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Yesterday, Apple made a variety of announcements at their Wednesday morning press event. Among the announcements, a new video iPod has released in conjunction with iTunes 6, now featuring video downloads via the iTunes Music Store. From the Apple website:

Witness the evolution of the revolution. First it played songs. Then photos. Then podcasts. Now iPod plays video, changing the way you experience your music and more. Again. In lighter, thinner 30GB and 60GB models starting at $299, the new iPod is music to your eyes.

Shop for them 24-7. Watch them at home. Take them on the road. Buy high-quality, ad-free music videos and TV shows for just $1.99, sync them to the new iPod and go. Browse and buy more than 2,000 music videos, plus your favorite ABC and Disney shows, including "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives."

What if you could command an entire world of music, photos, movies and DVDs — all from your sofa? Now you can share the good life with friends and family on a 17- or 20-inch new iMac G5 featuring Front Row software and Apple Remote. Slimmer than ever, the gravity-defying enclosure also houses built-in iSight, SuperDrive, wireless and the easy-to-use software that brings it all together. Modern living starts at only $1299.

Apple

Apple Website - New iMacs

Apple Website - New iPod

Apple Website - New iTunes

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The latest to examine Myst V: End of Ages, Eurogamer discusses whether or not the last title in the series lives up to the reputation of previous titles. In the end, despite the innovations of the new slate system and free 3D movement, Eurogamer could only give Myst V a 6 out of 10.

One thing you've never been able to accuse a Myst game of is ugliness. Whether pre-rendered, as in the early titles, or fully 3D as they are now, the atmospheric dream-like worlds have always been breathtaking. In End of Ages you'll explore strange tropical islands littered with bizarre skeletons, towering lunar escarpments topped with giant astronomical instruments, and vast cathedral-sized caverns before you reach the dilemma that ends the game and the entire series. As stunning as these locations are they do have their immersion-sapping inconsistencies. Direbo, the gloomy swamp 'hub' world features four islands linked by four gated bridges. Logic would suggest that you could hop over the low bridge gates but in fact it isn't possible. One challenge I've just completed involved using a counterweight to lift a pillar up to the level of a platform. Get the sums wrong and you end-up standing on the pillar a couple of feet above the platform. Again common sense and FPS experience would suggest that you could jump down but in fact the game forbids it.

Eurogamer: Myst V Review

Cyan

Myst V: End of Ages

Buy Myst V: End of Ages

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IGN's RPG Vault recently released a new interview with Spiderweb's Jeff Vogel about the upcoming Avernum 4. A4, the first new title in the Exile/Avernum series in several years, will follow in the turn based RPG footsteps of its predecessors. Players will find themselves in the familiar underground surroundings of Avernum as they struggle to understand why evil creatures have flooded the land and normally peaceful citizens have turned paranoid and violent.

Vogel promises more of everything fans of Spiderweb RPGs have come to love.Jonric: Given that your previous games have tended to offer quite a few quests, will this one follow the same basic pattern?

Jeff Vogel: I am a huge fan of games with lots of quests. Lots of chains of quests, quests that span the whole game, and piles of side quests for people who just want to run around and have fun.

Avernum 4 has almost 200 quests. In addition to the main storyline quest, there are two huge, multi-step alternate victory condition-type quests. All of the towns, cities and forts have job boards where you can score extra money and gear doing minor quests. And no fantasy RPG would be complete without hordes of hapless townsfolk with things for you to do.

Jonric: Is it safe to assume we'll find lots of cool weapons, armor and loot in general? Will there be rare or unique items?

Jeff Vogel: Of course, one of the great joys of any fantasy RPG is finding cool loot. Avernum 4 will have hundreds of different items, ranging from the mundane to the magical to the mightily powerful. In addition, some well-hidden and exceptionally difficult areas will have unique and powerful artifacts.For the entire Q&A and a handful of exclusive screenshots head over to IGN's site at the link below.

RPG Vault: Avernum 4 Q&A

Spiderweb Software

Avernum 4

In the latest announcement in their week of new product news Freeverse today announced the release of Plasq's Comic Life Deluxe Edition. An enhanced version of Comic Life, which allowed users to create comics, greetings cards, and more from their iPhoto collection, the Deluxe Edition offers dozens more fonts, over a hundred new styles, and over two hundred new templates.

Ian Lynch Smith, President of Freeverse has said, "Comic Life has been universally hailed as one of the coolest programs for the Mac in a very long time. The guys at plasq really hit this one out of the park and Freeverse is thrilled to be publishing the Deluxe Edition of such a killer app."

Comic Life is a highly-acclaimed, fun, easy and powerful application that expands what you can do with your digital photos. With Page and Panel layouts, streamlined image selection, cropping and placement of authentic speech balloons, captions and special effects lettering - each with saveable styles.

Comic Life offers full Integration with .Mac (including RSS feeds), iPhoto image library and exports to TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, HTML, iPhoto and Quicktime. Taking advantage of Tiger's CoreImage, it contains image effects that transform your photos into Comic Life images and more. Capture images directly from your iSight or DV Camera within Comic Life - drag and drop elegance.

Comic Life Deluxe

Plasq

Freeverse

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Platinum Arts has announced the release of version 2.0 of their Last Man Standing Coop Mod. Made for Doom 3, the mod supports both single and multiplayer game types, allowing players to face swarms of monsters in an attempt to stay alive as long as possible.

The latest update sports a wealth of new content, including custom maps, selectable ragdoll effects, and the ability to have monsters drop their weapons. Other features include the following:

• Thanks to the hard work of Hobbes and help of Gen. Meister, Mac is now supported!
  
• Completely rewritten the AI netcode. Reliable messages overflow should be very rare now.
  
• Plasmathrower given a new sound, new stream, and ignites monsters
  
• Updates to Radio Tower, including much more intense gameplay and cinema screens
  
• KF_Loading_dock tweaked to be more playable, especially in hardcore mode
  
• Over six new monsters were added to the mod including the super maggot, spectre, spectral nimp and more
  
• Music volume now fades to new value properly when using music volume slider.

Doom 3: Last Man Standing Coop Mod

Last Man Standing: Mac OS X Installer

id Software

Aspyr Media

DOOM 3

Buy DOOM 3

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