Odds And Ends: Tuesday News Roundup

Developer Taldren, best known for its work on the Star Trek licensed Starfleet Command, has reportedly shut its doors - with Internet posts suggesting that the US company has closed, but some staff are opening a new firm in South Korea. Earlier this year, it was announced that the studio's action title Black9 had been put on hold by publisher Majesco, a major setback for the company which now appears to have brought about the closure of its US offices. However, other reports from staff at the company suggest that Taldren CEO Erik Behnke is planning to move to South Korea to work on a new MMORPG project with a number of other Taldren staff. No information about the new project has been announced, except that it is "myth themed" - which, given the general form of MMORPG projects, isn't exactly a revelation. Further details of the new venture should hopefully emerge in the near future.

Movie studio Paramount Pictures has launched a free videogame for the PC and Mac, which is designed to promote the arrival of its forthcoming movie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The game, which is freely downloadable from the movie's website, features four levels which combine aerial shoot 'em up style play with racing objectives - perhaps not the most innovative or taxing game ever created, but for the price tag, you can hardly argue. Paramount is also planning a promotion which will see players of the game participating in an "Air Combat Challenge", with the eventual winner being brought to London to see the premiere of the movie in September.

The PC version of Midway's The Suffering has been patched to version 1.1, reportedly fixing a few critical bugs, including a "death loop bug", whatever one of those is. (Presumably it's similar to the time this writer first played through Quake 2 using one quick save and wound up stabbing F5 at a moment of impending doom, only to have to pick the thing up from seven levels previously. So, yes, good to see that patched. The download weighs in at 3.8MB and you can get hold of it wherever files flock. Like here.

Ubisoft has released a small patch for the PC version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which solves problems with NVIDIA's new GeForce 6800 graphics card. The patch comes in the form of a new game executable, and you're advised to back up the old one before you overwrite anything. You know, just in case. Not everyone has Daggers of Time to undo their foul-ups. You can download the piddly 52KB file here.