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The Japanese seem to have a strange obsession with big stompy robots [Don't we all - Ed], taking in videogames, comic books, movies and any number of bizarre anime cartoon series, from Sunday morning kids' fare to the excellent Bubblegum Crisis. And while western mechs tend to be slow and clumsy, the oriental mecha is a fast moving and agile mechanised armour suit, while still having enough armaments at hand to level an entire city.

One of our favourite real-time strategy games of recent years is Cossacks, and sales figures from across Europe show that we're not alone. Unfortunately the game didn't fare quite so well in the US though, which is where American Conquest comes in...

While the original Kingdom Under Fire bore a certain resemblance to Warcraft, at first sight the sequel seems to have more in common with Koei's Kessen series. The whole game is rendered in glorious real-time 3D, providing players with a ground level view of the action as up to 450 soldiers fight their way across hills and through forests.

When we first saw The Y-Project at a press event in London way back in January, it was more of a concept and a tech demo than an actual game. Seven months later things have moved on dramatically though, and Westka boss Christoph Kabelitz was on hand to run us through the very latest build as Europe's biggest videogames trade show ECTS kicked off this morning.

It's been a long time coming, but the third installment in the Broken Sword series was finally unveiled at a packed press conference during this year's ECTS. Revolution boss Charles Cecil was on hand to talk about the new game, subtitled The Sleeping Dragon, and to show us a brief trailer featuring some early in-game footage and cinematic sequences.

Forget America, if you want a truly innovative first person action game look no further than Eastern Europe. The former Soviet Bloc has become a hive of game developing activity over the last decade, and is now home to some of the most exciting shooters around. The latest one to catch our attention is Xenus, and we tracked down Ukranian developer Deep Shadows in the Developers Pavilion at ECTS this morning to get a closer look...

If there is one stand at ECTS which is truly buzzing with people this year, it's Ubi Soft's, largely thanks to this year's Game of the Show, Splinter Cell, and its various companions from the Tom Clanciverse. However, lurking amongst the big brash super-realistic military simulations and cel-shaded first person shooters is a more familiar face - that of Rayman - and it was with him that we enjoyed an audience on Thursday afternoon.

When the notoriously bland 3DO first announced Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, we were (to say the least) gobsmacked. Here was an adult game where the "heroes" include a serial killer and a prostitute, a game with gratuitous amounts of gore and occasional nudity. Not only that, but it's a big budget effort with famous actors providing the voices and veterans of comics such as Heavy Metal and 2000AD providing the visual style and character designs.

Of all the games that we saw at ECTS last week, the one which confused us the most was Mistmare. At first sight it's a Morrowind style first person action role-playing game, but lurking behind that attractive 3D facade is an inventive character development system and a truly bizarre setting.

Ever since Westwood's seminal Dune II appeared on the Amiga and PC ten years ago, the real time strategy genre has become one of the most compulsive gaming experiences out there. But the genre's reliance on the mouse and high detail maps has ensured that this is one strand of gaming that won't be whoring itself on console systems any time soon, unlike various PC innovations we could name. This combination of practicality and happy accident means the clutch of developers loyal to the RTS are still refining their craft on the platform and thus it has become one of the most interesting, competitive and lucrative genres on the PC.

Did anybody actually swap their PS2 for a GameCube because Shinji Mikami ran away with Resident Evil? We sincerely doubt it. And despite protesting that the PS2 in your front room is about as durable as a china teapot in a hurricane, Mikami-san obviously still has some time for Sony, because Resident Evil Online is a PS2 game, despite a thriving Xbox network and a cheap as chalk Cube broadband outlet. It doesn't seem like a decision borne out of necessity.

If videogames were a reflection of an average day in the life of the players, then we'd a) be wearing tight-fitting spandex suits, b) sport ill-advised mullets, c) spend a large part of the day sneaking around in the shadows, peering around corners and bopping unsuspecting passers-by on the back on the head.

