week with World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and the ultra-cheap The Sims Carnival: Snap City replacing them.

1. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II - THQ
2. World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King - Blizzard
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
4. The Sims 2 Deluxe - Electronic Arts
5. World of Warcraft - Blizzard
6. World of Warcraft Battle Chest - Blizzard
7.Spore - Electronic Arts
8. The Sims Carnival: Snap City - Electronic Arts
9. The Sims 2 Apartment Life - Electronic Arts
10. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade - Blizzard