The battle against telepathic monsters

In Metro: Last Light, you'll play Artyom. The action is interspersed with dialogue that provides you with more information. You'll have 3 weapons to start with, and, as the game progresses, you can build on this arsenal by exchanging ammunition, which serves as the game's currency.

Metro: Last Light is linear and you don't have much freedom to explore. In fact, your biggest choices will probably revolve around whether to attack your enemies rambo-style, or stealthily, under the cover of darkness.

Traditional 1st person shooter

Metro: Last Light is a straight-up first person shooter where you move with the keyboard and mouse and see the action from your character's viewpoint. You can also use a gamepad to play. Pressing the button will allow you to light a torch, which will help keep your photosensitive enemies at bay.

Depending on the situation, you'll need to try different techniques when fighting. Lots of times, you'll find that a stealthy approach will let you sneak up on enemies, saving ammo and avoiding detection in one fell swoop.

In order to survive above ground, you'll need to use a gas mask. Keep an eye out though, because the mask's filter can become blocked, or the eye piece will cloud over with contamination. If either of these scenarios come to pass, it could lead to your demise.

Unnervingly beautiful graphics

The tragedy and pain of the story behind Metro: Last Light is clearly and perfectly reflected in the graphics. Faces are lined with pain and sync crisply with dialogue. The landscape of the decimated world and murky underground are patent and palpable - chipped tiles, rusty pipes, dirty stations and scurrying rats.

Everything in Metro: Last Light is beautifully fluid. The "camera" moves between fights and panorama seamlessly, the music changes from scene to scene, moving from lighthearted excitement to terror and doom. It really is a pleasure to look at.

An exciting stealth terror shooter

Metro: Last Light doesn't do things by halves. The hideous mutants, macabre surprises, creepy atmosphere and awesome soundtrack make for a game that is nothing short of memorable.

We've taken points off for the lack of a co-op mode, which would have been easy to implement. In a sentence, Metro: Last Light is solid - and solitary - entertainment, but lacks re-playability.

A terrifying alternative world

Metro: Last Light is set in a barren wasteland, where Nazi Germany rules and everybody else has been forced below ground. The only people who can survive above ground must wear special breathing equipment, while everybody else takes refuge in subway station townships.

The Metro: Last Light world is beset with mutants and a new race of telepathic humanoids, and it is among them that you must fight. The storyline is loosely based on the novel Metro 1033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky.

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We saw a demo of early Borderlands 2 gameplay where the player begins in a cold wasteland, and quickly comes across some ice-dwelling monsters. These showed off the improved enemy AI in the game: using their environments intelligently, enemies don’t simply attack, but will find objects to throw at you too and try to stay on higher ground. With humanoid enemies, this increased intelligence is even more pronounced - they work in teams to out-flank you, retreat when wounded and more.

All the battles in Borderlands 2 were reassuringly dynamic and dramatic, without feeling scripted. The range of weaponry is really varied, with the new use-once-and-throwaway-guns called Tediores looking really cool - they have ammunition in them, but you can also throw them as grenades, making them very flexible.

The mission demoed saw you teaming up with a female siren in two player co-op mode, to rescue Roland, a character from the first game. He has been captured by a large hovering robot, hiding out in a lair guarded by weaponized mining robots. Fighting through these as Roland is being taken away through the industrial complex, we saw enemy backup robots being fired in from a moon base, which looked really cool and emphasized the incredible scale. The moonbase can attack anywhere on the planet of Pandora, run by 'Handsome Jack', who is trying to violently bring law and order.

There was plenty of macabre, violent humor along the way, and the demo finished with the start of what looked like a big boss battle. The player was flung off a high damn structure by an enormous robot. Views from here, when there was time to look, were really impressive, and the huge landscape we could see is apparently all explorable in Borderlands 2.

Developers Gearbox were keen to make the point that they feel many game sequels are just 'content dumps', additional levels with no substantive changes, so they want to make Borderlands 2 a genuinely new game with real changes, and from what I saw, they are well on the way to achieving that.

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If you've ever played Dungeons and Dragons then you'll be familiar with the sort of territory that The Battle for Wesnoth covers. It's surprisingly complex and not a fantasy game that you can immediately get into but The Battle for Wesnoth has many treats hidden in its depths.

For a start, the amount of roles you can play gives the game great variation. Regaining the throne is but one scenario - you can also guard a frontier outpost, take on a load of undead warriors and guide elves to make a new home in the kingdom.

There are more than 200 units to take control of with 16 different tribes and six major factions. And if that's not enough, you can even create your own maps, scenarios and unit types. This ability to create your own style of game is really impressive for an open source RPG.

The Battle for Wesnoth is also a highly tactical game, requiring you to move units around in order to outfox your enemies, which takes some doing with several units on the go at once.

As far as open source RPG fantasy games go, The Battle for Wesnoth is an excellent effort.

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This is a world of noble knights and ruthless nomads, a world of courageous deeds and internal wars. As one of the famous military leaders of the 13th Century, gamers are able to test their steel against the neighboring nations and carve their names into history.