When he comes to visit, my little brother (at the root end of his teens) seldom does much but play videogames. Imagine being 12 years old with an older brother whose entire house is pretty much given over to computers, consoles and technology, with a flood of new games in the post every other morning. But nothing; not joysticks, not dance mats, not even the gift of his own PS2 for Christmas could light up his expectant little eyes like the sight of a Steel Battalion controller flashing away in the corner. It was a whole half an hour before he even asked what it was for…

Cliché though it is, being a fan of First Person Shooters on the PC is like waiting for a bus. After waiting for what seems like an eternity, you suddenly can't move for the things: Unreal II and Battlefield 1942: Road To Rome hit the nation's shelves last week, and over the next few you'll be indulging in some chin stroking down at your local gaming emporium deciding whether to blow your cash on IGI2: Covert Strike, Vietcong, or, later in March, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down. Decisions, decisions.

Even the most die hard PS2 owner must have been feeling a little envious when Splinter Cell burst onto the Xbox scene at the tail end of last year. Even though a port of the stealth action title was always on the cards, the feeling among the community was that the chances of replicating the visual quality were extremely slim. After all, those truly impressive lighting and texture effects had pushed the Xbox into new territory - how on Earth could the relatively humble Sony machine ever hope to compete.

When we first heard that Splinter Cell would theoretically let you travel from one end of the game to the other pausing only to kill the final boss, it seemed like the perfect embodiment of the games industry's newfound obsession with stealth. Sure enough, thanks to a mixture of delightful technical abilities and playfully constructed levels, with enough practise it is possible to avoid almost all confrontation.

Last time out, there were no rules. NBA Street was basketball stripped of its glamour, rulebook and realism - a streamlined, arcade title which dragged the game back to tarmac courts, creaky backboards and funky dunky rap stylings. It paid homage to NBA Jam, really, bettering Acclaim's long since ignored franchise in virtually every way. It was so good, in fact, that Acclaim has dusted off Jam for 2004, hoping to cash in on its renewed popularity.

Jennifer Tate is a 'modern girl', a scary Goth type with an even scarier Goth-rockstar boyfriend (Lewis), and wanders around in skin-tight Lycra halter neck tops with a giant symbol tattooed on her back. One night Lewis is 'rocking out' on stage with his (unnamed) band when a rather scary giant Goth wanders into the venue, wades through the (rather sparse) moshpit and stares out the lead singer. Slightly perturbed, Lewis ends the set, wanders backstage, where Jen waits to congratulate him on another "great show".

'Addictive' is a much abused term when used in connection with videogames, and people have been bandying it around for decades now. In the early days of videogames magazines, the seminal Crash even used to rate a game's 'Addictive Qualities'. If Championship Manager had been around in that sepia tinted era, it would deserve 100 per cent. Nothing else in this author's 25 years of playing videogames has quite inspired the long term obsessive compulsive addiction that CM has. In the mid 90s, around the time of CM2, it was almost impossible to think about anything else. We can think of no higher complement than it became more important than real footy - and remember what Bill Shankly said about football being more important than life and death? Yes, it was that bad.

World War II has come to London. The roar of artillery mixes with the chatter of small arms fire and the shouts of the soldiers. The bodies of the slain litter the crater-pockmarked earth, while the flames of burning buildings and destroyed armour divisions cast eerie flickering light on structures still standing. Half tracks and tanks churn grassy fields into muddy quagmires, and you can almost smell the heavy scents of cordite and death on the air.

Ok class, pay attention. Beards at the ready. Can anybody name the biggest selling PC game in Germany? The Sims Party Like It's The Last Expansion Pack In The Series? No, but good guess. The correct answer is, in fact, Anno 1602, a civilisation building game that Sunflowers reckons captured the hearts, minds and Deutschmarks of PC gamers everywhere. Not that you'd have noticed on these shores, but the mighty EA has picked up the distribution of the sequel in the UK and sees it as the third prong in its strategy assault (C&C = future, Sim City = present, Anno = past) Set 100 years before the first game, Anno 1503 - The New World promises to do everything that the first game did but bigger, better and, ahem, presumably older.

