As a user request, the excessively old PC game, Digger! From way back in 1983 this ye olde game is quite a family favourite. We've been heading out to the way old pc in our freezing cold garage to play Digger, wearing our coats and trying to best each other's best scores.

Turning the tables
The first weapon you have available is you gun. Apparently this digger is equipped for warfare. Yes, just a click of F1 and you'll fire a asterix looking fireball that will kill the first enemy it hits, or else hit harmlessly into the dirt (the Nobbins and Hobbins are quite good at dodging).

Another good way to get them is by dropping the Gold bags on them. It crushes the enemy and leaves a pile of debris which if you go over gives you points! The same debris is left by dropping a gold bag at least 2 spaces, but beware as they can crush you too.

Finally, the pièce de résistance is the "Bonus", i.e. cherries. Reminiscent of Pac-Man, getting the cherries makes the screen flashy and enables you to gobble up the Nobbins and Hobbins in your digger mouth, Mwahahah!

Conclusion
A classic game, simple yet addictive. If you want to play it yourself, you can find a remade version online here, or even download it to your PC with a level editor and more from here! Note: to use the downloadable version you'll need a DOS emulator like DOSbox, which is easier to use with a front end, I use D-Fend Reloaded. Another thing I will note is that a HD Digger version has been released for the PS3, shown above, with new graphics and new features and also includes the original game, available from the PS3 marketplace.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is the most recent game in the Splinter Cell series, where you play as spy Sam Fisher, using a variety of gadgets and weapons to achieve your objectives, most memorably the night vision goggles which have become a kind of logo for the series.

Overview
In SC:C, Sam has basically retired, however events of a massive plot bring him out of his retirement and force him back into saving the world once again. Splinter Cell has always been a series full of twists and turns so I won't go deeper into the plot if you don't know it. One thing I will mention is the interesting way of displaying objectives. To make it more immersive, similar to Dead Space, the objectives are shown on the walls, which like Dead Space does make it cooler than them just popping up on your screen as in Gears of War and most other games.

Stealth
As with the other Splinter Cell games you can often find a sneaky route around enemies, like up a pipe or through a window and so on, and it's still useful to turn off or shoot out lights so enemies cannot see you. However, in SP:C you will practically live in the dark. When in a shadow the world turns grayscale but with interactive/explosive objects like chandeliers and fire extinguishers as well as enemies still showing up in full colour.

Another aspect added in SC:C is the Last Known Position, which is basically that if you are spotted and get into cover then a white outline shows your last known position, and the enemy will head towards and attack that position, allowing you to sneak away.

Equipment and challenges
In SC:C the weapons are the usual SMG's, Assault Rifles, Shotguns and the like, however what most of us tend to find ourselves using the pistol, specifically the five seven. This is for two reasons, first you have infinite ammo with pistols and second the five seven has the most marks available in the game.

Like most games these days, SC:C offers some specific challenges to aim for throughout your gameplay that grant you with upgrade points that you can use for weapon, armour and equipment upgrades.

Another really interesting addition is the Sonar Goggles, which when activated show you enemies through the walls, and you can even mark them using the goggles! You can also still use an optic cable to look under doors and can mark enemies using that as well.

Co-op and Multiplayer
In SC:C there is a fair amount you can do with a friend or online. There is an entirely separate Co-op campaign, unlike most games where you would just play the same campaign but have two or more of you, as in Halo. It's interesting as obviously the Co-op campaign adds more storyline.

There is also multiplayer which can be done split screen or over Xbox Live, with four main gametypes. There is Hunter where you have to clear the map of enemies, and if spotted instead of the ten enemies in the section you get a further ten added. In Infiltration it's exactly the same as Hunter but if spotted or detected you just fail. Face-Off is a gametype where you and the other player are pitted against each other, but with optional bots running around killing you both! Finally Last Stand is another Horde like game mode, where you have to defend an EMP generator from waves of enemies.

Interrogations
Another big thing added to SC:C, probably to highlight how Sam is acting on his own now and is a bit more brutal about it, is the interrogations that occur throughout the game. Basically you have a hostage with information and you can interact with the environment around you to torture them for information. It's all a bit messy, but very satisfying after spending so much time sneaking around.