Among the playable factions are the English, the French, the Mongols, the Germans and Kievan Rus' (Russians). The game consists of 5 campaigns which cover the most well-known battles of that period.

XIII Century: Death or Glory features large-scale battles, with thousands of units located on a battlefield at the same time, and offers players a chance to test their skills as military leaders in medieval Europe.

XIII Century: Death or Glory thoroughly reconstructs not only units and their behavior during a fight, but such important features as setting and landscape of a battlefield.

Key Features:Over 30 battles in 5 campaigns. Famous battles that changed the face of medieval Europe. Additionally the game includes several battles, which have never been featured in PC games before.

Historical reconstruction. Real conditions of renowned battles such as landscape, time of day and weather conditions are taken into account. Authentic heraldry of European aristocracy.

Dozens of unit types. National specialty of troops. Weapons, arms and equipment of knights are made using historical documents and specifications.

Unique battle system taking into account 80 parameters and characteristics, which allow complete authenticity of medieval battle on the unit level.

State-of-the-art shader graphics with astonishing level of refinement and veracity. LAN and Internet multiplayer. Minimum System Requirements:Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista.

Processor: Intel Pentium 2. 4 GHz or AMD 2000+. Memory: 512 MB. Video card: GeForce 5200 or Radeon 9200 128 MB with up-to-date drivers. Hard disc: 3 GB.

Recommended System Requirements:Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Vista. Processor: Intel Pentium 3. 2 GHz or AMD 3000+.

Hard disc: 3 GB

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You'll play Hawke, who can be one of three traditional classes: Warrior, Wizard or Rogue. You can also choose to be male or female. Conversation now is more like the effective system used in Sci-Fi adventure Mass Effect 2, with its inclusion of a dialog wheel.

The demo gives you a good introduction the to story and the gameplay: You are on the run from the Darkspawn, after the destruction of your village. Using the your abilities and those of your group, you have to survive wave after wave of Darkspawn, including a fight with an enormous Ogre. The action is quite hectic, and you need to quickly grasp battle tactics, as despite appearances simple hacking and slashing won't work!

Graphically Dragon Age 2 looks improved, although not dramatically different to the original. If you got tired of lots of brown spattered with red, there's little to excite you here. The storytelling seems to be the biggest attraction - your character's fate is sealed from the start. Like a movie where you see the end first, and are then taken on a journey towards that, Dragon Age 2 moves away from traditional storytelling. Your choices and actions do affect the game though, so it's not totally linear. Th introduction and opening part of the gameplay give you a great sense of danger and of facing an almost impossible task, which gives Dragon Age 2 a lot of drama.

If you enjoyed the original, Dragon Age 2 promises to be a great continuation of that fantasy masterpiece.

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Eight years is a long time, and Grand Theft Auto IV has taken the crown as the best serious sandbox adventure in town. Starting Mafia II, it's difficult not to compare the game's Empire Bay with Liberty City, but thankfully the 1950s buzz of this game makes it feel totally different.

Attention to detail is impressive, and the look and sounds of the city really evoke the 50s. The graphics in Mafia II are good, although the face modeling isn't the best we've seen. The story is violent, and the dialog is full of adult language. That's not a problem, but it sometimes feels too much.

The basic driving around and doing missions isn't anything new, but Mafia II is a little different to the competition. The police can be bribed, and if you start a fight you go into a kind of fight mode which works quite well.

While the city in Mafia II is quite bustling, the pedestrians aren't as realistic as in GTA IV. They don't seem to react to their surroundings much, and there is too much repetition in the models.

The Mafia II shows part of an impressive sandbox game, but it doesn't live up to the standards set by Rockstar Games

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In order to do so, network details will be provided so you can pass the Virus from one computer to another. You will go through a series of machines that will challenge you with different firewalls and special programs.

Your job is to infect the entire network and destroy the artificial intelligence program that has taken over. As you advance through the game you will see that this artificial intelligence is a real die hard.

Virus is a game any person with slight knowledge about networks will love playing. It will challenge your knowledge and reaction abilities to the limit.

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The format of this sandbox game is like many others, make your way around, completing missions you are given on the way. Of course, while avenging your friend's death, you'll more or less single-handedly save Paris! Realism is not important in Saboteur, and you have to play it accepting that it's not to be taken seriously.

Graphically, The Saboteur is not up to the standards of games like GTA IV or Assassin's Creed. It's also more buggy, with graphics occasionally popping up as you travel around the city. The story is clichéd, as are the characters.

The driving is satisfying, even if Paris isn't made a very exciting place to drive around. Damage isn't realistic though, so you don't really need to drive with any care! Despite its technical and gameplay limitations, The Saboteur can still be fun to play, and there is plenty to see and do around the city.

The Saboteur isn't as impressive as the best sandbox, open world games, but it has its moments.

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The game presents the hard battle between the forces of evil and a powerful hero – the character we control. This time it's not just Dante (the original protagonist), but two people instead: the aforementioned Dante and also Nero, who appears in this demo and has nothing to do with the CD burning tool.

