A recent posting on id Software confirms that Doom 4 has entered production. Do we thus expect to see another Mars based, dark corridor set, zombie filled Doom 3, or a full throttle fun Doom the Original? Who knows!

“DOOM is part of the id Software DNA and demands the greatest talent and brightest minds in the industry to bring the next installment of our flagship franchise to Earth,” said Todd Hollenshead, CEO, id Software. “It’s critical for id Software to have the best creative minds in-house to develop games that meet the standards synonymous with our titles.”

Expect this to be the only bit of news for some months on Doom 4.

Last week I talked about Dark Rock Games with Adam Griffiths.

Adam brought my attention to Dear Esther, a Half-Life 2 mod that Dark Rock was called in to work on by Dan Pinchbeck.

Dear Esther is now available here along with a movie here.

Dear Esther puts traditional game technologies to innovative new use. Rather than a story told through the medium of games; a 3D environment has been constructed to disperse a story throughout. The user navigates the environment, triggering audio fragments of a narrative which, together with visual clues and codes embedded in the world, build to create a story which is inherently constructed around the innate slippage of meaning and fragmentary nature of interactive experiences. It is a fusion of original text, music and world within an existing media framework.

Reading more information on Dear Esther is really quite interesting, I just wish my PC was working so I could check it out. I recommend you go out and give this a whirl and see what it is all about.

Africa? Animals? Country in turmoil? Flamethrowers? Freedom of choice in missions? I’m sold!

Spore, Mass Effect, I am sorry, but you have just been struck of my buying list if this Shacknews report is true. The Shacknews report links to this thread on the BioWare forums where BioWare technical producer Derek French reveals some very interesting, but worrying information regarding copy-protection measures for the PC versions of Mass Effect and Spore.

While his full post follows after the jump I will give the lowdown on what he says.
- You can install Mass Effect as normal - internet activation required

- From this point on you don’t need the Mass Effect PC DVD in the PC to play

- SecuROM will check the validity of the CD Key after 5 days of Mass Effect being installed

- After this check you have 10 days of playing guaranteed.

- Upon starting Mass Effect SecuROM will attemp to check the CD Key

- If SecuROM isn’t able to check within these 10 days then the CD Key will have to be re-checked before playing again

- If the CD Check is bad then the game will be locked until you get in touch with EA Tech Support

- This system is being used on Spore as well

Read the rest of this entry

While that is a video from the recent Sony show off day in London that is how it is going to look for us on the PC..as long as EA don’t screw us over!

The minimalist’ness of the game is strikingly beautiful, it looks wonderful. Just watch that video again and again!

I went off to check the Battlefield Heroes website after a tip off from a Half-Life2.net forumite about some Beta info emerging soon. What do I see but this announcement.

Hello Heroes!

As you may have noticed, you killed our website. We are not angry. We’re very pleased you want to be in the Beta.

The beta for Heroes will be divided into several stages, the first of which is all about testing out this new way of getting games to you all; by downloading and installing them from a website. We’ll also be trying out some other dull stuff to do with servers, so we are expecting the systems to be down as much as they are up.

To help us track down all the technical issues, we have asked a third party to find us some specialist Beta testers. We are doing all this because we want to be sure that when we launch Heroes, everything will work smoothly.

So hang in there! We will announce here when it’s time to sign up for the public stage of the Beta.

Per Bonomi
Community Manager

Thats pretty much it, expect some more info over the next few weeks I guess on this.

The BBC reports that Cuba has finally joined the modern world with the arrival of the first legalised home computers at the Carlos III shopping centre in Havana.

The BBC reports that the PCs are selling at $800 (£400) while the average monthly wage for Cubans is only $20 (£10) a month. However many Cubans have relatives living abroad who send cash back to the island.

President Raul Castro has been making moves towards modernisation in recent weeks with mobile phones and DVD players becoming available. However those who have been fortunate enough to get hold of one of the PCs won’t be joining us playing EVE Online or Day of Defeat as internet access is limited to certain workplaces and education facilities.

This is because of the US trade embargo with Cuba that prevents the island from connecting to under-sea fibre optic cables. Instead the internet access in Cuba is limited to costyl satellite connections.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez is currently laying a cable under the Carribean to Cuba, though it is not known if internet access will become common place once the new connection is laid.

Blizzard have entered the world of digital distribution via their swanky Blizzard Store.

Currently they have Warcraft III Reign of Chaos, the expansion The Frozen Throne and the Starcraft Anthology. Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne clock in at $19.95 each which is about £10 and Starcraft Anthology is $14.99 costing about £7.50. (Rock, Paper, Shotgun money changing)

Good to see more companies embracing digital distribution especially with classics such as these! Lets hope Diablo appears there soon!

But I won’t be playing it! Alas exams and a PC that I haven’t had the chance to fix yet deprives me of the chance to enjoy the thrills and spills of the Race Driver GRID demo when it lands on all ‘non-handheld platforms’ sometime this week.

The GRID Community Site reveals that sometime this week (commencing 5th May) the demo for GRID will be made available.

The demo has 3 events to compete in. The eBay Motors Muscle Cup sees you taking the wheel of a ford Mustang GT-R and the streets of San Francisco, the Advan International Trophy hands you a Nissan S15 Silvia and your playground is Yokohama Docks, and the Euro Touring Car Series provides some old-school tin-top thrills with a BMW 320si touring car and the sweeping curves and hairpins of Jarama.

Of that, well only the Euro Touring Car Series sounds fun to me, but I guess I will wait a few weeks before being able to see for myself.

Prototype, the free-ish roaming super mutant shooter from Radical Entertainment and Sierra has been pushed back to a 2009 release according to GameSpot.

An representative told GameSpot;

“Since its announcement, Prototype has been regarded by many as groundbreaking and taking the open-world genre in new directions, and in the simplest explanation possible, we need more time to deliver the game the team initially set out to create,”

Which either means that someone was not happy with the game and wants a total overhaul, or that the developers have managed to get some more time from Sierra to further develop and polish the Prototype.

Lets hope the Prototype makes it into full production.