That was fast. The powers that be (also known as Tarn Adams) have buckled down to fix most of the glaring issues with version 39a that we reported on yesterday. While playing with the new world generation features was fun (a single human with one leg fighting off an entire horde of elves? Awesome!), it didn't sate us like the standard gameplay could. It is with great pleasure, then, that we may now play 39b.

Dwarves no longer sleep forever, you can travel around in adventurer mode without getting the annoying "You can be seen" message all the time, caves are once again appearing, the health care and hauling labors now appear on the labors list for each dwarf, and generated animals no longer start out drunk. There's many more fixes, but those are the major ones. This is purely a bugfix version, but it makes the game once again playable. You can download the new version from Bay 12 Games. Remember that you can use any worlds or saves from 32a onwards in a new version.

Whether you like military shooters, innovative first-person platforming, or racing, Big Download had something for this past week. In fact, we had surprisingly a lot, considering that most game publishers are holding their cards until next week's huge E3 conference.

Next week is sure to be a big week (and rest assured we'll be on top of every new file that pops up amidst the frenzy), but hopefully this will be enough to tide everyone over until then! Here are just a few highlights from the latest new downloads

	HAWX Developer's Diary #1 HAWX is an air combat game in the same near-future world as Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. In this video, a developer talks about the game, and of course there's footage as well.
	Frontlines: Fuel of War Beta Demo Try out this shooter that tries something a little bit different with territory control.
	LEGO Batman Bruce Wayne & Poison Ivy Trailer A humorous sneak peak at a couple of the characters from the fourth entry into the LEGO pop culture franchise series.
	GRID 1.2 Patch The acclaimed racing game gets some important bug fixes.
	Mirror's Edge Story Trailer A beautifully animated sneak peak at the storyline and setting behind Mirror's Edge, an innovative first person parkour game.

Tilted Mill has released a new patch for Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, updating their city-builder to version 1.3. The patch fixes a few bugs, adds compatibility for Windows Vista, and premieres many new features such as four new plazas and two shrine variants.

Download the Children of the Nile 1.3 patch from Big Download

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours.

	Games to play while waiting for Diablo III A crowd of ecstatic fans cheered when Blizzard announced Diablo III at the 2008 Worldwide Invitational and gave an early look at its gameplay. Then reality set in, and people were reminded that they wouldn't be fighting off the forces of hell again for a very long time. To help people suffer through the long "when it's done" schedule Blizzard sticks to, we've put together recommendations to help gamers get their action RPG fix until it comes time to confront the Lord of Terror again.
	Big Download's most anticipated PC games of E3 2008: 10-6 Here at Big Download we have been counting down our picks for our most anticipated games that we are most looking forward to seeing (maybe) at the event. After revealing our picked for 25-21 on Monday, 20-16 on Tuesday and 15-11 on Wednesday, we are now finally entering the top 10. Today we are revealing our picks for the 10-6 positions on our list.
	BigCast 003 -- The Pre-E3 Show ... Ladies This week we talk about everything from PC piracy solutions to puzzling (beta) demo releases. Also, listeners can enjoy multiple inside jokes that are later explained in the outtakes of the show. Akela, Kyle and Steven return to the BigCast this week ... well, until Steven has mysterious tech issues and is forced to opt out (which is later hilariously solved).
	Neverwinter Nights 1.69 patches arrive A trio of patches for BioWare's Neverwinter Nights have arrived, patching Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark, and Shadows of Undrentide to version 1.69. Each patch adds new music tracks, tilesets, and more to its respective title.
	New GRID 1.2 PC patch released The folks at Codemasters have released a new PC patch for their recent racing sim game GRID and we have it ready to grab right here at Big Download. The 1.2 patch has a number of fixes and changes for the game which we have right here.

A trio of patches for BioWare's Neverwinter Nights have arrived, patching Neverwinter Nights, Hordes of the Underdark, and Shadows of Undrentide to version 1.69. Each patch adds new music tracks, tilesets, and more to its respective title.

Download Neverwinter Nights 1.69 from Big Download
Download Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark 1.69 from Big Download
Download Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide 1.69 from Big Download

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours.

	Big Download's most anticipated PC games of E3 2008: 15-11 On Tuesday, in our last thrilling episode of Big Download's most anticipated PC games for E3 2008, we listed our picks for 20-16 on our list after revealing our picks for 25-21 on Monday. Which naturally means that today we will have our picks for the 15-11 games we have on our list that we are most interested to see at E3 next week in Los Angeles. Which games will they be? Will they actually be at the show? Will we stop making silly references to Saturday afternoon movie series of the 1930's? Stay tuned to find out the answers to these exciting questions and more.
	Big Ideas: Are video games art? The idea that video games could be classified as art is a fairly recent one, emerging right around the time that we began to include narrative as a game element. All too often, the subject is brought up by detractors of the form as a way to look down upon a medium to which they feel no attraction. The underlying conceit is ridiculous of course -- if video games aren't art, then they have no lasting cultural value, and may therefore be dismissed as mere juvenilia. Yet video games are, nevertheless, quite a large part of our culture, and the lingering perception that they are made only to be entertainment for adolescents does the entire industry a disservice.
	New Team Fortress 2 update released PC owners get another new update for Valve's popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 this week. This update, which as always is available when signing on via Valve's Steam client, is mostly to deal with a number of minor bug fixed in the game.
	Blizzard community manager discusses Diablo III respecs Diablo II could be a harsh mistress: bludgeoning your free time without a second thought, severely lowering your resistance levels in Hell difficulty, and adopting a "that's life, kid" attitude toward misspent skill points. Though equally harsh in many ways, modern action-RPGs and MMOs such as Titan Quest and Blizzard's own World of WarCraft allow players the option to respecify (or "respec") skill points they've decided are no longer applicable toward their desired character build -- for a fee, of course.