Conclusion
Splinter Cell: Conviction has a lot to offer, both the single player and co-op storylines are quite interesting and fun to play through. The wealthy of gadgets and weapons, coupled with the level layouts, always provide a number of different ways to do a level. The multiplayer game modes are well worth a go as well, particularly hunter. All in all, another good game that is well worth a play, however I would recommend the stealthy approach as going in all guns blazing is a quick way to get you killed.

So Guitar Hero. If you don't know the first thing about Guitar Hero you must have been living under a gaming rock. In GH you use a Guitar shaped controller with five note buttons and a strum bar to try and the notes of a variety of songs. As the series has progressed they have gone from just guitar to also having bass, mic and drums, but the drums are quite expensive so I've only used my friends kit for them.

Overview
Warriors of Rock is the last in the GH series, Activision deciding to axe the series, likely due to Rock Band taking all their sales. Aw with most of the Guitar Hero games, WoR adds a whole new slew of songs you can choose from, being shipped with 93 at release and plenty more available to download, and it continues to offer all the different instruments mentioned above. It is worth noting as well that the appearance of the game has improved, but not massively.

Quickplay
In quickplay you can play any song you have unlocked or purchased, either on you own or in a band with friends on the same console or even over Xbox Live. Each instrument has its own challenges to aim for for every song, as does playing as a band. It's still a staple of the series' feel that it's a game you get out while your friends are over or at a party.

With the soon to be released Assassin's Creed Revelations coming out, its release date set for November the 15th 2011, if you haven't got around to playing Brotherhood yet then you better get your skates on! Brotherhood is the third game in the series but technically its Assassin's Creed 2 part 2, with Revelations going to be part three.

Series Overview
In the Assassin's Creed series you are actually playing a 20th century man called Desmond. In AC1 he is captured by the Abstergo company and put into a machine called the Animus, a machine that regresses Desmond through his "Genetic memories". In AC1 the ancestor whose memories you "relive" is called Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, a member of the Assassin's guild in the 11th and 12th centuries. The Assassin's sworn enemies are the Templars who you find out are still about now and they are the Abstergo company. In AC2 you continue to use an Animus but with some 20th century assassins who helped you to escape Abstergo. In AC2's animus you go back to a different ancestor called Ezio Auditore, whose story you continue in AC:B.

Weapons and Combat
As in the previous AC's, your main weapons are your hidden blade and your sword, and you can still execute two enemies at once with the twin hidden blade added in AC2. AC:B added a few new weapons to the arsenal you have in AC2 though, namely a crossbow, usefully enabling long distance stealth kills, a few other heavy weapons likes maces and spears, and poison darts (a weapon I didn't realise was in the game and only found that out when getting the pictures for this review!).

The far weightier thing added into AC:B is the Execution Chain. Basically when you execute an enemy in combat you can immediately select another enemy and execute them and so on, only stopping if you get hit or if you run out of enemies!

Upgrading
In AC:B they have increased the revenue source from AC2. In AC2 you have a villa called Monteriggioni which you upgraded and it regularly deposits money into your chest. In AC:B you upgrade the whole of Rome, as the game is only set in the one massive city, from little tunnels to enable fast travel about right upto the Colosseum itself!

Then there are also the guilds. In the city there is a Courtesans guild, Warriors guild, Thieves guild and an Assassin's Guild setup by Ezio himself. Each guild is again something you can build up, by buying buildings and completing sub-tasks, which enhance both the groups themselves and give you little added passive bonuses and unique weapons. The Assassins guild however is actually a new feature added in AC:B whereby, at the touch of a button, you call a group of your Assassins to help you. There are three levels of the aid, the first two summon assassins to kill your target and then attack nearby enemies whereas having the third level unleashes an arrow storm that kills every enemy on the screen!

Multiplayer
This is one of the largest areas that AC:B adds to the AC series. There are a growing number of gametypes, but the three main ones are Wanted, where you are on your own hunting one target and another player is hunting you, Alliance, which is the same but you are in teams of two hunting and being hunter, and finally my favourite Manhunt where you are in two teams of five, one team hunting and the other team hiding and only able to stun and then you swap. The multiplayer is full of challenges to complete and characters, abilities and weapons to unlock. Lots of fun and adds an interesting new dynamic to the series.