Silent Hill's a strange and wonderful place. Full of twisted nightmares, ruined lives, half truths, yet always a faint shred of hope. A hastily abandoned place, the sort you can imagine David Lynch, or members of Slipknot growing up in. Nothing ever quite adds up, but there's always the sense that it might one day. Somewhere among this otherwordly place exists a framework for basing the most sinister, haunted, and unhinged horror games you'll ever experience.

How exciting. Devastation is a First Person Shooter. Whoop! It doesn't appear to be much different from a whole plethora of other First Person Shooters out there, and it's even powered by a heavily modified Unreal engine, along with a lot of other shooters that have passed our way without so much as a cursory glance. But with extended play of the snapshot of Devastation we were provided with, it's more like a First Person Shooter... with a twist of lemon.

We have to admit to being somewhat pleasantly surprised to take possession of the latest in the Zelda saga three days before its US release. But never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, we thought it was only fair to deliver our early thoughts on what stands as one of the most important games Nintendo has ever released. With large retail chains the UK over seemingly intent on deserting the GameCube less than a year into its lifespan, the Big N needs a huge hit on the format like never before.

Now this is a proper game - fast cars, famous locations, cheesy acting, gloriously addictive gameplay. We've spent long enough waiting for Microsoft to get its act together with a third Midtown Madness, and thanks to the careful guidance of DICE, it looks like it finally has. It has everything: multiple cities (Paris and Washington), tons of vehicles (including all your old favourites), mission-based driving, checkpoint races, choose-your-own-route blitz races, and plenty of multiplayer modes - even Xbox Live support! What more could we ask? [errrm…sexy visuals? -Graphic Whore Ed]

Scan your eyes over this list of recently released games and ask yourself what they have in common: Ratchet & Clank, Sly Raccoon, Dr Muto, Haven, Ape Escape 2, Treasure Planet, Jinx, Rayman 3, Blinx, Mario Sunshine, Ty The Tasmanian Tiger, Pac Man World 2, ToeJam & Earl III, and Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced. Unless you're really out of touch, you'll have certainly have noted that they all involve object collection and platforming, and all have been born to the world since October 2002. Now say hello to latecomer Vexx and try to look the snub-nosed intruder in the eye without spitting contempt in his stupid generic face.

We didn't really set out for this to be some sort of anti-Acclaim week, but for some reason after dealing with the lamentable Vexx yesterday we're taking a look at the equally tawdry and hopeless Dakar 2 today. A product of Acclaim Studios Cheltenham, Dakar 2 dramatises the race from Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal with less gusto than mid-90s Skoda salesman, and all the visual splendour of a mucky day in Bognor Regis.

Despite the heritage of the original PlayStation as the platform to own for the Japanese RPG fan, its successor is surprisingly under-stocked in this department - in Europe, at least. Aside from the fantastic Final Fantasy X, European gamers really only have the likes of Dark Cloud, almost-an-RPG Square-Disney collaboration Kingdom Hearts and the tragically under-rated Shadow Hearts to choose from - slim pickings indeed. Of course, this picture is much better Stateside, where the likes of Suikoden III, .hack and Xenosaga have been released, and the lucky Japanese just got their mitts on Final Fantasy X-2 and Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time, but for European gamers without the ability to play imports (or indeed speak Japanese), such turn-based delights are still a long way off.

It seems utterly bizarre that Konami chooses to produce two football games a year, especially when one is godlike in its genius and the other one is dandruff inducingly uninspiring, but the vague plan seems to be to produce a more arcade (i.e. FIFA-esque) oriented alternative. The concept in itself isn't a bad one; after all, not everyone has the time, the skill, or the energy required to become competent at Pro Evo. A pick up and play equivalent would seem like a worthy aim, apart from the fact that since the series made its PS2 debut back in the latter part of 2000 it has served only to highlight the yawning gulf in class between PES and ISS. Add to that the sudden return to form of FIFA, and suddenly Konami has much to do to compete. Third time lucky, perhaps?

You probably haven't heard much about War of the Monsters, which is good, because the game works best when it comes as an unexpected sock to the mouth. It's like a subtle blend of Powerstone and Rampage, inspired by 50s and 60s drive-in monster movies - and at times it's unlike any other beat 'em up we've played.