UEFA Challenge is a football game that combines both playability and durability along with a good dose of realism. The game features all of Europe's top teams and players. As the game installs you are presented with graphics and video footage of a handful of well-known and talented players such a Figo (the most expensive player on the planet), Del Piero, Simeone, Dwight Yorke and others. UEFA Challenge features all the biggest European clubs (Liverpool, Mancheaster United, Real Madrid, Arsenam, Juventus, Chelsea...) with their real players, skills, and strips, each their player has a unique playing style depending on personal attributes and position on pitch, more than 125 National and Club teams to choose from, and over 20 high resolution stadia (Old Trafford, Highbury, Anfield, Nou Camp and other).

The game offers the usual array of options that you would expect of a football game, plus some extras such a special game modes: Quick Start, Friendly, Club Challenge, Preset Competitions, Season, Tournament, Practice mode. In addition the game includes a Editor, so you can change team and player names and create all kinds of strange looking football greats by altering skin color, hair color, hair style and amount of facial hair. Unfortunately you cannot alter an individual's assortment of skill attributes.

UEFA Challenge has an impressive graphics and action replay facility, also you can choose from four camera modes: Side Linear Near, Side End Near, Side Blimp, TV Camera. The in-game commentary is well done (non repetitive), only music accompanying the option screens can become a little repetitive, but it isn't big problem. Honestly I very liked to play this surprisingly very realistic football game (probably more realistic than many other football games of the past) with pretty fast and frantic gameplay. Only I don't know if also Americans (who mostly prefer non-European's sports) will like this game so much as Europeans. However UEFA Challenge should keep interest going longer than many of the other football games out there.

Rise of Nations is a historical real-time strategy game which combines the strategic and in-depth features found in turn-based strategy games with the speed of real-time strategy games. The game was developed by Big Huge Games, the team behind Civilization 2 and Alpha Centauri, famous turn-based strategy games. However, the team has decided to move away from the turn-based genre for Rise of Nations. I bet most gamers will appreciate it. Rise of Nations brings a great deal of innovation from the turn-based world that creates a very different game-playing experience. National borders that define where you can build, multiple key cities you must defend, detailed tactical combat, and an in-depth technology tree all help bring that strategic depth from the turn-based world. You can win through military might, using everything from slingshots to cannons to stealth bombers; corner the market on key commodities, and wheel and deal with a wide variety of nations. You can quickly play from the Ancient Age (2000 B.C) to the Information Age.

Rise of Nations features over 6,000 years of history - you will advance through eight different ages - classical, medieval, gunpowder, enlightenment, industrial, modern, information and future, each with their own rewards; 18 highly diverse nations - each with its own distinctive nation powers and special units (Aztecs, Bantu, British, Chinese, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Inca, Japanese, Koreans, Maya, Mongols, Nubians, Romans, Russians, Spanish and Turks); many different objects such as Barracks, City, Forge, Fort, Library, Market, Oil Platform, Sawmill, Temple, Refinery, University; over 220 different unit types, with over 500 artistically distinct variations based on gender, race and time period, ranging from slingers, bowmen, musketeers to M1-A1 Abrams Heavy Tank, Missile Cruiser, Submarines, Jets and rocket-launching MLRS units defended by anti-air and infantry to nuclear weapons.

All the mechanics of traditional RTS games are here - there's resource gathering of standard resources such as food, timber, metal, oil, knowledge, wealth, and over 32 unique rare resources (they are inexhaustible and scattered around a map randomly) such as Aluminium, Amber, Bison, Citrus, Coal, Copper, Cotton, Diamonds, Fish, Gems, Horses, Marble, Obsidianm, Papyrus, Salt, Silk, Silver, Spice, Sugar, Sulphur, Titanium, Tobacco, Uranium, Wine, etc., construction of buildings and infrastructure, researching various technologies (in four main areas of research: military, civil, commerce, and science), and fielding military units.

