Activision

Game Description: Take a look overhead—Spider-Man is arriving to the PlayStation just in time. As the beloved photojournalist-cum-webslinger, you'll freely explore New York's skyline, sewers, and hideouts to fulfill several missions. Use Spider-Man's superhuman strength to fight such notorious foes as Scorpion, Venom, and Rhino. Use his spider abilities to spin webs (any size) to disable and detain bosses, swing around buildings, and creep along walls and ceilings. And thanks to your spider-sense, you'll detect impending danger from a distance. There is no wealth or fame at the end of this game, however; action is your reward.

In his opening paragraph, Dale said that this is the Spider-Man game that "got it right." While I don't doubt this is probably the best Spider-Man videogame ever made (though the old Atari 2600 one was pretty awesome for its time), I still think the developers missed the mark ever so slightly.

Game Description: From grinding to sliding to riding rails, you can do it all in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. You can free-skate around a number of parks, malls, and high schools without any hassles from the cops. Get aggressive and grind like a pro without worrying about skinned knees, and jump off tall buildings and walk away to tell the tale. Now you can become a pro skater without even buying a board.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Language

To watch any of the skateboarding commercials these days, you'd think that skateboarding was as illegal and immoral as highway drag racing. They all follow the same recipe—ending with skateboarders being chased away by the police or some sort of authority figure from wherever they were trying to indulge in their sport (with a few shots of disapproving elderly bystanders for that added touch).

While performing tricks and scoring in a free fashion was a total blast, I found trying to complete the various goals in the one-player mode to acquire tapes to be less thrilling. Like Dale previously mentioned, one of the major problems is repetition.

Going multiplayer was part of John Carmacks grand experiment and I commend him for it. Whenever I cruised to some of the Quake specific web sites, there were always loads of new Quake mods available, created specifically for online Deathmatches and CTF games. This was telling proof that gamers were hungry for deathmatch-specific levels and Im really not surprised that a game like this was made for them.

Game Description: This is the highly anticipated next installment in the Quake series of adventure games. Quake 3: Arena continues the action of the earlier two games but adds more intense action, surreal graphics, and a phenomenal multiplayer mode. Three player classes (light, medium, and heavy) with their own strength, speed, and armor levels, together with new characters and weapons (plus old favorites, such as the BFG), make this a thrilling first-person shooter game. The game also features body armor and health kits to help keep you alive. Quake 3 makes for an exhilarating single-player game, but to truly discover what makes this game great, try out the mulitplayer mode for up to 32 players in one-on-one matches or group conquests.

Videogames have also been considered another plain old recreational activity, but with the release of the much anticipated online multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS), Quake III: Arena (Q3A), that perception may finally change. The activity of Deathmatching (dueling to the death in cyberspace), which was popularized by FPS games like Q3A, may finally be considered a legitimate sport; digital or otherwise.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood & Gore, Animated Violence