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First of all, Counterstrike. I don't need to tell all of you that this one of the greatest games ever made. To date it holds the record as the number one online action game of all time. During the day there are approximately 70,000 players playing on some 15,000 servers worldwide. Quake3 and Unreal Tournament don't even come close. If you are an Everquest guy and think it R0xx0Rz, please do not email me and tell me. It's just amazing that this game is in its third year. Other games have tried to take the lead, like Operation Flashpoint, Wolfenstein, etc. In a word: LAME. CS has everything: strategy, teamwork, graphics, and yes, senseless killing. Click on the banner above and head over to the main page to be schooled.

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Next there is Battelzone, and BattlezoneII, and Red Odyssey, and Forgotten Enemies. Battlezone was the first, appearing years ago as an Atari game and later resurrected by Activision on the summer of 1998. It is one of my all time favorites. As the player you get a first person view of alien worlds. You can zoom around on them in a hovering tank in a fantastic 3D environment. You command an army, build bases, and defend against the bad guys. The single player game rocked, the multiplayer was pretty good but suffered from horrible lag and server-side synchronization. I think what kept this game from being more popular was its extreme complexity and lack of run-and-gun Q3 playing style so popular with younger players. Even so I played it often in grad school, when I should have been working on my degree. After standard BZ, there came the Red Odyssey mod, which was just as much fun as the original. Then came BZII, which suffered from a grossly overburdened 3D engine, and the fact that each side had potentially unlimited resources(dumb). Finally, Forgotten Enemies was released at the end of last year. It was an unbelievable effort by the design team, but unfortunately suffers from the same problems as BZII because it is based on the BZII code. Over all, I would say BZII is worth playing if you loved BZ, but otherwise forget it. You will be frustrated enough to throw your comp out the window. It is not for the squeemish or people who should be doing their homework.

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Independence war 2: The Edge of Chaos. This is the best space shooter I have played. In this game the player starts out as a pirate inheriting (his grandmother's!) old pirate base. The player can fly around the star system pirating, and collecting booty, with awesome graphics and realism. As your pirating skills increase, you get better loot and you can trade for better weapons and ship upgrades. The story line gradually turns you from pirate into freedom fighter, trying to throw off the yolk of the oppressive corporations. Overall this game is great. Awesome graphics, cool story, and a lot of free-form play where you can do what you want. The downside is that the gameplay is kind of disturbed by some ridiculously difficult missions and no way to save the game except when you are at your base. What this means is sometimes you will be out and about for an hour or more of play, get killed, and have to start all over. There are almost no cheats available for this game, so you are pretty much on your own. I remember one mission that took me like 10 tries with cheats and a walkthrough. Even with the negatives, it really is an epic scale space game that is just beginning to catch on even though it is 2 years old. Probably because the 16MB video cards that were out 2 years ago couldn't quite handle the intense graphics. And also because it needs a more sophisticated gamer than the usual Q3 crowd.