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Congratulations to Westwood and Electronic Arts, for they are the official winners of the Biggest, Most Pointlessly Enormous Downloadable Demo 2002 award from all of us here at Eurogamer. In a year which has seen so many huge (and hugely pointless) demos released by a wide variety of developers and publishers, it's refreshing to come across a team willing to go beyond the fabled 1GB mark just for the compressed installer whilst maintaining a straight face.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is a game that virtually everybody on the staff here at Eurogamer has conquered - a rare feat given the high volume of software that crosses our desks. However, a quick tour of duty in EA's Spearhead expansion robs us of our rose-tinted spectacles. It's a spectacular and well-decorated broth as ever, but how easily its flaws bubble to the surface.

PC real-time strategy fans are somewhat spoiled this year, with two of the three biggest franchises in the genre getting major overhauls. Blizzard's WarCraft III saw the series take a radical new direction earlier this year, earning rave reviews and an overwhelmingly positive reception from its fans, and now it's the turn of Microsoft's franchise, Age of Empires, to show off its new colours with its third incarnation, Age of Mythology.

Nintendo's Wave Bird controller will soon use Mitsubishi Materials' AHD Series 2.4GHz wireless ceramic chip antenna, IGN reports, in a move which stands to increase the controller's effective range beyond the 34 feet promised on the box. Good news indeed, but the chances of being able to tell the difference without opening the whole thing up are slim, and Nintendo are hardly going to advertise the fact that the new peripherals work over greater distances to existing owners - indeed, it was Mitsubishi Materials that publicised the fact, whereas Nintendo remains quiet.

Following a successful 20,000-person multiplayer test, peculiar 1930s-based gene-blending animal RTS Impossible Creatures has finally appeared as a public demo (or 'trial version' in publisher Microsoft's speak). Available from the colourful official website, the demo consists of a tutorial and three single-player missions (with two skirmish-style 'player vs. CPU' maps thrown in for good measure).

28 square miles of central London, painstakingly recreated for your gaming pleasure, 50 real life vehicles to drive around in, 24 missions of stealth action and an hour of cut scenes featuring torture, murder, gang warfare, racism, and some hard core swearing are just some of the things you'll find in The Getaway, and no one in their right minds should dare criticise Sony for lacking ambition in this era of sterile rehashes and sequel obsession.

A wronged cop, out to avenge the death of a loved one, wanted by both sides of the law and tooled to the teeth with pistols, shotguns and a penchant for the explosive. Armed with the ability to dive about in slow motion to easily target enemies and avoid their fire, constantly doing what the other guy wouldn't, dressed sharply and always gravely spoken. That's Jack Slate, disgraced former K9 squadman in Grant City.

Elite Force II-developer Ritual has seized the reigns of much-delayed Counter-Strike single player project, Condition Zero. In a peculiar announcement, Half-Life creators (back when they bothered to make software) and development overlords Valve confirmed that Ritual have taken over work on the game from previous developer Gearbox Software. No reason for the switch was given, and it's not yet clear how the new team will proceed - it does seem unlikely that the team will start afresh though, particularly after a build of Gearbox's work was demonstrated at E3 in May.

Capcom has slipped the US release of Capcom Vs. SNK EO for Xbox until January, and it seems likely that the European version will subsequently slip beyond its current March target. Although CVS EO is already available on PS2 and GameCube, the Xbox release is the more significant of the three, as it will be the first beat 'em up to support Xbox Live.

Nicely Crafted's massively multiplayer real-time strategy title, Time of Defiance, has been revised to include several significant new features, and re-released in a slender 10MB build.

TV-based games-playing, via Sky's Digital services amongst others, has escalated in significance ever since Mum and the kids bothered to try it out. Now even Dad chips in occasionally, going for a couple of rounds on Breakout or something when nobody's watching. Not that he ever did that in his youth. Wink wink.

BioWare has finally released a demo version of popular and highly customisable dungeon-bashing RPG Neverwinter Nights. However, it's not clear where all the cutting down went, with the demo weighing in at a grossly hefty 389.9MB according to GameSpy. The demo will put you through your Academy training as one of Rogue, Wizard, Barbarian or Paladin, before thrusting you into battle with goblins and skeletons. We're not sure how many hours this all represents (which is odd, because BioWare are usually quite up on these sorts of estimates), but you can download it from a number of locations (including the developer's own server) linked from this page. Shazzam!

Fresh from resurrecting Mini-Combat - a free, Flash-based, turn-based, online strategy 'em up - last month, CDV has announced another free game for its adoring public, and this time it's festive.

Ubi Soft has aligned its pieces and checked in with the news that the next Chessmaster game will appear on PlayStation 2 in March, and support online play using Sony's multiplayer games service once it's available.