Along with six story driven tutorials ranging in difficulty level from beginning to advanced players, the game mainly consists of Quick Battles, World Conquest, and the standard multiplayer. Quick Battles allow you to choose the nationality of yourselves and your opponent(s), along with the option to choose customized and set rules. The set options include modes where you must defend against waves of attackers, play the role of the aggressor, kill a certain unit, start the game without a scout or town, an option to win by research and not war, along with a couple of others. Customizing the game is definitely enjoyable. The main focus of our single-player campaign is Conquer the World, where you take over the world one territory at a time. The global map portion of the campaign is turn-based; you buy special cards that provide specific bonuses for a battle, upgrade your territories, move armies across the landscape, and so forth.

Each scenario is set in a single Age, so you get a great feel for the units and tactics unique to that era.You can set the length of the game to whatever you wish, so you can have a long, drawn-out game or a quick blitz. It's kind of like Risk or Diplomacy meets RTS. Victory in each territory gives you tribute, special resources, or bonus powers to attack a strong enemy. If you do get bored, there's also map editor and a script editor to help build and distribute your own scenarios. Needless to say that Rise of Nations provides an enormous replay value, since no two games will ever be the same.

Armed and Dangerous is a 3rd-person action shooter developed by Planet Moon Studios, the company that brought us Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The lands of Midden have been conquered by the evil King Forge, who has ruled over them with an iron fist for many years. A small band of Robin Hood-esque thieves, called the Lionhearts, who have an axe to grind against the King, decide to pull one last ultimate heist. They stole the famed Book of Rule, the King's prized possession, and thus humiliate him. It doesn't work out exactly as planned, though. What begins as a purely selfish plan changes as the Lionhearts get drawn into the underground rebellion against the King.

In the game, you control a master thief named Roman and your pals Jonesy, a sarcastic, mean-spirited and selfish Scottish moleman who's a miner and a demolition expert, Q1-11, a highbrow former-killer robot that helping you fight and Rexus, a once-powerful magic seer with googly glass eyes. To be exact, your buddies (Jonesy and Q1-11) are controlled by the AI and basically just follow your moves, helping you blast baddies. You can only issue two simple orders to them - "attack target area" and "guard me".

Armed and Dangerous features 21 levels set in five various environments (snowy levels, woods, mountains, sea-spattered cliffs), plenty of weapons like the Hawkings Rifle, Flemming Machine gun, Cyclops Sniper Rifle, Vindaloo Rocket Launcher, Gurner Personal Mortar and the Land Shark Gun, six different types of bombs - Sticky Bombs, Topsy Turvy Bombs, Guy Fawkes Traitor Bomb, Knockout Bomb, and World's Smallest Black Hole, and wicked enemies like half-man, half-animal Grunts, eliminator droids and wall-smashing Goliaths.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward - you and your teammates run across an open landscape employing the weaponry to achieve mission objectives. If course, here are tons of enemies and you have to kill'em all :) So you can expect lots and lots of action in the game. Some weapons are really cool. For example, you have the Land Shark Gun that releases a shark to attack your enemies - that means enemies get swallowed by a shark that swims just under the ground, or the Topsy Turvy bomb that literally turns your world upside down and send enemies in your range up and down in the world as well.

In each state you can carry up to three different regular weapons. To make gameplay a bit more various, sometime you must control a single turret armed with two machine guns and a mortar. That mortar is on a rail atop a wall guarding a town or village. Your objective is to keep a set number of Grunts (usually 100) from getting over the walls and taking over the town for King Forge. There are thousands and thousands little "dots" (ehrm enemies) coming at you! These bonus missions are really very fast-paced and cool.

Overall, Armed and Dangerous is great game, however you will complete it in just a few hours, and unfortunately the replay value is not very good. There's no multiplayer too :( There's no doubt that a co-op mode would be really great addition to the gameplay. Hey developers, do you hear me?! :) Despite the game is short, simplistic and a bit repetitive, I liked it. Honestly, once started, I couldn't stop myself from playing till I finished it. How's that possible? In fact, the in-game-humor and cut-scenes is what you want to play&finish the game for. That's it