Pummelling bullets into flesh while splashing blood against walls in generous quantities is, most gamers will admit with a cringe, a fairly common part of our pastime. But before you meekly accept your desensitisation to brutal violence, consider this scene from midway through Clive Barker’s Jericho, Codemasters’ latest take on the horror genre, and try to convince yourself it isn’t remotely shocking.

Your foe, a demented leader from Roman times, has grown obese through his insatiable taste for human flesh, and is an unforgivable pervert. When you meet him face to face, he is happily hanging above from chains, which are attached to him via large hooks that dig deep into his repulsive, wobbling body. You’d think he would make for an easy target in his current condition, but, aside from his 40-foot gladiatorial guardian, he also has a more biological weapon.

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Harry Potter seems to be loved by everyone and it’s easy to see why. The story of a young wizard in training who takes on enemies well above his status, only to get in trouble over and over again is something kids can relate to and parents can read/sit through without too much pain. You’d think video games of Harry would be a no brainer then. Boy with magic takes on evil doers with the help of his friends - sounds simple enough.

The problem with the Potter games is that they come paired with the movies, with this year’s game based on the forthcoming Order of the Phoenix. Movies pack everything into a few hours, whereas games need to last a lot longer. This means that all the boring stuff that didn’t make it into the movie is what you’ll be doing in the game. So, in Harry’s latest you spend most of your time at Hogwarts, recruiting school mates for Dumbledore’s army (D.A. Members).

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Being evil is often seen as a bad thing, but how often do we really get to see things from the other side of the fence? Take the characters in Codemasters’ Overlord. These evil doers go about their daily life with a gleeful smile on their faces, relishing every moment of their frowned upon activities. Is it that these brutes simply love inflicting pain on others or is Overlord perhaps not quite as evil as the story suggests?

In a Fable-esque fantasy world full of make believe creatures and every bright colour known to man, you take on the role of the Overlord. This guy has been resurrected after the ruin of his kingdom and it’s your job to bring it back to its former glory. Being the man in charge he’s not too keen on getting into fights himself or doing much actual work, so he has a team of imp-like minions to do his bidding.

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It only seems like a handful of weeks since Lord of the Rings Online went global and proved that there was still plenty space in the market for a new MMO based on a vintage fantasy licence. But it is somewhat surprising to find that another classic brand with a heritage stretching back to long before the time of consoles and circuitry is preparing itself to stride into the crowded world of the MMO.

Conan the Barbarian has previously been most popular in comic book form, with his graphic adventures enjoying unrivalled popularity in Scandinavia. Yet despite good sales, and a series of well-loved films starring Arnie, the muscular warrior has never quite achieved the mainstream success he might have hoped for on UK shores.

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Rallying is a motorsport that seems tailor-made for video games, yet its thrilling high speed racing around the most perilous of courses doesn’t seem to get as much attention as the Gran Turismos and Ridge Racers of this world. Colin McRae: Dirt combines the precision and concentration of the most hardcore sims, but also the thrills and immediacy of the best arcade racers, with a stunning next-gen engine to boot. Has rallying finally made its move into the mainstream, ready to achieve worldwide success?

Straight away you’ll be taken aback by Dirt’s exemplary presentation. The menus are fully 3D and as slick as anything you’re likely to see, with a crisp rectangle for every game mode and challenge. Their simple design but classy elegance puts the menus in other games to shame and makes you wonder why more modern titles haven’t made the most of this often overlooked area of a game. Even the loading screens look wonderful, with user stats being delivered as you wait. It’s highly polished and gives the perfect first impression.

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Developer Ascaron Entertainment can only be praised for its bold approach to the games it makes. Despite being a relatively small studio, it has previously tackled the hugely popular and vastly crowded action-RPG market, and succeeded. The first Sacred game has continued to be a sleeper hit, and still has a large installed user base playing regularly.

With work well underway on Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, Ascaron are going straight for the jugular of the big league genre leaders Titan Quest and Diablo. While Blizzard’s Diablo is aging a little now, Titan Quest is still an established and recent title, meaning Sacred 2 is going to have to swim rapidly against the torrent to achieve the success of its predecessor.

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If anyone remembers Zombies Ate My Neighbours for the SNES and Megadrive back in 1994, they should know exactly what to expect with Monster Madness. Commercially, the two games are unrelated, but spiritually they have the same undead heart. One, however, is a good deal better than the other.

Each sees you assume the role of an unwitting teenage protagonist, lumbered with the responsibility of protecting their suburban neighbourhood from a scourge of rampaging zombie fiends.

