I'll be posting a few reviews up sometime this week. I've got a fair bit of programming work to do first.

Now on to a different subject. We need some more Quake 2 reviewers! 2 infact. The requirements are simple.

• You know something about Quake 2 mapping.
• You play the game. (Trust me, I had people who applied before who said they don't really play Quake 2 but would love to review. Weird!)
• You have the facilities available to properly review the maps.
• You can cope with a having to regularly produce reviews. Don't just apply if you think its something fun to do. It just require a bit of effort on your part.

Thanks to Gestalt at PlanetQuake and Renegade at Terrafusion for giving the above bit of news a mention! Should hopefully generate more requests. Also thanks to all the people that applied so far, I'll get back to you all this weekend.

Headshot has released a new map. It's called Bless To Kill (175kb). I have mixed feelings on it. I'm not keen on the texturing, its like q1edge. There is some really nice curved architecture though.

Peej has moved to PQ. His site now has a new look which I think is pretty cool. I especially like the logo.

You know something, I'd save myself alot of time and money if I proof read my stuff. Dammit!

Skorpion has moved his Omibot route making page to the ever-enlarging PlanetQuake.

I've just been reading about the new mod interface for Half-Life. I could ramble on about how damn good an idea it is, but I'll save some time and point you to this article about it.

Just to continue rambling on about Half-Life. I've now reinstalled it and thought I'd have ago at properly playing it in deathmatch. I downloaded a load of maps. One in particular was Double Cross by one of the guys at Valve. Radium gave it its highest ever score. I loaded it up and was completely unimpressed. The architecture inside the buildings is just so bland and boring. Most of outside sections were cool, but I was just astounded at why this map got such a high rating. Maybe I'm missing something?

That little rogue Xori has started to do indepth reviews on his website. The first is on Junior's latest map, jrdm2 (376kb), which I mentioned on Thursday. Anyway, I found the review to be very interesting. Anyone would think he'd done that type of thing before =P. I look forward to seeing more!

The Fat Controller has added a new section to his site. The seal of approval. Don't quiet understand the relevance of the seal bit, but basically what it is, is a little history of an authors maps or pak of maps. Worth a look.

Also Mr Fribbles has begun updating his regularly again, after having a break.

Apparently there was a bug somewhere in Q1Edge (524kb), so its now been fixed and re-released. Tim Willits updated his .plan file to describe the changes.

I was also just taking a look at the new screenies of Team Fortress Classic. It looks very impressive and I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Also can you believe its 10 days until the Quake 3 Arena test is released. I'm getting excited already. Speaking of demos, the demo for King Pin is going to released this weekend. I also want to play that, the problem is that its going to weigh in at about 100mb(!?!) so I don't think I'll be downloading it =).

I installed Internet Explorer 5 yesterday. Not much is changed. The interface in Outlook Express is a little tidier and the folder filenames now match the name you give them in the program. Other than that though I'm trying to figure out what exactly I downloaded in that 18Mb.

Also got a CD-Writer yesterday. I'm going to put it to good use =).

Anyway, Pingu has very kindly bailed me out again and done up 4 new Quake reviews.

Some maps which are worth downloading are Junior's latest piece which is jrdm2: Foot Massage (376kb) and Bal's newest map in the baldm series. Baldm4 - Eternal Life (217kb). Also for those who want to complete their collection of Killjoy's maps then you'll be glad to know he has re-released, the first map in kjdm series, Baths of Blood (197 kb).

Also Tim Willits at id software, has released his conversion of the Q2DM1 map for Quake2. Its called Q1Edge (524kb). If you want to read his little .plan update on it, click here. Its an interesting map. I didn't really like it in Quake 2 and in Quake it seems out of place. The texturing is pretty bad, not in use, but in keeping a constant theme.

The UKPAK mega review will be up next weekend. Its coming along nicely.

I'm seem to be getting more and more crap email addresses and bad links. I would name and shame you people but if you can't be arsed to do things right then why should I?

Details of the new Playstation 2 have been announced. The machine looks absolutely amazing! Its apparently 50 times more powerful than Sega's Dreamcast and 4 to 5 times more powerful than a Pentium 3. I've read a load of articles on this but by far the best place is Ars Technica (look at the news for March 5th). They have technical spec documents with graphs and loads of fancy jargon I don't understand but if you're interested I recommend going there. What I like about the new machine though is that its backwards compatible and will run existing PSX games! Whats even funnier though is that Sega has just suddenly announced a Saturn emulator for the Dreamcast.

Anyway, some Quake related news. id seems to have been in a bit of twist this week what with the leaked Q3A IHV demo and interview transcripts appearing without id's consent. I'm sure they'll cope though.

The Quake 3 Arena site has some new screenies up. Some really smart level pics in there. Also Scary has more Q3A shots. Some new, some old. Cool stuff. The player models are a little too wierd though. The laser sights shown in one of the pictures looks cool.

Renegade has joined the news team at Terrafusion. Now we get regular updates =P.

Last months news has been archived. So if you missed anything go have look there. Speaking of archives, the program I'm writing for the review archives has had hit a problem. Nothing major, just annoying.

My new machine arrives soon and I can't wait.

Finished Metal Gear Solid for the second time yesterday. I can believe I bought it last Friday then finished it on Sunday. Just like Resident Evil 2 though. I picked it up and just kept playing until I'd finished it.