A new Disciples III: Renaissance video released, coinciding with the announcement that Akella acquired all rights to the game series from Strategy First. This relaxing video gives a short fly through of an elven tower, but shows off what fans can look forward to as it draws closer to its scheduled 2009 release.

Download the Disciples 3 Elven Tower HD Trailer (52 MB)

The Macintosh version of Spore is releasing day-and-date with the PC version but most games made to run natively on Apple's platform usually take months to head to stores, well behind their PC counterparts. Today we got a huge example of that formula when Aspyr announced that the Mac version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has now gone gold.

The adaptation of the best selling modern day themed shooter from developer Infinity Ward and publisher Activision was handled in-house at Aspyr's own dev studios. The port will require a Mac running an Intel-based processor and Mac OS X 10.5.4. Also, integrated video chips are not supported. The game will ship on September 15.

[Via Blue's News]

This cinematic video uses in-game graphics to introduce Atalanta, the huntress. It shows off her high agility while explaining some of her back story and why she eventually joins Jason on the Argo. Rise of the Argonauts is an action role playing game that lets players assume the role of Jason as he travels with his crew of Argonauts. The game is currently scheduled to release fall of 2008.

Download The Rise of the Argonauts Atalanta Cinematic HD Video (326 MB)

The developers of Red Faction: Guerrilla further elaborate on blowing up the world in their latest video. In Guerrilla, destroying the environment is the most powerful weapon at the player's disposal.

Download the Red Faction Guerrilla Destruction HD Trailer #2 (108 MB)

Like most zones in Cryptic Entertainment's Champions Online MMO, Snake Gulch is a big place. The Gulch used to be a thriving desert town-themed amusement park manned by friendly cowboy robots whose gun-slinging shenanigans combined perfectly with exhilarating rides to bring visitors from far and wide to the famous park.

Now, Snake Gulch sits abandoned. The mine cart ride creaks and groans along its tracks, its buggies devoid of riders, its wheels squeaky and wobbly, its tracks rusted and misshapen. Former hot spots sit dry and barren. Wind whistles a lonely cry as it escorts billowing waves of dust through dirt streets, all empty save for the robots marching rhythmically, their eyes no longer wide and friendly but blank, their hands not waving in greeting but dipped toward guns resting in holsters. Their leader: ASCII Oakley, a rootin', tootin', mean ol' cuss who, like her mechanical subordinates, has been reprogrammed by the VIPER organization to respond with hostility instead of grace to any who dare venture into Snake Gulch.

Despite the town's impressive size, a group of mild-mannered journalists who recently attended a Cryptic press event decided that the town wasn't big enough for ASCII Oakley and the rest of us. Sorry, lass: VIPER's reprogramming wasn't your fault, but you've got to go down, and hard.

This patch updates World in Conflict's map editor (WicEd) to version 1.2, which will bring a number of improvements including a resolution editor and the ability to import ground textures.

Download the World in Conflict Map Editor v1.2 Patch (41 MB)

You can add more more game that's now available via Valve's Steam download service. Funcom's fantasy MMO Age of Conan has now joined the growing line up of titles on Steam. As usual with introducing a new game, Steam is offering a 10 percent off sale for anyone purchasing Age of Conan before Sept. 11.

Funcom recently announced plans for a commercial expansion pack for Age of Conan that will be released in 2009; they will also continue to expand the game with free content updates for its subscribers. They also plan to release a DirectX10 graphics patch for Age of Conan that should improve the title's visuals greatly. The big question: will the release later this month of Warhammer Online affect Age of Conan's subscriber base?

Codemasters recently announced their latest racing game and it's already looking like it could be a 2009 highlight. Fuel takes place in a massive off-road open world where racers not only have to deal with other vehicles but also other items like weather. Today Codemasters released the first screenshots showing the game in action.

Developed by France-based Asobo Studios, Fuel actually takes place in a alternate timeline where massive climate change as take place and oil supplies are dwindling. The racers compete in their two and four wheeled vehicles to get more gas for their gas guzzlers. You can check out a developer/teaser trailer for Fuel by downloading it right here at Big Download.

