Gold Slam, a free to play online tennis game, just entered open beta and invites players to jump into the action. go to goldslam.aeriagames.com to create an account and start playing.

Download Gold Slam (335 MB)

We've been waiting patiently for info about the new game from Petroglyph, the Las Vegas based developer behind Star Wars: Empire at War and most recently Universe at War: Earth Assault. They recently announced plans to create a free-to-play RTS title with publisher True Games Interactive.

This week we got word via a press release that Petroglyph and True Games Interactive " . . . intend on making a major announcement soon regarding the full features of the highly-anticipated new game." The announcement came with news that GOA will handle the European publishing details of the title. We wonder how the free-to-play model will be handled and how a developer like Petroglyph, which is used to high profile projects from major developers, will change their format for this new situation. Stay tuned.

Penny Arcade is no longer just a web comic strip about gaming. It has evolved into having those strips collected into books, launching a hugely successful children's hospital charity called Child's Play and the basis for a new episodic series of games called Penny Arcade Adventures. Perhaps the biggest part of their empire is the one that begins in Seattle on Friday; the fifth edition of the Penny Arcade Expo.

The Seattle Times has posted up a new look on Penny Arcade on the eve of PAX 2008, telling the story of how two buddies, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, created the web strip, survived the first few rough years and then met Robert Khoo, a University of Washington business graduate who took over the money end of Penny Arcade and helped Krahulik and Holkins become the massive success they are today. Penny Arcade Expo first started as a way for fans to meet the two creators; in five short years it has exploded into the single biggest consumer video game event in North America. Yet Krahulik and Holkins still work mostly on the strip while Khoo handles the numbers.Sounds like a good deal to us.

By now we know that Electronic Arts is going to be pushing hard to hype up the release of the long awaited life simulation game Spore but we didn't know exactly how they would do it. CNet's News.com reports that EA has already been putting up large posters for the game on the side of buildings in San Francisco.

EA wants to make this game a huge mainstream success like The Sims but this time they are really making sure people know about this game beforehand. The CNet author speculates about more possible promotions for the game. Will there be TV ads? Yep. Will there be magazine ads? They are already out there. But then he adds speculation about a Spore ARG (alternate reality game) to which we have to say, "Huh?" Isn't Spore a kind of ARG already? That seems kind of pointless.

If you live on the wild side like we do you likely want to have your hot dogs without mustard, watch football games on TV with the volume really low and download new graphics card beta drivers. So we have a deal for you. Nvidia this week released some new GeForce beta drivers (177.92) for all of their current chips. These include the newly released 9400 GT, 8500 GT, 980 GT and 9800 GTX+ models.

The release notes for the new beta drivers reveal a number of game related issues that have been addressed in this new download including Prey. F.E.A.R and City of Heroes. There's also some performance improvements for games like BioShock, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty 4. As usual, this is a beta release and thus is not officially supported by Nvidia.

The folks at Valve continue to give Steam customers (at least those in North America) some cool package deals on games on their service. The latest is for the upcoming SimBin developed racing simulation GTR Evolution. This latest game is actually an extension of the previously released RACE 07 and contains nearly 50 cars, 19 different tracks and both a simulation and arcade racing mode.

GTR Evolution actually contains the full RACE 07 game and Steam is offering people who pre-order GTR Evolution 10 percent off its regular $39.99 price before it launches on September 1. If you already own RACE 07 you can download GTR Evolution from Steam; it is also priced at 10 percent off its regular price of $19.99.

One of the biggest attractions of the upcoming game Spore is the ability to design and evolve your own alien creatures. People who have used the already released Spore Creature Creator have gone nuts with their own creative monsters and some have had some . . . interesting appendanges. In a new chat about the game for the Associated Press (and posted on Yahoo) Spore's creator Will Wright says he doesn't mind the more adult creations that have been made for his game.

Wright states, "Some of it's really good for what they were shooting for. It's amazingly explicit, especially when those creations are animated. We just have to make sure those people aren't messing up the experience for others." Spore will indeed have filtering software to keep people who download new user creator content for the game away from such creations if they so wish. Spore itself is still due for release on September 7.

There have been tons of different approaches for making PC games and then projecting them into 3D space. Nvidia believes it has a new solution and showed off their plans at their own Nvision conference this week. Our sister site Game Daily has a report on some of Nvidia's plans for this subject.