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Michael Bay’s upcoming Transformers movie is earning rave early reviews and looks set to be one of the year’s biggest movies, but what of the video game? Due out on just about every format going, the Traveller’s Tales developed action title is expected to do big business. Activision stopped by to demo the Xbox 360 version and it looks like fans of the movie aren’t going to be disappointed.

Being a movie licensed title the game follows the story of the film, but also adds plenty of new content to flesh out the story. Each level is based in a free-roaming area, with the players free to go where they like, but an entire free-roaming world simply wasn’t possible due to the worldwide spread of locations in which the film is set. Although I was only able to play an early level with Bumblebee, set in a typical US town, later levels vary substantially.

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With the sequel to 2004’s action-RPG Sacred due in the first quarter of next year for PC and 360, Pro-G took some time to talk with Product Manager for Ascaron Entertainment, Alan Wild. While the game is still in a relatively early stage of development, there is already plenty to be learned about Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, which strives to be accessible and packed with replay value.

Pro-G: Hi Alan. The action-RPG genre is already full of decent quality titles. What does Sacred 2: Fallen Angel offer that distinguishes it from its rivals?

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Sitting down to tackle a selection of multiplayer World in Conflict closed BETA games some months after playing the Alpha build for the first time, it is instantly apparent that Massive Entertainment’s new nuke-’em-up loses none of its excitement and immediacy on a second visit.

Of course, like any action RTS played online, it can be an overwhelming experience, made all the worse by the army of players who already seem to have reached Zen levels of gaming ability, despite the fact that the game hasn’t even reached its retail maturity

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Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare are both veterans of the video game industry. They’ve worked together on numerous titles, including the cult classic Deus Ex and its sequel Invisible War. The one thing they haven’t done is create a rollercoaster, thrill a second, heart pumping, adrenaline filled action title. This is what the pair claim Blacksite will be. It’s the game they’ve wanted to make for some time, and early impressions suggest they’re well on the road to achieving their goal.

By now there’s a good chance Xbox 360 owners will have sampled the game thanks to the tasty little Xbox Live Marketplace demo. The game has come some way since then, with the demo based on a build that dates back to December 2006. I got hands-on time with three new levels and things are certainly looking action packed.

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PC gamers can be a hardcore bunch at times. Years of upgrading, tweaking, more upgrading, reinstalls, more upgrading and general maintenance has meant they are rather picky when it comes to games. Ask any veteran PC gamer about console games and you’ll probably be met with something about the lack of keyboard and mouse, and how consoles become outdated too quickly. Ports over from consoles often insult these guys, unhappy by the treatment their beloved gaming platform has received. So when Ghost Recon became a console franchise, the news wasn’t met with much love.

But PC gamers needn’t have worried too much. While Xbox 360 owners got a tactical but still fairly arcadey third-person shooter, Ubisoft and Grin Software developed the PC version separately, building it to the strengths of the platform. GRAW on the PC is an altogether more hardcore experience, where the difficulty is punishing, the view is first-person and that arcade feel is nowhere to be seen. Fans are in luck, as Grin has gone it alone once again with GRAW 2 for PC.

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Deep below the streets of Paris, in an underground hall at the famous Louvre museum, Matthew Ferland, Senior Producer of Splinter Cell: Conviction, sat down to answer some questions on the latest stealth game from the famous Tom Clancy brand of games.

Pro-G: Conviction clearly takes the Splinter Cell series of games in a new direction. Can you tell me a little about that?

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No game genre experienced as rapid a rise and fall as stealth. When Metal Gear Solid introduced it to the masses, it was dramatic, loaded with tension and oozed originality. But as quickly as it ignited the gaming world, the genre’s quality was extinguished by lazy clones. For a while every game with a third-person perspective seemed to include sneaking and strangling from behind, and even today it rears its ugly head in most action titles.

Once fresh and invigorating, sneakily moving past security guards quickly felt slow and painstaking, and even the mighty Metal Gear series began to falter. The only series that really made the sneak-’em-up worth exploring yet again was Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, starring the light footed Sam Fisher and his employers, the Third Echelon. But today even Sam couldn’t get away with yet another corridor shuffling romp, so something new was needed, and that comes in the form of ’social stealth’.

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Another ‘historically accurate’ WWII shooter is always going to meet groans from the video game press, backed up by accusations that it can offer nothing new to a genre already bled dry by identikit games.

Most gamers have even grown tired of dubious claims of originality by publishers desperate to convince people their product has something new to offer the military-based FPS. Recently we’ve had ‘alternate WWII realities’ and interchangeable characters with mixed abilities, but nothing has really done much in the genre’s favour.

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