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Occasionally a videogame so perfectly exemplifies a particular type of gameplay that its name becomes interchangeable with that of its genre. Mario is easy shorthand for the Platform game; Tetris, piece by piece epitomises the Puzzle genre; Dance Dance Revolution is foot sign language for Rhythm Action; and Street Fighter's Ryu and Ken, even today, bounce hunched as poster boys for Beat-‘em-ups everywhere.

Dear Santa, for Christmas please bring me a Warhammer 40,000 MMO. This is, after all, the franchise that cheerfully pilfers every single great idea sci-fi has ever had, sticks it all in a giant fiction-blender and then adds several pints of bubbling blood. Just imagine all that presented as a living online world to carve your way through. The sights you'd see, the things you'd kill and be killed by - aliens, mechs, demons and men in a startling array of flavours, all itching for a taste of your Heavy Bolter. Imagine, just imagine playing as a Space Marine and falling prey to the corruption of Chaos, then choosing the fascinatingly monstrous ways in which your body mutates and gains dark new abilities. But no, instead we get another couple of dozen cheerless grind marathons filled with elves and wizards. I'm so bored of elves and wizards. If I met one in the street, I'd probably punch him. Why, why, why is the first Games Workshop MMORPG the upcoming Warhammer Online, which, however good it may turn out to be, enters into such an overcrowded online fantasy market when there's a near-vacant sci-fi one GW could just stroll right in and, thanks to that incredibly rich Warhammer 40,000 universe, take without contest? Sigh.

People have every right to moan about the monotony of incremental 'spot the difference' updates. We can understand that the ever-changing nature of sports games justifies a new version every year, but when it comes to FIFA, EA not only takes the biscuit, but waves it in your face, munches it with undisguised glee, dances a jig on the coffee table and runs out of the door screaming with its shirt pulled over its head. Not even counting FIFA Street 2, FIFA 07 on Xbox 360 is the fifth update to the franchise in just shy of 400 days.

Bethesda Softworks is to publish a new Unreal Engine 3 powered first-person shooter called Rogue Warrior on Xbox 360, according to Official Xbox 360 Magazine. (Update: an announcement today confirmed that the game will also be released on PC and PS3.)

Sony has released a special Halloween LocoRoco demo along with a new firmware update for PSP, the latter of which brings the system up to version 2.82.

The wait is over! Actually, let's rephrase: elements of the wait are over! For example, we've got a PlayStation 3. Yes it's quite nice thanks. But what we've actually got is a 'debug' unit, which, while it looks exactly like the 500,000 final units Sony will be shipping out to US and Japanese retailers next month, is designed to let us play unfinished preview code, and at the moment lacks a number of key interface features. Sony would want us to be very specific about that. Otherwise that's what their phone call in half an hour is going to be about.

Developer David Jaffe admits he'll probably end up working on more God of War games after the first one proved so popular, but right now he's falling in love with Sony's "e-Distribution Initiative" (EDI) - PlayStation 3's answer to Xbox Live Arcade and Nintendo's Virtual Console.

With Dark Messiah of Might & Magic out today on PC, Eurogamer TV is running a special exclusive introduction to the war-town land of Ashan, with a sneak peek at the game's opening story sequence, and a run through of all the game's key features.

RedOctane has announced that it will release proper, official wireless Guitar Hero controllers in the US next month, and they'll cost just US$ 59.99.

Eurogamer's first poker challenge heat, brought to you in association with our friends at PKR, took place last night, with 71 people scowling unreadably at one another across the Internet until the early hours in the hope of taking a cut of the US$ 500 cash pot.

The new Gears of War trailer available to Xbox Live Gold customers this week may be a sign of things to come, according to Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hryb - one of Microsoft's more visible next-gen bloggers.

PC owners wondering why their version of Splinter Cell: Double Agent isn't out this Friday can breathe a bit easier: the game's gone gold, and should be on shelves on 10th November.

Activision has released a bit more information about PSP version of Call of Duty, including its official name and some screenshots.

Okay, so I have to declare an interest. My favourite game in the entire world, ever, ever, is a game called Rogue. It's a game created in 1980, in which you play the part of an adventurer who is represented by an @ sign. This adventurer explores randomly generated dungeons made out of ASCII characters and fights monsters represented by letters, and the game itself spawned a whole genre of 'roguelike' games - more complicated imitators that are enormously popular on the internet, where they can generally be downloaded for free.

Firaxis has released a playable demo of one of this week's top releases, Sid Meier's Railroads!, giving you the chance to work through a tutorial and then play around in a smallish map that starts off in the town of Towson.

Tim Closs, chief technical officer for Ideaworks 3D, has predicted that the next generation of mobile phones will be on a par with Sony's PlayStation Portable when it comes to performance.

Internet comedy hero Jack Thompson - famous for his anti-game lawsuits - has put in another strong performance this week, writing some more of his trademark long-winded, shouty letters about how videogames teach us all how to kill beavers with our teeth or whatever it is he's bothered about, and his latest target turns out to be one surely long overdue: Mortal Kombat.

Ubisoft has released a brand new trailer of Red Steel, showing off the game's multiplayer features in action.

Richard A. Knaak, author of a new book based in the Diablo universe, has dropped some not very subtle hints about a plan for a third game - something that Blizzard devotees have been eagerly anticipating for quite some time.

Lik-Sang has continued its war of words with Sony over lawsuits which the Hong Kong retailer cites as responsible for its closure, arguing that a number of the PlayStation company's statements in court and since have been misleading or contradictory.

Of course, what everyone wants to do when they pick up WarHawk for the very first time is jump in the plane and try out the tilt controls, thus rendering any kind of meaningful multiplayer playtest slightly meaningless. Either that, or it accurately simulates the kind of thing you can expect when you go online with the game when it launches next summer.

Sony's Phil Harrison says he has no regrets at all about not including rumble functionality in the PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS controller. But is he bothered about the overuse of capital letters?

Sony has been talking a bit more openly in Japan about what it plans to do with downloadable content around the PS3 launch.

Epic's Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of War is finished and should ship to US retailers on 7th November. "Waaaait-a-second," you say, "wasn't it down for the 12th?"

The third annual FIFA Interactive World Cup is due to kick off this weekend, with real-life and Xbox Live qualifiers due to take place worldwide over the course of the next month and a half until a winner is crowned at the grand final in Amsterdam on 9th December, where 128 people, and the winners of the last two tournaments, will be competing.

Ever wondered how Railroads! came about? Well, Eurogamer TV is hosting a video today delving into just that, with commentary from the likes of Sid Meier, executive producer Barry Caudill and lead artist Greg Foertsch - even including some amusing footage of the very first prototype, for which Meier learnt how to use 3D Studio Max so he could do the artwork without bothering anyone.

Want to learn about Viva Piñata? Then read Ellie's preview, which explains how you attract piñatas to come and live in your garden, how to fend off nasty piñatas, and how to make everyone sex like bunnies.

Meier Meier my - Steam gets busier every day, and today it gets busier thanks to somebody called Sid Meier, whose Civilization III and IV and Pirates! are now available to buy through Valve's digital distribution wotsit.

Sports Interactive's soccer sim, Football Manager 2007, has taken the top spot in the UK All Formats Charts on its first weekend of release, knocking EA's FIFA 07 into second place.

The first heat in the Eurogamer PKR Challenge 2006 poker tournament takes place tonight, so here are the details. We're not bluffing.