Touted by many as a candidate for the greatest game ever made, we've invested several hours in the first portions of Electronic Arts' Spore in our quest to determine if it's really THAT good. So far, it's holding our interest. In the first few hours in playing the single player portion we can say that Spore's creator Will Wright seems to want to cram pretty much every game genre he can think of in one title (except maybe for first person shooters; maybe he just didn't have time).

Starting up Spore brings up the main menu where you have three choices: Play, Create and Share. Share is basically being able to check out other players' creations in Spore and sharing your own. Create opens up all of the game's various editors to allow you to make creatures, buildings, vehicles and space ships without the need to actually go in and play the game at all. We suspect a lot of folks might just ignore the actual game side of Spore and dive into making stuff.

I've covered several games for Freeware Friday, but there's a key genre that I have unintentionally left out. That is what this Freeware Friday is to rectify. The genre in particular is one very near and dear to my heart, and one that I have a love-hate relationship with. I am referring to the adventure genre, which has given us such greats as Myst, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam & Max. The game in particular is a recent freeware remake, but it's definitely worth the time for any fan of the genre. I am talking about the Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire remake.

Dead Space's mix of sci-fi and survival horror is apparently too much for some countries to take. According to a report on Destructoid this week, the Electronic Arts titled has been banned for sale in three countries so far; Germany, China and Japan. There's no specific word on why these three territories decided to ban the game but we can have some educated guesses.

It looks like PC owners will also have to wait a little bit for their port of Dead Space to be released as EA announced that the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions will now have a new release date of October 14. The PC version stays where it is with a release date of October 20.

Update: Eurogamer.de reports that Dead Space has not yet been banned in Germany, claiming that the game has yet to go through the country's rating system

Last April, Ziff Davis, then in the middle of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, announced that it was shutting down its Games For Windows print magazine. The mag, which had changed its name only 18 months before its shutdown and was previously known as Computer Gaming World for 25 years beforehand, had Jeff Green as its long time editor in chief. At the time of the magazine's cancellation Green minced no words when he said on his blog, "This is tough. This sucks. I'm not going to pretend to be in a good mood." Green and the rest of the Games For Windows staff (minus their art team) moved onto the 1Up.com web site to cover PC gaming.

Now 1Up.com has posted up word that Green has decided to leave Ziff Davis after a total of 17 years to get into game development. Specifically Green will be working for Electronic Arts' Sims brand of games. Ironically Games For Windows' last print issue had Sims 3 as its cover story. There's no word yet on what Green's new specific job will be like.

A while back we mentioned that the DirecTV satellite TV service would be offering exclusive HD coverage of this October's Blizzcon event via pay per view. This week DirectTV announced the details on how new subscribers to the service would be able to get the Blizzcon coverage for free.

Simply put, any new DirecTV customers who sign up for the service by September 30 will be able to get the Blizzcon pay per view for free. Existing customers will have to shell out a whopping $39.95 for the same privilage. That pay per view will offer at least eight hours of HD coverage per day of Blizzard's sort of annual event on October 10-11. Anyone who orders the pay-per-view will also get a cool World of Warcraft in-game item; a polar bear mount with a murloc that waves a Blizzcon flag.

Ubisoft has been cranking out these CSI mystery adventure games for some time but this week the publisher announced plans to bring the third TV show in the CSI franchise to PC gamers. Yep, that means you will get to control a virtual Lt. Dan . . . er, a virtual Gary Sinise in a CSI: New York game.

The game itself will have five cases to solve, reportedly created by the TV show's writers. While Ubisoft's press release on the game didn't name a developer, GameSpot reports that Legacy Interactive is handling the creation duties. The company previously created a number of Law and Order adventure-mystery games so this is right up their alley. CSI: NY ships out before the end of the year.

Canadian publisher Strategy First released a number of smaller PC games in the 1990's and in the early part of this decade, both from third parties and their own internal development studios. They created the Disciples turn based strategy RPG series and produced two games in the franchise before they filed for bankrupcy in 2004 and shut down their internal development studios. Strategy First announced in 2005 that Disciples III would be handled by Russian developer Akella.

This week Akella announced that they have now acquired the rights to the Disciples series from Strategy First (Financial terms were not disclosed). Akella continues work on Disciples III with a planned release date in the first quarter of 2009. It is not clear if Strategy First will continue to be the US publisher for the game.