The folks at Codemasters have released a new PC patch for their recent racing sim game GRID and we have it ready to grab right here at Big Download. The 1.2 patch has a number of fixes and changes for the game which we have right here:

• Fix for sessions list overflow and missing characters in front end.
• Fix for errors generated on game shutdown
• Support for TrackIR
• Online experience points: more points awarded for completing longer races
• Assists on/off toggle added to session creation and browsing
• All offline events (apart from head-to-heads and touge) are now available online (event voting screen now scrolls to see additional championships).
• Fix for failure to recognise some devices in user-created action map presets, including Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2.
• Fixed GRID startup issue where it appears as a process in Task Manager but fails to run.
• Additional experience points are awarded for not colliding with other cars whilst racing damage on or forward sessions

Grab the new GRID 1.2 patch at Big Download right now

After patiently waiting, gamers have finally been treated to the promised patch for the Command & Conquer 3 expansion, Kane's Wrath. Fixing numerous bugs and adjusting game balance, the 64MB patch is now available for download from Big Download. Earlier reports suggested the patch had been pushed to later in the week when it was delayed on July 3. The patch release comes days after EALA lead, Mike Verdu, promised the developer would create a live response team to fix issues with their titles so long waits, like the one for this patch, would be a thing of the past. Hopefully EALA is firm on their word so we can continue to fight the good fight against Kane. Look at him up there, all smug. He's so going down.

Download the Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath 1.01 patch now!

PC owners get another new update for Valve's popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 this week. This update, which as always is available when signing on via Valve's Steam client, is mostly to deal with a number of minor bug fixed in the game.

While this update is a small one this week, Valve does have plans to release a more substantial patch in the near future. As we reported earlier this month the Heavy character class will be the next in the game to gain new unlockable achievements and weapons to use in the game. At the moment there's no word on when the Heavy update will be released.

Fans of Command and Conquer 3 have been awaited a long promised patch for the Electronic Arts RTS expansion pack Kane's Wrath. The patch was previously promised for last Thursday but it looks like that patch has been pushed back to sometime next week. This decision has apparently upset fans of the game series in so Mike Verdu, the head of EA's Los Angeles branch, has written a personal and lengthy note on the game's official web site.

Verdu states that the lack of a patch for a game to fix a number of balance and desynch issues "has been a low point in our product support for the last few years, and I take full responsibility." Indeed, Verdu admits that post release support of their RTS games (for the C&C series as well as Battle for Middle Earth) has not been as good they should be in the last few years. However he did state that EALA will now establish a live team who will be tasked with supporting C&C products after their release. Verdu says, "Over the next year, more and more support activities will be carried out by the live team instead of by the teams that actually build the games. Red Alert 3 will start out supported by its development team and will transition to live team support a few months after release." Verdu hopes this move will over time result in better and quicker patches for their future RTS products.

It seems a tad appropriate that the Fourth of July holiday weekend will also have a new major update for Day of Defeat Source, the WWII multiplayer shooter from Valve. The developer just released that update to the game via their Steam client, adding a lot of new content and features.

The new version adds a new map to the game, Palermo, which is based loosely on the real Italian city that was the site of one of US General George S Patton's victories (it' also based on a popular community made map Sarleno). The update also adds 51 new achievements to the game, player stats, Steam Community integration and a new freeze cam that will let players look to see who killed them (and even take a screenshot of the event). Some new visual effects to the game have been added as well. People who haven't player Day of Defeat Source will be happy to know that from July 4-6 you will be able to play the full game for free.

Talk about a boatload of patches. Blizzard just patches both the original Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne recently. You can either obtain the patch by logging on to battle.net, or by download it from us. There's a massive amount of patches, though, and in this case the Mac users have the advantage, as PC users must patch up to 1.21b before they can apply the new patch.

Download the 1.21b PC patch for Warcraft III on Big Download today!
Download the 1.22a PC patch for Warcraft III on Big Download today!
Download the 1.21b PC patch for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Big Download today!
Download the 1.22a PC patch for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Big Download today!
Download the 1.21b Mac patch for Warcraft III on Big Download today!
Download the 1.22a Mac patch for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Big Download today!

As expected, the Fan Pack for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 has been released, adding a slew of new content to the game. Featured among the new content are three new maps on which to wage strategic combat, as well as new ranks and weapon balances.

Download the Rainbow Six Vegas 2 fan pack from Big Download

A new patch for The Sims 2: FreeTime, an expansion pack that allows your Sims to partake in leisurely activities such as "tossing a football with the family, practicing ballet, restoring cars with friends, or building train sets," has been released.

Other than testifying to the absurdity of software patch numerical iterations, the patch also provides a few minor bug fixes and tweaks.

Download The Sims 2: FreeTime patch 1.13.0.161 from Big Download