Lara's come a long way since her inception in the original Tomb Raider. Crystal Dynamics proved there was life in the old girl yet after its impressive performances with Legend and Anniversary, but despite this, we approach every demo of the next iteration in the franchise, Tomb Raider Underworld, with trepidation due to some of the missteps made in the all-too-recent past. However, this game features an entirely new engine, a fully motion-captured Lara, and a number of intriguing new dynamics and mechanics.

We got to see a few of these in action during a brief hands-on with a new part of the game, which we were told takes place about an hour in. Warning: The demo that we played featured something of a plot twist that could be considered a spoiler due to the way it unfolds.

We found Lara on a cargo boat, faced with Jacqueline Natla, the main antagonist from the very first Tomb Raider game. Natla is sealed in a capsule that, after a bit of banter, is lifted through the roof and off into the sky by a waiting chopper. As the cutscene continues, a series of explosions rock the ship, and it becomes very clear that getting out is the only reasonable way of surviving. Running through the cramped hallways of the ship, we came up against one of Underworld's adrenalin moments, which replace the quick-time events that littered previous instalments of the franchise. Unlike in previous games, these don't involve pressing certain buttons as prompted onscreen to perform set actions, but simply involve a slowing down of time during some serious onscreen action. In this case, we needed to dive out of the way of a mass of collapsing wreckage as the entire room shifted around Lara.

An explosion somewhere else on board, in fact, made the situation a whole lot worse, and afterward the entire environment had been rotated 90 degrees, with the ship apparently sinking rapidly into the waves. This completely changed the approach to escape, with previously secure floor panels falling away, leaving us with a long climb up the corridor that we'd only recently been running down. The now-exposed under-floor piping proved an excellent place to try out Lara's new free-climbing ability. The right stick let her scramble across the wall, grabbing on to pipes, valves, and pretty much anything that stuck out enough to get a grip on, without the need for much jumping around.

With falling debris to dodge and an interesting three-dimensional path to traverse, the result was a compelling, if brief, game segment that suggests Crystal Dynamics is really trying to bring Lara back in some style.

We then moved to a later segment of the game to try out the combat in a zone that had a slightly richer selection of wildlife, and we were also pleasantly surprised. Fighting a selection of spiders as we scrambled through some very Indiana Jones-style puzzles in an underground temple chamber was exciting, and we found that the dual-pistol targeting worked very well indeed. Lara's new melee moves also looked good, though they didn't prove to be hugely effective against the larger, armoured, spider-like creatures that were attacking her. The same could not be said about the smaller spiders present in other parts of the level; they did not much care for a swift boot bringing squishy death from above.


Minimum System Requirements

OPERATING SYSTEM: Microsoft Windows XP (admin rights required)/Microsoft Windows Vista (admin rights required)

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3+GHz or AMD Athlon 2.5+GHz
RAM: 1GB (Windows XP) / 2GB (Windows Vista) system memory
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce 6 series 6800GT (or better) / ATI 1800XT (or better)

SOUND: Direct X 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM drive
HARD DRIVE: 8 GB Free Space
INPUT DEVICES: Keyboard and mouse

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Recommended System Requirements
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OPERATING SYSTEM: Microsoft Windows XP (admin rights required)/Microsoft Windows Vista (admin rights required)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 4400+
RAM: 2 GB system memory
GRAPHICS: nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX or ATI HD4800
SOUND: Direct X 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM drive
HARD DRIVE: 8 GB Free Space
INPUT DEVICES: Microsoft Xbox360 Controller

Setting out to do for co-op gaming what Counter-Strike did for team combat, Left 4 Dead is an ambitious survival horror game. Running on the Source engine, Left 4 Dead leaves four armed survivors of a world overrun with zombies, and they must fight their way out to escape the outbreak.

Designed for co-op play, the four players must work together to finish each stage of the game, lending each other artillery support, sharing ammo and rescuing each other when zombies are on top of them. In addition to the standard four players as humans, another four players can be amongst the masses of assaulting zombies, seeking to take down the other players. Zombie players might even find themselves become one of the four mutant �boss� zombies, who have unique powers that can be used to devastate, injure, tie up, mark and track, confuse, or even humiliate the gun-toting human survivors.
General Features

* Co-operative gameplay in epic struggle between survivors and zombies
* Choose to play as survivor or 4 types of infected mutants
* Set across 4 massive campaigns
* Game creates a unique and dramatic experience based on players� actions
* Multiplayer games for 1-to-8 players

Requierements :
* OS: Windows XP, Vista, Vista64
* CPU: 3.0 GHz P4, Dual Core 2.0 or AMD64X2 (or higher)
* RAM: 1 GB for XP / 2GB for Vista
* Disc drive: DVD-ROM Drive
* Hard drive: At least 7.5 GB of free space
* Video: Direct X 9 compatible video card -- Video card must be 128 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for pixel shader 2.0 (ATI 9600 or high. Or, Nvidia 6600 or higher)
* Sound: Direct X9.0c compatible sound card

Call of Duty: World at War is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. It is the fifth installment in the Call of Duty series excluding expansion packs. The game's setting returns to World War II, after the previous title Modern Warfare's modern settings. It focuses on the Pacific Theater and Eastern Front of World War II in the Microsoft Windows, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 version. The title, game details and estimated release date were announced on June 23, 2008 and the game was released worldwide between November 11, 2008 and November 14, 2008. A Windows Mobile version was also made available by Glu Mobile and different storyline versions for the PS2 and Nintendo DS were made, but remain in the World War II setting. The game uses an enhanced version of the Modern Warfare's game engine with increased development in audio effects.

The story for the PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 focuses on the initial battles of World War II in the Pacific and Eastern Europe involving the United States, the Empire of Japan, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany. It is told from the perspectives of a Marine Raider and a Red Army soldier and is based on several historical battles, including the raid on Makin Island, the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Peleliu, the Battle of Seelow Heights, the Battle of Okinawa, and the Battle of Berlin. The multiplayer portion of the game contains various game modes and a leveling system that allows the player to unlock additional weapons and rewards as they progress, which was originally implemented in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. A new feature to the Call of Duty series is the cooperative mode, which can support up to four players online and two offline.

The game was the second best-selling game for November 2008 in the United States selling over 1.41 million units and sold twice as many units in the UK in its first week compared to Modern Warfare becoming the third fastest-selling video game in the UK. It received a mixture of reviews. Some criticized the game for returning to World War II and not building upon Modern Warfare, whereas others praised its portrayal of the gritty, dark side of the war. It was also criticized for jumping years ahead during the plot, but was also praised for the new co-operative mode introduced.


Minimum System Requirements:
* CPU: AMD 64 3200+ / Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz +
* Memory: 512MB (XP) or 1GB (Vista)
* HD Space: 8GB
* Graphical Card: Nvidia 6600GT/ATI Radeon 1600XT or higher (Shader 3.0 or better) with 256MB memory