Game Downloads

Two key things will undoubtedly run through your mind as you play Valve's first-person survivors-versus-zombies shooter Left 4 Dead: the phrase "oh, s***!" repeated ad nauseam in response to a stressful turn of events, and the phrase "goddamn sadistic Director system" after either surviving or failing that stressful turn.

Top 5 Things Videogames Have Taught Me
Never to Do
And people wonder why we're afraid to go outside. By Scott Sharkey

Away: Shuffle Dungeon might be the most taxing game I've ever played. The exhaustion isn't a matter of reflexes, however; like most top-down action-role-playing games, it doesn't require thumb dexterity so much as cautious play. That's the rub, though: Caution only goes so far when the dungeon's rearranging itself every few seconds.

It's no secret that World of Warcraft has been a tremendous global blockbuster, even in the hard-to-crack Asian markets. But if Lord of the Rings Online's lead developer Jeff Steefel has his way, the Middle-Earth MMO could be the second western success story when it launches on that side of the Pacific next year.

People still can't seem to get enough of the Wii, at least judging from its monthly dominance of the sales charts, but one place it hasn't dominated is online gaming. Its reliance on players exchanging twelve digit "friend codes" to connect with each other flies in the face of the Wii's approach of being so easy to use anyone can pick it up and play right away. They've left the door open for someone else to seize the mainstream audience for creating an online community accessed through your home gaming console, and with the none-too-subtle avatars in the new Xbox Live experience launching this week Microsoft seems eager to take advantage of the opportunity.