Ahh Dead Space. The Survival Horror that brings the horror back to the genre that Resident Evil left behind and that Silent Hill has stopped being notieable. Seriously, there have apparently been several Silent Hill games out in the last few years and I just hadn't noticed.

Overview
Dead Space is a third person game set in a futuristic universe where you are Isaac the mechanic, a man worried for the survival of his girl and assigned to repair her ship after the comms went down. Shockingly it all goes to pot even before your repair ship docks with the massive silent ship the USG Ishimura, a planet cracker class spaceship, and before you know it you are on your own fending against strange creatures for your own survival!

Necromorphs
The creatures you encounter in Dead Space are generally collectively known as the Necromorphs. Another interesting idea implemented in Dead Space is that, unlike in Resident Evil (which is pretty much the benchmark for Survival Horror) headshots are NOT the way to go. In fact most of the enemies function fine without a head.

No, in Dead Space the order of the day is dismemberment, and a lot of it. The most common Necromorph is a humanoid creature with scythe like arms. Shoot its head off and it will just keep charging you, but shoot its legs off... and it will claw its way towards you on its arms, but then once you've shot those off it dies. And that's the point really, how tough the enemies are to kill varies with how good you are at dismembering them.

Weaponry
Another section that Dead Space has been clever with is its guns. As Isaac is a mechanic and not a soldier he doesn't have most conventional guns. Yes there is an Aliens style pulse rifle but besides that all the weaponry is based on various tools and mining equipment.

You pickup credits and energy nodes throughout the game which you can use to upgrade all of your weapons and your armour but again the upgrade system isn't just "use a node and your gun is better". Yes, using the nodes to upgrade your guns helps to improve them, but you have to fill in slots in the upgrade chain, some of which do nothing at all.

Stasis and Kinetic modules
Another element that Dead Space uses, not quite as original but still adding to the awesome-ness is the Kinetic and Stasis. The Stasis module is a constant weapon in Isaac's arsenal. With the Stasis module you can freeze enemies and objects, and along with the Kinetic module you can move heavy objects, both of which are used to progress through fairly simple puzzles.

Conclusion
Dead Space is a very good game. It has a number of innovative features, it is very immersive, and it a very freaking scary game. You can't really describe scary, you need to experience it yourself. So you should try Dead Space, and just remember that in Zero-G, nobody can hear you scream!

Space Marine is a game based on the Warhammer 40,000 universe and the tabletop miniature wargame. There have been a fair few of games based on this universe but by far the most successful so far have been the Dawn of War series. Space Marine changes all that.

Overview
In Space Marine you play as a captain of an Ultramarine squad and you charge through the battlefields of an Imperial Forge World called Graia, fighting various orks and later on chaos (not really a spoiler, as it's obvious because of the multiplayer). The campaign is a moderate to long campaign, but Space Marine doesn't really shine in general, but in specifics.

Combat
In Space Marine you have the usual assortment of weapons taken from the Warhammer universe, a sniper rifle, a bolter (your main gun), and upto heavier weapons like the Heavy Bolter, the Plasma Cannon and the Lascannon. They are all well and good and nothing really blows your mind there (although a headshot will still blow the enemies). Where the game really comes into its own is the melee, and it kinda feels like you need to charge headlong into every fight. For starters you cannot take cover, something that has been force fed into our gamer psyche as a necessity in recent shooters.

Secondly you do not regenerate health as you would in COD or Gears of War, and there are no health packs as in Unreal Tournament and Left 4 Dead. To get your health back you have to execute enemies, generally standing exposed in a group of them while you're doing this. What this equates to is two styles of play. The first is standing behind a wall, nipping out to shoot enemies and then hiding again, which makes you feel like a total woss, or going insane in the melee, hacking your enemies into as many pieces as possible, which is fun but you dance a very fine line between massacring them and death.

