What can I say? It has been a very good week!

First of all I want to say congratulations to everyone who worked on Tribes:Vengeance. At the recent Australian Game Developers Conference the game nabbed 4, that's right, FOUR major awards including: Best Game, Best PC Game, Best Design, and Best Level Design. Tribes was also the runner up for outstanding visual art. This is very exciting, of course. Recognition of all the hard work that goes on here makes everyone happy and not to sound trite, but that is worth a lot. And really, who doesn't like to be best whatever? It's just a good thing all around. Also, you may have noticed that the cover of the January PC Gamer reads, "The Top Ten Most Anticipated Games of 2005." Well, look closer because you will find Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich settled comfortably on page 58. This too makes us happy since Freedom Force is Irrational's baby. Speaking of which, there seem to be a lot of new or pending Irrational (actual human) babies lately so congrats to everyone involved with the whole reproduction thing.

And now on to SWAT 4, which had a very good week in the press:

First of all, check out Andrew Park's preview on Gamespot. Andrew compliments the game's visuals: "SWAT 4 continues to look great... environments are clearly handcrafted and exhibit great attention to detail. Furthermore, its detailed character models also look good in motion." He also likes the gameplay: "multiplayer gameplay and strategies are clearly different from most shooters, and they show much promise. In fact, if the rest of the game can turn out similarly well, then SWAT 4 will be a highly refined tactical shooter that's every bit as terse and exciting as it should be." Gamespot also features a SWAT 4 video interview with Andrew and a whole lot of footage from the game.

When you are through with that, head on over to Gamespy where writer Sal Accardo talks about his experience with the multiplayer beta. He says that "Although the beta test only included one map, it still managed to be fun, regardless of whether we were playing with 4 players or 12."

Also, this forum features a discussion about SWAT in which someone calling himself "Rogue Agent" says That he was "really impressed" by "the graphics, features and info on SWAT 4". Rogue Agent also feels that "SWAT 4 is looking to steal the disgruntled tactical players away from..." I am not going to say which game he said SWAT will steal players from because that's super-bad karma for us, but I very much appreciate the quote.

A fan in France posted a ton of page SWAT 4 screenshots on his page. He did a really, really amazing job with it and the page is well worth a look. I have no idea what the page actually says since I was afraid of my high school's French teacher and took Spanish instead. Anyway, check it out because it is a great way to preview the game without actually, well, previewing it. In case you are as French-challenged as I am, just click on the pictures to see what I am making such a fuss about.