If you missed Audio Director Chris Sweetman's talk on Weapon Audio Design at GDC last week, we now have it available for download here on the site. All you have to do is head over to our newly glued together Publications section and grab the PowerPoint slides from there. Related, if you have any questions for Chris on the subject, feel free to stick them in the comments - he'll hop in there when he makes his glorious return to Castle Splash Damage next week.

Since everyone involved in our last PC Gamer/Splash Damage/community showdown had such a blast, we're getting together for another round on the 31st of March. Everything's set to start off at 7 PM that day and if you want in, just join the PC Gamer Steam Group - server IPs (there'll be more than one this time!) and passwords will be distributed via the group's chat room just before kickoff. We hope to see you there!

Splash Damage's Audio Director Chris 'peaceful warrior' Sweetman will be giving a lecture at GDC 2009 in San Francisco later in the week. Aptly titled 'Weapon Sound Design', Chris will be sharing his approach for designing excellent weapon audio, fine-tuned during his rather long career in games which includes gun-laden titles like BLACK and SWAT. In addition, Chris will discuss how to prevent audio clutter (such as when multiple enemies are engaging the player at once), and share ways to evolve sounds to convey things like player mood and story progression.

The lecture is scheduled for March 27 at 11:10 AM local time and recommended for anyone even remotely interested in the noise guns make in games. For those who won't be able to attend it in person, we'll be making the presentation available here on the site at that time.

The latest edition of Currently Hurling is here and packed with new releases! After the rather quiet patch that was January, a truckload of great new games including Dawn of War II, Street Fighter IV, Halo Wars, Resident Evil 5, Empire: Total War, Men of War and of course Killzone 2 has arrived and they all need to be played.

Without further ado, let's get to the Good Stuff and find out what we've been playing:

Jamie 'Fishbus' Manson (Level Designer):
Welp. I’ve had a good time with some new games over the past couple of weeks. For starters I got to play Killzone 2 with 4 of us in the same room on four PlayStations. It was pretty ridonkulous to say the least, but it was indeed very fun. The graphics for the game is simply staggering in most areas; I can’t get enough of the light-exposure-burn-in-your-eyes effect!

German gaming magazine PC Action has put together a list of what they think are the 33 best first person shooters of all time. We're delighted to see Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars on the list and all the way up at #11, snuggling up to BioShock. To see which other games they included, check out the full list on PC Action's website.

The latest staff member to roll up and down our list of pointed questions is Neil 'exedore' Alphonso who apparently climbed aboard the Splash Damage rope recently as Lead Level Designer. Prior to coming to Splash Damage, Neil worked at Guerilla Games on Killzone 2 for the PlayStation 3 and previously had his brush-building hands in the original Splinter Cell as well as Duke Nukem Forever.

To find out how Neil ended up at Splash Damage, his thoughts on the evolution of level design, and why he thinks that QUAKE is the best thing ever, row your mouse kayak over to the full interview in this profile.

We're very excited to announce that Neil Alphonso, most recently Lead Level Designer on the excellent Killzone 2, has joined Splash Damage. Neil is now in charge of our team of Level Designers and will direct their efforts for our new (and still unannounced) title with Bethesda Softworks. Aside from Killzone 2, Neil also level designed for the first Splinter Cell game on the original Xbox as well as Duke Nukem Forever and is a rather smart chap who's Seen It All (at least when it comes to level design).

For all the relevant details, quotes and line breaks, check out the official press release.

The European arm of the Electronic Sports League has announced its Spring 2009 leagues for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. The leagues come in 2 on 2 and 3 on 3 flavors, each with its own map list and set to kick off on May 24th (which is just a few days before ET's six year anniversary, actually). If you want to get in on the action, now's a great time to do so so as sign ups are open and being accepted until March 21st.

And if you're interested but just can't get your head around this whole ESL business, check out their handy Starter Guide.