THIS season鈥檚 hottest games are selling geopolitical nostalgia: all the bad guys are Russian. The military pandemonium simulator that is (Activision, Xbox360/PS3/PC) features one level, already notorious, in which you play a CIA mole in the team of a mad Russian mastermind, accompanying them as they stroll through an airport massacring civilians. You don鈥檛 have to kill the civilians yourself 鈥� as a protest against global consumerism, I decided to shoot up the duty-free shop instead 鈥� but the effect is unsettling. The rest is a Rolls-Royce-quality rehearsal of familiar shooter tropes, with some gorgeously built sets for the mayhem 鈥� a Brazilian favela stands out 鈥� but little thought is required beyond shooting the next guy in the face. The online options, which include dedicated cooperative missions, are state of the art.
A Russian ruffian also features in the other big action game, (Sony, PS3), which resembles a movie starring Indiana Jones鈥檚 psychopathic kid brother. Your hero flirts, quips and smashes priceless artefacts through snack-sized cinematic clips and Tomb Raider-style locations, never forgetting the primary business of shooting a thousand hoodlums to death. It鈥檚 just a glittering, linear string of set pieces, but some of them are spectacular. For a deliriously adrenalised ride, the designers have crammed in every great speeding train action-movie clich茅 in history, and then thought up some more of their own.
鈥�Uncharted 2 crams in every great speeding train action-movie clich茅 in history鈥�
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More sedate diversions are offered by (Sony, PS3). With a webcam (supplied) pointed at your floor, you interact with a cute virtual animal, a kind of monkey-dog. Feed it, groom it, wash it, play with it and even show it drawings: they become objects in the game鈥檚 intriguing space-between-two-worlds. A sure delight for young children, and an impressive experiment in augmented-reality technology.
You can also magic up a monkey, or a dog, but not a hybrid of the two, in (Nintendo, Nintendo DS), a slightly messy but lovably surreal cartoon-style game in which you solve problems by typing in words for things, and watching those things appear in the game鈥檚 world, complete with physically modelled behaviours. There is a 20,000-word object repertoire: anvils, hot-air balloons or bridges glued to tyrannosaurs can all be yours 鈥� if you can figure out how to use them. Refreshingly, I couldn鈥檛 create a Russian villain.