Synetic's Mercedes-Benz-themed World Racing project is nearing completion for Xbox. Reports put it at about 80 per cent with a couple of months left until its February 14th release. And with only a short amount of time to go, publisher TDK has revealed that PS2 and GameCube versions are in the pipeline, due out some time during 2003. Firm dates and screenshots for the new titles are expected shortly.

With the exception of the odd hardcore Japanese release, the old-skool shoot 'em up genre has pretty much been put out to pasture. The relentless killathons of old, like Gremlin's long forgotten Loaded and the thousands of 2D shooters of the 8 and 16-bit era are but fond memories of the days before RSI crippled ageing gamers everywhere.

Last Friday, we gave you the opportunity to win one of five copies of Gungrave, Red Entertainment's explosive new 3D cel-shaded shooter, courtesy of publisher Activision. Well, after a significant response, we've picked our winners. But before that you had to answer a challenging question about firearms, to which you're all presumably wondering the answer. We asked you, which of these is not a gun? M-16, Walther, Magnum, Glock or A frying pan.

Sony has updated its release schedule for Q1 2003 to reflect various changes.

Sega's fantastic Jet Set Radio is coming to Game Boy Advance, courtesy of Vicarious Visions. VV is the team that brought us the highly successful handheld versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and according to a US release from publisher THQ, we can expect a similar isometric style to the visuals.

Datel is launching its Action Replay brand in the US this month, through its own US-based corporation, Datel Design & Development, Inc., located in Clearwater, Florida. The move marks the cheat gurus' decision to promote Action Replay in the US instead of distributing it through InterAct under the "GameShark" moniker, as it has done over the past six years, selling in excess of four million units.

Midway's modern day update to Defender will not appear until March 15th, the publisher has confirmed this morning. Despite vague assurances that the PS2 version would appear as planned today, December 6th, a bit of prodding later the publisher conceded that not only would it miss 2002, it will miss the previously set date for the Xbox and Cube releases, February 14th.

Like an oil slick no one expected, Christmas calmly rolls towards game-packed release schedules in waves of destruction, and next Friday it'll start to hit the first beaches. Traditionally, it's about this time in December when publishers give up on their perpetually slipping shoot 'em ups and Tomb Raider rip-offs, doff the PR-writing mitts and settle down with brandy and cigars until evening dawns on the festivities and the hard sale can once again begin afresh. Well, not afresh, this is the games industry after all...

Eager beavers who lay awake at night dreaming of Championship Manager 4 can now have their taste buds whetted further with some leaked artwork, which has shown up here.

Do you remember the story behind DOOM? I know, I know, you're struggling. It was something about hell, the moon, possibly a couple of moons... and a marine who went in and killed everything. The end. They just don't make them like that any more. These days we all seem to want the digital War & Peace with production values to frighten James Cameron, and even DOOM III is starting to look like a bad night round Stephen King's campfire.

Older readers and those of you that enjoyed playing video games as an embryo might recall the original Defender, a rock hard, super fast side scrolling shoot 'em up that was a monster arcade hit in 1980. Still revered today for its insane twitch gameplay, it was only a matter of time that those nostalgic types at Midway would see the commercial potential in producing an update.

Later today, GMX Media will announce plans to publish Runaway: A Road Adventure in the UK. Runaway is an old-skool adventure game about a student called Brian, who has to flee New York when the Mafia mysteriously comes after him. Saddled up with an enigmatic stripper, he has to escape the mob whilst simultaneously trying to work out why they're after him. GMX promises a cerebral tale of murder, money, ambition, rituals and deception.

Whenever we go to see Nintendo, they make half-hearted attempts to convince us that their latest console is more than just a child's toy, but the latest news on their Game Boy Player peripheral suggests that even they believe what people say about the Cube these days.

Activision has patched Return to Castle Wolfenstein to version 1.41. Hurrah, eh? The 7MB patch is available from a variety of sources including FileShack, with a separate Linux version and source code for both Windows and Linux also available nearby. The patch addresses a number of issues, detailed in the accompanying readme file, which include "miscellaneous issues in anti-lag code that generated unpredictable results". Run, don't walk, to get this one.

Japanese gaming oracle Famitsu has revealed that Nintendo will release three classic (genuinely classic) puzzle games in a Nintendo Puzzle Collection for GameCube this January. The games will be Panel de Pon (known as Tetris Attack or more recently Pokémon Puzzle League outside Japan), Dr. Mario and Yoshi's Cookie.

As anybody who isn't a jaded cynic or blinkered fanboy will know, MechAssault is a damn fine multiplayer game with an engaging single player diversion. But as hundreds of thousands of gamers the world over blast one another into smithereens, Day 1 Studios continue to beaver away on the promised downloadable content, and purse-string-holder Microsoft has confirmed that it will roll out starting the first week of January.