Gotham

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Violence

Game Description: At the height of the 1991 Gulf War, 300 clicks into the heart of Iraq, you must command your squad of Special Forces operatives to strike at Iraq's evil dictator, and his fascist regime. Armed with an authentic arsenal of high-tech weapons and vehicles, your squad will face impossible odds in this battle against tyranny. Only strategy and skill will ensure your survival through frantic firefights, gut-wrenching vehicular combat, and gripping stealth operations.

The problem is that after the previous Conflict game was released, another tiny little game edged its way onto consoles. You may remember that little game as Rainbow Six 3. Oddly enough, there were times when I wished that I could do some of the things in Rainbow Six that I can do in Conflict. But overall the tactical action in Rainbow Six is so superior to that of Conflict that Back to Baghdad doesn't do nearly enough to be a contender.

Game Description: Take the wheel of the Zebra 3 with two of the coolest undercover cops in town. Join the soft-spoken Hutch and the street-wise Starsky, as they solve the toughest cases in the roughest neighborhoods—battling the hard-nosed but lovable Captain to fight crime in their own unconventional way. And with the assistance of the always suave and cool Huggy Bear, they stop the criminals every time.

What exactly is a "concept game?" A concept game is one that, rather than simply being a game that requires players to learn how to operate controls so that they can complete objectives and eventually reach the 'ending', tries to create an overall game "experience," where every element works together to further the illusion. Some games that fall into this genre are the recent Rez, with its bizarre world where light and sound become one, or The Getaway, in which the developers attempted to remove everything characteristic of videogames in order to create the first fully playable movie.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Violence

Considering that the source material is a venerable classic of dramatic filmmaking, a game based on the 1963 masterpiece The Great Escape seems overdue. It possesses all of the drama, humanity, and suspense to make an engaging videogame (as long as a few liberties are taken with the plot, of course).

Game Description: You will command four unique soldiers, each with their own skills, strengths, and stories through their capture, escape, and vengeance in the heart of the evil Nazi empire. Use advanced espionage skills in stealth missions, a wide variety of weapons in combat sorties, and a huge array of authentic vehicles in your fight for freedom. Superstar Steve McQueen is digitally resurrected for the fistfights, shootouts, and vehicular mayhem of this WWII classic. You are the new mastermind in this saga of indomitable spirit and daring heroism, can you pull off The Great Escape?

Maybe I'm more of an "old school" gamer than Mike is, but I appreciated Serious Sam a bit more than he did. I found the game's 36-mission campaign to be more than a simple Doom rehash. Certainly there were moments when I felt a twinge of the old Doom nostalgia (I was a Doom-addict in graduate school), but dismissing Serious Sam as little more than a Doom clone isn't giving the game the credit it deserves.