A demo for Codemasters' deliciously dastardly game Overlord is now available on Xbox Live, with a PC version expected to follow early next week on the official site.

The publisher also confirmed a European release date of
29th June for both games.

The demo lets you romp around the tranquil area of Mellow Hills, unleashing your venom on the land by using your minion horde. We got a little confused yesterday when the US pretended that the taster had already been released, but you can rest assured now that we're telling the truth. Or pretending to.

Triumph Studios is the fiendish brain behind Overlord, and has refreshingly done away with the notion of being a goody; only evil or more evil is on the menu.

It's also devilishly fun, as we found out when we went to play the game. Find out more in our first impressions of Overlord.

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WTF is with games getting demos I want to play when my 360 is dead?!?! This happened last year, and again this year when my 360 died. It is driving me nuts. I loved Dungeon Keeper growing up so this game has really piqued my interest with all the game sites referring to it as a spiritual successor to the Bullfrog games.

The official Shadowrun forums declare that a demo will be released, er, half an hour ago on Xbox Live Marketplace. So, 2am PDT.

There's no sign of it yet according to Internet hero Kristan Reed, and apparently there's no immediate plan for a Windows Vista version ("We haven't announced [it]").
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But we do know what's going in the Xbox 360 one: the first three training chapters, bot and online multiplay, the Power Station level, Elf and Human races, four types of magic, three types of tech, and six weapons including the katana.

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This may be for our friends across the ocean, but hopefully for us too! I can't verify as my 360 is awaiting it's 2rd respawn from Microsoft.

The Lord of the Rings Online first content update, Shores of Evendim, was announced before the game even went live. Today, it finally has a solid date attached to it: June 13th, less than two months from the game's launch. If there are any flies on those Turbine guys, they're paying rent.

The first big addition to the game adds the (dur) Lake Evendim zone, an area with a wide level spread, but most of whose content falls in the middle range. The south of the Evendim where it abuts the Shire is a bit Hobbity, but quickly transitions to forests and ruined Dunedain cities. The new zone features more than a 100 new quests, specifically added to freak out obsessive completionists who have been trying to go through every scrap of game content (cough). There are also nine new monsters running around in there. And by "new" I mean "new." Not "same goddamn spider with a texture swap." There are a few of those, too, but they're not even counting them.

Among the new critters are some Beornling-like wolfskin-wearing men, the leader of whom has a nasty tendency to revive his wolf allies as even more irritating spectral dogs. There's also an interesting ecology going on between tomb worms and nasty-ass guys called Kergrim. The latter feed on the former, so kill a bunch of worms and you can count on the bigger bads coming out of the woodwork. Also featured are an NPC Ent who hands out some of the game's quests, and (spoiler):

A story-capping Balrog-kin. Happily, he's not a straight up clone of the whip-and-sword-having Durin's Bane. 'Roggy is his own unique snowflake, and the fight is suitably epic.

Also featured is a necessary retooling of Champion skills, some new sets of epic armor, the ability to sustain notes while playing music, or import tabs to the game. Making a dwarf loop a lute remix of Baby Got Back in the middle of Rivendell just got that much easier.

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Now I'm not 100% sold on this game yet, but I have been jonesing for a new MMO to play. I was hooked up with a 10 day trial, and so far its not bad, but I haven't really found too many other people to play with yet. I may just not be high enough to get out of the starting area, but then again with I played DDO there were people everywhere... Then again it was really just one city that all took place in.

Once again my beloved console has been struck down with the Red Ring of Death. It was out of warranty so I debated ripping her open and seeing if I could fix it myself or not, but decided that the $139.90 Microsoft charges is a lot less then buying a new one, so I called them up. I was actually surprised that they gave me a discount as this is the 2nd time it has happened to me, and at almost the exact same time (within 2 weeks of my warranty expiring) as it did last year. They gave me a 50% discount, so I would have to be a fool to not accept it.

So once again, I'm without my console, but at least it's during the summer and I'm not itching to play UNO like I was last year. I have a lot of Guitar Hero 2 to catch up on and a few others, but nothing that is pressing me to play right now besides Catan.

Larry Laffer, better known as Leisure Suit Larry, turned 20 years old yesterday. Sadly, like many child stars, he didn't have a huge celebration. It merely passed with a statement by his father, Al Lowe, in his daily joke.

Lowe writes, "Today is the 20th anniversary of Leisure Suit Larry. On June 4th, 1987, LSL1: Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards shipped ...to the lowest sales of any game in the history of Sierra! I assumed I had just wasted six months of my life and immediately started work on Police Quest I with Jim Walls and Greg Rowland. We worked long hours while, unknown to me, each month Larry's sales doubled. A year later, Larry was in the Top 10 and soon after that was number one. So lift a glass with me to my dear departed friend, Mr. Laffer! Together we had one hell of a decade of great times."

Although Mr. Laffer will be appearing in some upcoming mobile games, it'll be hard to recapture his glory days where he taught young boys around the country lessons about the opposite sex. Oh well, although Lowe thinks Larry is dead, we do hope that one day -- and soon -- a Leisure Suit Larry game will return the series to raunchy greatness.

I can never forget these games growing up. This was our Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball game. My mom is actually the person who bought me my first Larry game, actually 1-3 were all boxed together. And I got 5 as a free gift for subscribing to PCGamer starting with Issue 2.