Multiplayer
The multiplayer on Space Marine is fairly straightforward, like the rest of the game really. There are two game types, a team deathmatch and a take and hold gametype. In these matches you are either a space marine or a chaos space marine, and there is a moderate degree of customisation. As you complete weapon challenges you unlock different armour pieces (cosmetic only) and various perks for the weapons. You can pick the colour of your armour as well, so you do get to make yourself look like your own miniatures if you own any, which is something I'll come back to below. The free DLC that came out in October added the Exterminatus game type, a 4 player "survive the wave" gametype that is becoming more popular since Horde for Gears of war and then a little later Firefight for Halo.

Gears of War 3 is the culmination of the series, probably the final in the Gears of War series, and it's a good one. Having loved the previous two games, I was fully prepared for this to be another stonker and it does not disappoint.

Overview
Gears of War 3 continues on the story from Gears of War 2 unsurprisingly, though several years have passed. On the planet of Sera, the humans and the monstrous locust have been fighting for the last 14 years since emergence day or E-day. The sinking of Jacinto at the end of Gears 2 decimated the locust threat but a new enemy has emerged called the lambent, which are basically glowing, explosive locust.

Weaponry
Gears of War has always been noted for its visceral weaponry, most notably the lancer, a rifle with a chainsaw. Gears 3 has expanded on this with the retro lancer, a rifle with more recoil and a normal bayonet and its ability to carry out a "retro charge" where you literally charge an enemy, impale them with the bayonet and throw the corpse to one side. Other new weapons are the Sawed-off shotgun, which is insanely powerful at point blank range, but is balanced by low ammo and long reloads. and the Digger, a gun that fires subterranean explosives that pop out of the ground killing anyone nearby or can be fired into their chest for a quicker kill!

Besides that is the One-Shot, a new heavy weapon that aims with a laser and once charged does what its name suggests. Also added is the new heavy weapon the Vulcan, a mingun with really quick firing but is best used with a 2nd player acting as an ammo loader. They've also added an incendiary grenade, which basically does what it says on the tin.

Executions
Gears 2 ramped up the executions that you could perform and this has been further developed in 3, with each weapon now having its own unique execution. These executions need to be unlocked by performing a certain number of kills with the weapon so they actually feel like a little in game reward, and the executions are fairly visceral. Just so you can enjoy them, check all of them out in the video below.

Unlockables
As with the executions there is a lot of content that you can unlock by completing certain tasks. Multiplayer character skins and weapon skins can be unlocked by leveling up your character and obtaining various medals. The medals are another new addition. Practically everything in Gears 3 has an onyx medal to work towards, from getting curb stomp executions in versus to pressing buttons in campaign.

It is interesting to note that in Gears 1 and 2 there were two achievements, called Seriously or Seriously 2.0, which required a certain amount of kills, 10,000 in Gears 1 and 100,000 in Gears 2. In Gears 3 Seriously 3.0 requires you to be level 100 and have all 65 onyx medals, which among other things includes doing 18,000 versus matches of specific types and 64,000 kills in specific circumstances, so will likely take forever to finish.

Co-op Game Types
In Gears 2 they introduced the horde mode, a very fun game mode where you and up to 4 team mates fight off waves and waves of locust. In Gears 3 they have revamped horde. The principle is the same but now you earn money that you can spend on building defenses such as barricades, automatic turrets and the powerful Silverback, a mech with a minigun. These defences improve as you spend more money on them and of course there are onyx medals for spending money and for doing waves.

A new game type they have introduced is Beast mode, the flip side of horde. In Beast mode you play as the locust fighting the humans with their defenses setup. As you kill the AI humans and destroy their defenses you earn money that you can use to be higher and more powerful types of locust, the best being the Armoured Kantus, the Bezerker and the Savage Boomer, a boomer armed with a digger gun.

Versus Game Types
Versus mode has always been a big part of Gears, and Gears 3 is no exception. They have changed a few game types though. They have amalgamated the King of the Hill and Annex games to be just King of the Hill, where you have to take and hold a location that switches every 60 seconds.

They have done the same with Guardian and Submission, so now in Capture the Leader you have to capture and hold the enemy leader for a certain amount of time.  Also they have added a Team Deathmatch and a newbie playlist to make versus more accessible to players new to the series. However if you've played Gears 2 it will recognize this and let you go straight to the normal matches.