Voting for this year's PC Gamer Top 100 is drawing to a close in less than two days, making this your last chance to ensure the Enemy Territory games make the cut. Both Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars are up for inclusion, with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory previously making PC Gamer's own Editorial Top 100 at #69. Voting could not be simpler: Just make an account, pick your five favorite games of all time (use the links above to quickly get to ET goodness), and submit the list.

As an added bonus, the PC Gamer crew is also looking for user comments to be included in their upcoming print feature about this year's Top 100. If you fancy being featured in the article and want to tell them why you like the Enemy Territory games, drop them a line at pcgamer@futurenet.com or post in this forum thread on their website.

An all-new Brink developer diary has been released, with Lead Writer Ed 'BongoBoy' Stern exploring Brink's setting and backstory, and how they came about. The diary covers everything from the very initial inception of the Ark (where Brink is set) to how the game's final environments convey backstory information to the player. It's a very fascinating read and garnished with plenty of new concept art - head over to the Bethesda Blog to get reading.

If you missed them earlier, don't forget to check out the inaugural Brink developer diary by Game Director Paul Wedgwood and the second instalment covering art direction penned by Art Director Olivier Leonardi.

If you fancy dressing up your walls with a huge Brink poster, our friends over at PC Gamer UK have you covered. Earlier in the week, the chaps got their hands on a Brink print measuring some 3 metres in length and depicting an elaborate Security vs. Resistance face-off. Luckily for poster aficionados everywhere, they've decided to be charitable and give it away on their website. All you have to do is be located in the UK and post your top five games of all time in this thread - the most exciting submission wins the print. To see what you're getting yourself into, check out a short video of the PC Gamer crew unrolling the print below. Continue reading »

Much to our continued surprise and general bemusement, we walked away with the victor's trophy at last night's Spring 2010 edition of the Develop Magazine Games Industry Pub Quiz. 20 different teams from all over the UK games industry were in attendance, including game developers, middleware companies and recruitment agencies.

Representing Splash Damage were Media Director Richard 'Fluffy_gIMp' Jolly, Tools Programmer Flavius 'Flawe' Alecu, Level Designer Jamie 'Fishbus' Manson and Community Relations Manager Steve 'badman' Hessel. After all was said and done, we narrowly edged out Curve Studios for the win, while Rocksteady clinched third. Embarassing photos are sure to follow at some point - in the meantime, enjoy this artsy shot of the trophy.

There have been a number of great community-made maps for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars over the years, and this Sunday, you'll get to experience four of them in special exhibition matches. Kicking off at 6 PM GMT, the matches will pit The Art of Warfare (TAW) clan against regular participants of the long-running Custom Map Nirvana event. The following maps will be part of the proceedings:

• Team Jungle by MoP
• Maridia by Chris
• Free Spirit City by []V[]
• Radar by Chris

You can grab these maps right here or, if you want to absolutely positively make sure that you've got the right ones, you can download them directly from the server at etqw.nett.org:27745 when the time comes. Continue reading »

Seeking to bless one lucky winner with a massive home theatre upgrade, US games behemoth GameStop has kicked off a Brink sweepstakes. The grand prize includes a 55" LED TV, a 5.1 surround sound system, and a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 console. Additionally, three other participants will also get a choice of either a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 console. The competition is open to anyone in the United States (except where prohibited by law) and runs until April 15.

Unable to flee the premises in time, Jaromir 'pg' Salaj is the latest member of Splash Damage to fall victim to our series of staff interviews. Before arriving at Splash Damage, Jaromir guest-starred at both Illusion Softworks and 10Tacle Studios. He is now part of our hive of environment artists, who are responsible for much of the surroundings you get to experience in our games.

To find out more about Jaromir, including how he ended up in the industry, his tips for breaking in, and how Czechoslovakia neatly merged computing and body-building all the way back in 1985, check out the full interview on his profile page.

ClanBase's Spring 2010 Cup season is about to kick off and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is once again among the games featured this time around. Players will be able to compete in two different types of tournaments - OpenCups, for which anyone can sign up, and ClanBase's trademark EuroCups, which are invite-only and feature Europe's top teams. Sign-ups for the latest Enemy Territory OpenCup will start this Sunday and run for exactly two weeks until March 14. The actual cups will then start at the end of March. For more information, head over to ClanBase's EC/OC Cup Spring 2010 page.

There's a brand-new European Brink fansite out there and it's offering you the chance to get your most burning game-related questions answered. Named BRINKish.eu, the site promises to bring you the latest Brink development news and updates, with a special focus on the competitive side of things. BRINKish is run by dohfOs, who also maintains Scandinavian fan site ChefenCo.

To kick things off, BRINKish has organized a community Q&A, allowing you to submit questions to be answered by the Brink development team here at Splash Damage. The deadline for submissions is February 28 (which is this Sunday), so be sure to send your Qs in by then.
Finally, if you frequent Twitter, don't forget to follow BRINKish for bite-sized updates.

Fancy creating your own Brink fan site? Grab the Brink Fan Site Kit to help you kick things off with plenty of game media, logos and information.

Welcome to the latest installment of Currently Hurling, our semi-regular look at the games we've been playing here at Splash Damage. 2010 has been a spectacular year for games so far and with great new releases continuing to appear on almost a weekly basis, there's no sign of that changing any time soon.

Among at least several other things, this edition features Crispy flailing about in the dark, Mikkel being trapped in his dosbox, and Locki practicing all-female intergalactic warfare. Just another day at the office, really.

Let's dive right in: Continue reading »