The game's objectives involve completing several missions, gathering objects and of course, killing all the evil creatures you'll find on your way to the final boss. And the best part in the game is precisely these fights against demons, monsters and other strange living beings. Being a hack and slash adventure, Devil May Cry 4 focuses on close combats and enables you to perform extraordinary movements and incredible combos with your sword and a new powerful weapon, the Devil Bringer. Plus, battles feature a hard-beating background music that reminds me of the Blade original soundtrack and which only make them more exciting.

The graphics in Devil May Cry are impressive. I tested the game on a Vista machine with DirectX 10, and I can tell the game makes the most of the computer's resources, rendering beautiful landscapes, realistic light effects and smooth movements.

On the downside we find game's controls. You can really tell this game was originally developed for consoles, because it's really hard to control it with a keyboard. If you have a gamepad you can plug into your PC, I'd recommend using it even if it's only to test the demo.

Devil May Cry 4 presents us with a new episode in the war between Nero and Dante against the forces of evil. Great graphics and brilliant battles make of this game a worthy action adventure, despite its difficult keyboard controls.

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Kung-Fu Master Returns is an attempt to remake the 1984 arcade classic, Irem's "Kung-Fu Master".

The background music is a remix of the original game song, made by Tsu Ryu. Graphics are taken from several sources (most of them recent fighting games). The full list of credits, as well as the instructions for playing, are described in the documentation files.

If you know the original game, you'll absolutely love this.

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Enter the world of Robert Foster, a dark, grimy city with rampant corruption from where he must escape. Having seemingly lost his parents as a child when they tried to escape from the city with him in a helicopter that crashed, he is found and taken prisoner by the city authorities. As fate would have it, the chopper in which he has been taken prisoner also goes down and so begins the adventure.

With definite Orwellian influences and reminders of the classic Blade Runner, Foster must voyage to the ground floor of the skyscraper he finds himself on, avoiding the unmerciful guards, making friends, and solving puzzles on the way. Death lurks around every corner in this point-and-click adventure, so a cool head and plenty of saving is advised. Although point-and-clicks were very popular around the time Beneath a Steel Sky was released (1994), this one stood out from the pack with its extremely well-balanced mix of problem solving, exploration, and dialog.

The controls are about as intuitive as you can get, with need only for the mouse. You examine objects with the left button, and interact with the right, and as you progress through the narrative you will pick up objects and information with which to solve any pending puzzles. At times retracing your steps is essential and can become a source for frustration if you aren’t entirely sure of what is expected of you next. This is offset by the sheer satisfaction of completing each task and delving further in to the plot of the story.

In terms of graphics, Beneath a Steel Sky fares pretty well against titles from the same period, and with original hand-drawn scenery, it has stood up well to the test of time. Anyone who has played the game will know what we mean when we say prepare for some corny jokes, the kind that leave you groaning in agony. What’s more, originality jumps off the scale at some points, such as when you plug your-self in to a virtual world and try to solve some trippy abstract puzzles!

Without doubt, this game has influenced many others that have followed through the years, and now that it’s available for free, can serve you many hours of quality game play and represents one of the key players in gaming history.

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Prey tells the story of Tommy, a Cherokee garage mechanic stuck on a reservation going nowhere. His life changes when another-worldly crisis forces him to awaken spiritual powers from his long-forgotten birthright. Abducted along with his people to a menacing alien mother ship orbiting Earth, he sets out to save himself, his girlfriend and eventually his planet. In Prey, gamers enter an unpredictable world where nothing can be taken for granted.

Features:

• Built on an enhanced Doom 3 engine, the most impressive 3D engine used in a released game
• Portal technology adds a new dimension to gameplay, allowing enemies to appear out of thin air and create new and completely original puzzles and gameplay styles
• Several never-before-seen gameplay elements such as Spirit Walking, Wall Walking, and Deathwalk
• Highly organic, living environment that itself can attack Tommy
• A deep, emotional story of love and sacrifice
• Tommy has a sidekick, a spiritual hawk that can help him fight enemies and decipher the alien language of the living ship
• Multiplayer game support that takes advantage of the unique gameplay styles in Prey

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"Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars" is a sequel of "Cossacks: European Wars," the hit of 2000-2001. Developed on a new 3D engine, the game combines 2D graphics and the latest achievements in 3D technologies. Significant rework on the engine as well as a number of gameplay innovations allow for presenting the game on a new level. "Cossacks II: Napoleonic Wars" answers to the latest technology advances and provides a chance to even hardcore RTS gamers to experience a brand new gameplay of historical battles played on the true-to-life scale, with tactics and strategy particularities of warring sides taken into account.

Napoleonic period brought "civilized" warfare, fighting in combat formations into being. The very principle is put into practice in Cossacks II gameplay. Generally speaking, formations play a decisive role on the battlefields whereas individual units are mostly ineffective. Players are given a chance to lead their armies to victory in epic battles with tens of thousands of units on the map. The new engine's ability to zoom in and soar upwards to get a bird's-eye view of the battle makes Cossacks II the most spectacular game about the Napoleonic era.

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