April 7^th, 2005 (1:15am) - Matrix Games today announced the release of the first official update for the World War II grand strategy game, Gary Grigsby’s World At War. The new version 1.016 is now available from the Matrix Games website Games section and Member’s Area.

The new update focuses on fixing a few bugs, including one involving surprise attacks on nations not yet in the war and a rare problem with retreating from battle, as well a variety of minor fixes. Additionally, several improvements were made to the already formidable AI, making the AI nearly as dangerous as a skilled human player. Finally, some new features were added to help the game run on machines with less than 640 MB of Ram and allow the player to pause the game during AI turns, useful if you are watching the AI play to get a better understanding of the rules.

There were 18 fixes or changes to the game in total and Matrix Games recommends that all owners of Gary Grigsby’s World at War download and install the patch. All games saved under the original v1.005 version should still work with the new patch installed, read the version history when you download the patch for information to ensure PBEM games can continue normally.

Check www.matrixgames.com for the update.