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Auran Announces the Fury League

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Brisbane-based developer Auran have announced the Fury League, an attempt to bring more players back into their (ill-fated?) MMO. The league will begin with a qualifying season, which will be free to enter:

To get the competitive juices flowing, and to ensure plenty of hard fought competition, the Qualifying Season will culminate in two special Cash Ladders. The top 1,000 players on each Ladder will win cash prizes with a total of $25,000 to be won. The first Cash Ladder will kick off May 20 with players competing in 8 v 8 team Vortex. The second will begin on May 27 with players competing in the 4 v 4 Elimination game type.

The press release has a lot more information, so if you think you're in with a chance, it's probably worth having a gander at it. Whether this will boost the flagging player numbers is another question.

The Bourne Conspiracy Demos

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Vivendi Games have revealed both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of The Bourne Conspiracy are available in free downloadable demo form from both the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace today. The full press release can be found here, but for the uninitiated, The Bourne Conspiracy is a game based on the Robert Ludlum Jason Bourne series of books and films and will offer new chapters between major film and novel events to flesh out the world of the forgteful Mr Bourne even more.

Through close partnership with Ludlum Entertainment, and collaboration on story and character development with Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy, The Bourne Conspiracy is an intense interactive addition to the blockbuster films and best-selling novels.

The Bourne Conspiracy game will be available nationwide June 5, on the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system.

You can check out more about the game by hitting up our AusGamers The Bourne Conspiracy game page.

Race Driver: GRID X360, PS3 and PC Demos

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Codemasters have released a playable demo of Race Driver: GRID to the Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network, the 795MB sampler offering races from three regions from the full game.

Europe Touring Cars at Jarama Circuit, U.S Muscle cars at San Francisco and Japanese Drift Racing at Yokohama Docks. Compete online in the European and U.S races and check out the time trial competitions for the chance to win a car and other ace prizes.

Race Driver: GRID is the latest incarnation of the TOCA series of racing sims from Codemasters and uses the same game engine as Colin McRae: DIRT. It also continues Codies tradition of confusingly renaming the same game for different regions. You'll find some screenies and the feature trailer over on our Race Driver: GRID game page.

Update: The promised PC version is now also available. Grab it right here from AusGamers Files.

Windows eeePC Cheaper than Linux

AusGamers Pty Ltd

APCMag are reporting the the upcoming Asus eeePC 900 - the anticipated ultraportable laptop that we have talked about previously - will be cheaper if you buy the version that comes with Windows XP.

At a Sydney launch event for the much-anticipated Eee PC 900 model, local product manager Albert Liang revealed that the XP model would sell for $599 in Australia, while the Linux model would be $649. To cover the licence cost associated with Windows XP Home and Microsoft Works which replace a custom version of the Xandros Linux distribution and OpenOffice the XP model has just 12GB of storage, while the Linux version has 20GB.

So you can stick with Windows and save $50, or buy the premium unit with Linux and an extra 8GB of storage. It should be noted that in other markets the two retail for the same price.

Haze Multiplayer Demo Released

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Ubisoft have today announced a multiplayer demo for the forthcoming Free Radical shooter, Haze, is available for free download from the PlayStation Store. The demo is up now and will set you back 1.5g of space on your HD. We're bringing it down as this is posted, so stay tuned for our thoughts on one of the PS3's more anticipated releases (and its multiplayer component). There are also a few new screens available, which you can look at in our awesome new AusGamers 2.0 screens gallery.

Haze is a PS3 exclusive first-person shooter developed by Free Radical (TimeSplitters) and published by Ubisoft. For more information check out our Haze game page.

Lord of the Rings Conquest Announced

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Pandemic and Electronic Arts have announced The Lord of the Rings Conquest, a new action title set in the Tolkien Universe, set for a global release in (Australian Spring) 2008 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Nintendo DS. The game is being handled by the Pandemic crew that brought us the Star Wars Battlefront games, operating out of Pandemic Studio's Los Angeles headquarters, not to be confused with the Brisbane team who are yet to reveal the secret project they are currently working on.

Set in J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings universe as depicted by the Academy Award®-winning films, players will finally fight the entirety of these epic battles any way they want. In addition to crusading as the heroic forces of good, for the first time ever in a The Lord of the Rings action title theyll conquer Middle-earth while playing as the legions of Saurons evil army, including Cave-trolls, Oliphaunts, the Balrog and Sauron himself.

The first screenshots from The Lord of the Rings: Conquest can be found here in our brand-spanking-new AusGamers games library.

PlayStation 3 DualShock 3 Controller Out Now

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Sony recently announced that the PlayStation 3 DualShock 3 wireless controller was about to land, which it did a couple weeks ago - bringing back the much-desired vibration and rumble experience.

The DUALSHOCK 3 Wireless Controller provides the most intuitive game play experience with pressure sensors in each action button and the inclusion of the highly sensitive SIXAXIS motion sensing technology. Each hit, crash and explosion will be more realistic than ever as the user will be able to feel the rumble right through the palm of their hand. The DUALSHOCK 3 Wireless Controller can even detect natural movements for real-time and high precision interactive play, acting as a natural extension of the user's body.

The DualShock feature was allegedly left out of the original PlayStation 3 controller due to the lawsuit in which Sony was sued for squillions of dollars for patent infringement because they included the vibrating technology in the PlayStation 2 controller.

Upcoming ET: Quake Wars Patch

AusGamers Pty Ltd

The Enemy Territory: Quake Wars blog has word of the impending v1.5 update, looking at all the new bells and whistles that'll be included. The full list is extensive, covering user interface improvments, new cvars for enhanced customisation, updates to the ranking and statistics system, improved bots, plus other minor tweaks and fixes.

AGN Grand Theft Auto 4 Review

AusGamers Pty Ltd

It's been a long journey to get here. We've done countless write-ups and news pieces in the build-up to its release, but finally we have our GTA 4 review up. It's part of the celebration of AusGamers 2.0, and part of our promise to you to bring you the best editorial we can.

Dan and I have been slogging it out, as we expect you have, since April 29 and still know there's more and more to find and uncover. At any rate, this is definitely one of the bigger games of the year, so head on into our review, play with the new AGN 2.0 features and be sure to let us know what you think.

Click here for our massively in-depth review of Grand Theft Auto 4.

Savage 2 on Steam

AusGamers Pty Ltd

Almost missed this one with all the AusGamers v2.0 fun going on; thanks aus-savage for the heads up. S2 Games' multiplayer only first person shooter Savage 2 has now landed on Steam, a perfect fit for the independantly developed game that was previoulsy only available via the S2 website.

To celebrate the launch, S2 Games will be offering the Steam community a five dollar ($5.00 USD) discount on the download and purchase of a Savage 2 game account from now until May 10, 2008. This special introductory discount brings the price of the game down to $24.99 USD.

Savage is a cult classic amongst gamers everywhere, including many fans here at Valve, said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. However, like many great PC games, finding a copy of its fantastic sequel is something of a challenge in the states and other parts of the world. As such, were especially delighted to offer Savage 2: A Tortured Soul and help drive awareness of this great franchise among the millions logging on to Steam each day.

Not a bad deal. Check out steampowered.com for the goods, and stop by our in-depth review of Savage 2 to find out more about the game itself.