PC

Weighing in at 534MB and 323MB, the single and multiplayer demos of Pacific Assault came out yesterday, but I'm posting about them now because I just finishing downloading them now. Well, not really, but wow. That's a lot of WW II. If you don't see the single player demo, scroll down the page a bit.
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The Flop Bin

Today's flop is not a
flop flop. It's fairly lackluster and a sales disappointment, sure, but what puts Oni in the Flop Bin is more of a relative flop-ness. Oni was the game Bungie Software made before they made Halo, you see.
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Announcements
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Events

What with all the in-game items and money of massively multiplayer games being auctioned off for real money, lawyers have to meet and discuss the
pro nolo and
habeas absentia dictums and whatnot. There are ramifications involved here that require precedents and majority opinions. So all that is being worked out this weekend at the second annual State of Play conference at the New York Law School in Tribeca. Stop in and say hi, and maybe visit panels on "Virtual World Governance and Democracy" and "Dispute Resolution and Trust Building in Virtual Worlds".
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Gossip

Things have progressed since we reported on UK developer Argonaut's financial troubles two weeks ago, and word comes to us today that the employees have been sent home and to expect an official announcement next week that the studio is no more.
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PC

The brave Canadians at Digital Extremes are trying to muscle into Halo's territory with their own sci-fi first person shooter for the Xbox named Pariah. They also have a PC version planned. GameSpot has the game's official trailer, released today.
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Playstation 2

1988's Narc was one of the first games to make even non-reactionary parents a little concerned. You were supposed to arrest the throngs of drug dealers and sexually deviant clowns by just moving your cop character over them. But they liked to throw stuff at you like hypodermic needles, so the better option was to thin their numbers a bit with your machine gun. The
best option was to fire a rocket-propelled grenade into a large crowd of them and blow them all up off of the top of the screen, and then watch them return only as a rain of disembodied arms and legs. The website for next year's sequel is live now.
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Gamecube

GameSpot got the Japanese version of Mario Power Tennis, and has made some videos of the gameplay for your previewing enjoyment until the game is released here a week and a half from now. There's also a preview that details a few more of the twists that the game adds to your average tennis game. They're all a lot more benign than the only thing
real tennis has managed to add over the years though, that of course being knife-wielding obsessed Monica Seles fans. Except for maybe the ass-biting alligators.
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PC

Players of the superpowered MMG City of Heroes will find Paragon City in perpetual darkness all weekend, as a mysterious power descends on the city, and spooks and spectres menace the streets. Players who get involved with literally (well, literally
virtually, being just a game) saving the day may get special loot from defeated spirits.
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