Nvidia is partnering up with TV manufacturers like Mitsubishi and PC LCD monitor makers like Viewsonic (like the one pictured above) to support their upcoming GeForce Stereoscopic technology. Nvidia will release an emitter and 3D glasses in the new future that will allow anyone with a PC rig with an Nvidia Geforce 8 graphics card or higher to view over 350 PC games released in the last five years in 3D. Pricing for the GeForce Stereoscopic technology, along with a release date, has yet to be announced. Meanwhile, San Diego based iZ3D already sells a similar technology along with their own $600 22-inch monitor that they claim supports over 400 PC games in 3D.

Electronic Arts is really pushing the marketing of its upcoming survival horror game Dead Space. This week, details were revealed on one of the side projects for the game; the direct-to-DVD animated prequel that's being handled by Film Roman and Starz Media. The DVD will be released on Oct. 28 by Anchor Bay, a week after the game's release.

The film will be released in both DVD and Blu-Ray formats and High-Def Digest reports that both versions will have deleted scenes and trailers, a digital copy version that can be transferred (legally) to your PC or mobile video device and two exclusive cheat codes for the game. The Blu-Ray version will have additional downloadable animatics from the movie and a Blu-Ray first; an isolated music score that you can download in MP3 format.

From New York to London, the end of the world takes on many looks and shapes. In Legendary, major cities get torn apart by mythological creatures released from Pandora's Box. In this latest video, the game's developers go into detail about what it takes to bring about the end of the world and why it makes for great tourist attractions.

Download the Legendary Behind-the-Scenes HD Video - Episode 4 (510 MB)
Download the Legendary Behind-the-Scenes HD Video - Episode 3 (51 MB)
Download the Legendary Behind-the-Scenes HD Video - Episode 2 (59 MB)
Download the Legendary Behind-the-Scenes HD Video - Episode 1 (141 MB)

Tank Universal captures the nostalgic feel of classic games like Battezone mixed with an art style similar to the movie TRON. Even the plot follows a TRON-like plot line. A person diagnosed with a terminal illness enters into a virtual reality, where he ends up in neon world primarily made up from simple polygons. There, he joins a rebellion group fighting against a murderous and oppressive dictatorship. In order to upset the seat of power, players must jump into a tank and start blasting away the opposition.

Ubisoft's upcoming open world shooter Far Cry 2 has a lot of people expecting it will be great. So, apparently, does Ubisoft who are now in early development of the next game in the series at their Montreal studios. Videogaming247 has a quote from team member Patrick Redding who confirmed the plans during last week's Games Convention.

Interestingly, the dev team will apparently keep Far Cry 2's Africa setting for the follow-up game with Redding saying, "There are still things we want to do with the African setting, and I think it's safe to say we'll continue to explore it." While he says other locations might be considered for other titles in the series, he adds, "I think to save time, for us, one of the reasons we chose to use the African setting is because we felt that in order to retain the Far Cry brand value, of an exotic, dangerous environment, a place that maybe people haven't had a chance to see themselves, or have seen extensively in film, television and other games, we wanted to choose Africa."

This patch fixes Space Siege's problem with recognizing certain DVD drives. Patch must be copied into game directory and run with the disc in drive.

Download the Space Siege DVD Recognition Fix (16 MB)

It's one of the longest running MMOs in history and this week Turbine announced that their first game, the fantasy MMO Asheron's Call, just had its 100th free content update released to its subscribers. For those who need details, this update adds the beginnings of the much requested (by the game's players) an Elder Games system along with two new PvP controllable towns.

Turbine first released Asheron's Call in November 1999 via publisher Microsoft and made a point to have the game feel like a ongoing storyline was taking place with monthly events and content released. Two commerical expansion packs for the game have been released since the launch and the free content updates have also continued. Turbine took over full control of the game from Microsoft in 2003. The game has even outlasted its graphically improved sequel Asheron's Call 2 which launched in 2002 but shut down completely just three years later.

Stardock has released it's promised next major update for its Impulse digital distribution platform. "Phase 2" of Impulse adds a number of games from publisher 2K Games to its line-up, including Civilizations III, Shattered Union, Sid Meier's Pirates! and Sid Meier's Railroads! The update also adds the new enhanced version of Tilted Mill's Children of the Nile to the game line-up along with a number of other non-game PC software applications for download and purchase.

As we previously reported, Phase 2 of Impulse also adds a number of new features including ImpulseReactor which will allow developers to add things like matchmaking , cloud computing, rankings, achievements, multiplayer, NAT negotiation, and more. The recentStardock strategy game The Political Machine 2008 will be the first game to have the new Impulse Reactor feature. Also a private beta of MyImpulse has begun which will allow any developer to submit a game or other program for sale via Impulse. According to the press release, "A team of Impulse moderators evaluate the submission and (if accepted) could go live within one business day."