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Following on the heels of last week's announcement by Aspyr Media, that the James Bond adventure 007 Nightfire had reached beta, is an update today to their project status page indicating the game is now considered Final Candidate. This means the title is now going through approvals by all parties and once done, will be heading towards Gold Master and into stores.

Featuring a lifelike replica of Pierce Brosnan's Bond character, the title contains nine singleplayer levels and 15 multiplayer maps with multiple modes for replayability. Here's more from Aspyr's on the game's system requirements:

System Requirements:

Mac OS X 10.3 or later

PowerPC G4/G5, 1GHz or faster

256 MB RAM

2.4GB free disk space

3D Graphics Acceleration required (ATI Radeon 8500/nVidia GeForce 2 or better)

64MB of video ram (VRAM) required

DVD drive required to install and play

Network play Mac to Mac only

Multiplayer Requirements

Internet and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported

Internet play requires a 56Kbps or faster connection

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Aspyr and Inside Mac Games are teaming up once again for a special giveaway in celebration of the recent release of Command & Conquer: Generals. Three lucky winners will win a free copy of the game. Winners will be randomly picked on May 5th, 2004.

To enter the giveaway, please follow the link below.

IMG: Command & Conquer: Generals Giveaway

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IMG has posted a hands-on preview of Aspyr's upcoming WWII first-person shooter, Call of Duty. Here's a clip from the preview:

When I first heard that Call of Duty was coming to the Mac, my initial reaction was “Wow, another World War II first person shooter?” Having played every WWII first person shooter since the original Castle of Wolfenstein, I was pretty sure nothing innovative was going to be brought to the table by Call of Duty. But, I’m happy to say that Infinity Ward (the developers of Call of Duty) definitely topped all other WWII shooters. They took the best aspects of WWII first person shooters, put them all together, and then went one step beyond by offering some truly innovative (and, at times, awe inspiring) gameplay.

Haven't pre-ordered your copy of Call of Duty yet? Follow the buy link below to place your pre-order.

IMG Preview: Call of Duty

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Alexander Seropian, founder of the legendary gaming company Bungie, has started a new company called Wideload, with the goal to "bring unusual games to unusual people". Together with Seropian are a few other ex-Bungie employees set to create original games with the first one being based on the Halo game engine. It is predicted to hit the shelves in 2005. It is currently not known what platforms the game will be released on, so we will see if Seropian's Mac faith still remains in the future.

The team is currently too small for the company's taste, so they are looking for new employees. There are currently openings for positions as AI Programmer, Systems Engineer, Game Designer, Concept Artist and Art Commando. To find more information about the positions and what's required, head over to the jobs page on the Wideload site.

We at IMG wish Seropian and company the best of luck with their new company.

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MacSoft today released a patch for the retail version of Unreal Tournament 2004. This initial, interim patch fixes a number of bugs found in the retail version of the game.

Here's a list of fixes:

• Game no longer crashes at startup if you have an iSight or USB microphone plugged in.
• Fixed a serious crashbug buffer overflow in the VoIP code.
• Servers should no longer kick you for cheating (unless, of course, you're really cheating).
• Fixed the crappy colors on the splash screen (hey, it was bothering me!).
• Other less notable fixes.

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MGF: Unreal Tournament 2004 3186.1

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Wolfpack and Ubisoft have announced a treasure hunt for players of their massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Shadowbane. While scheduled to begin tomorrow at 6:00 PM EST for North American players, the hunt has been delayed until Thursday at 2:00 PM EST on the European "Damnation" server to better accommodate their prime time.

Here's the scoop on what participating players can expect to find:

Nearly eighty unique armor and weapons can be found in most of the adventure zones of Aerynth, except the safezones. Almost every weapon and armor type, including class specific items, can be discovered during the hunt. You will have to kill Mobs to find the treasure though! 

Shadowbane Treasure Hunt to Begin Wednesday

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Blizzard recently updated the beta page of their upcoming MMORPG game World of Warcraft with the latest changes to the game. The updates include new information and changes on some of the classes in the game and also information on several new trade skills. Here are the details from one of these new trade skills:

Want to save people's lives? Want to cure poison and heal grave wounds? Become a Physician! This minor skill allows you to create various bandages that can be used to help yourself and other players.

The benefits of this skill are to heal yourself using items created from ingredients you are finding anyway while you are killing monsters. You might be throwing these first aid ingredients away, but instead you can turn them into something useful.

Who should be a Physician?
Anyone can be a physician if they want to, however, this skill is more tailored toward those classes that don't have healing. Examples of non-healing-classes include Warriors, Hunters, Warlocks, Rogues, and Mages.

Updated World of Warcraft Game Info

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