Armed & Dangerous demo
Worth it for the Shark Gun alone.
If you haven't seen this one pop up on your regular trawl of download sites, then we can't really blame you. Giants developer Planet Moon's peculiar shoot-'em-up may be well worth downloading, but a large number of popular download sites have rejected its "exclusive" release at a number of locations and, in their words, "have agreed not to host any exclusive demos anymore, even after they eventually become public." You can read their open letter on exclusive demos here.
Anyway, for those of you who still want to see how Armed & Dangerous has come together, the demo is nevertheless available from the likes of IGN, GameSpot and Happy Puppy, weighs in at around 164MB and features two levels from the full game. Although it might not grab you immediately, it's well worth toying with, if only for some of the magnificent weaponry like the Shark Gun (we're not going to spoil it), which recalls for us at least the manic sensation of playing Shiny's MDK for the first time and getting to grips with its definitive arsenal. It's funny, too. Well worth the download.
We can't seem to get our mitts on distributor Activision's latest release schedule just this second, but according to Amazon's crystal ball the full game is due out on PC and Xbox on February 20th, having been released in the US towards the end of 2003.