Sam Fisher has gone from shadow warrior to wrecking ball. Splinter Cell fans may remember the series as somewhat sneaky – a matter of waiting for the right moment to knife someone in the back and plonk their body in a darkened stairwell. Conviction asks, why wait? ...

The Chaos Space Marines are doppelgangers. They’re the Venom to the Space Marines’ Spider-Man; the Sith to their Jedi. They’re best buds with the dark gods of an obscure dimension. They gussy up their power armor with gaping skulls. And among the varied-shades-of-villain factions of 40k fiction, they’re a great candidate for their own expansion to Dawn of War II. ...

Only once you’ve wandered into StarCraft II’s greased-metal cantina and engaged in conversation with embittered mercenaries, or spoken to Jim Raynor’s crew about armour upgrades and the like, do you begin to understand why, and how, the Terran, Protoss and Zerg campaigns will be split into three separate titles. ...

Say hello to the monk, the recently revealed Diablo III class who rather than sitting cross-legged in a hill-top monastery, is far more likely to slap you 100 times in a second before appearing behind you and kicking you in the arse. That’s his trick, and he sidles up to the three revealed classes – the Barbarian, Witch Doctor and Wizard – filling the fourth slot on the Diablo III character selection screen and shuffling ...

Good thing there was somebody in the room who knew a bit about submarines: a German games journalist, who’d ask about periscopes like a terminally ill patient asks about how long he has left to live, and who’d punch the air when he learned of the accurately rendered ship wakes, and the now separate damage readouts for hull integrity and flooding. ...

Some people, after reading our review of Empire: Total War, wanted to string us up and splice our main brace. We can’t help it if the bugs other people experienced didn’t happen to us. Still, it’s safe to say that there were some problems that perhaps could and should have been sorted out before release – specifically the AI’s total lack of ability to perform invasions over a stretch of water. ...

Paul Wedgwood, CEO of Splash Damage and game director on Brink, isn't a big fan of marketing spiel. He's talking about the game's fluid movement mechanic when he sighs: “It's called SMART – smooth movement across random terrain. The marketing guys at Bethesda made us call it that.” ...

Dragon Age: Origins’ November release date is fast approaching, and so far, we’ve been having a blast bathing our ragtag party with the blood of our foes. That’s why we’re excited to bring you some exclusive screenshots and advanced lore from the folks at BioWare about Dragon Age: Origins’ most dangerous beast, the dragon. ...

Eight hours into a preview build of Dragon Age: Origins and we can’t get the blood off. The crimson evidence of our violence still stains our hands, our armor, and our entire party. It’s even in our hair. Whether you’ve slain a pack of wild beasts or put a gang of mercenaries to rest, in Dragon Age: Origins there will be blood - lots and lots of blood ...

We recently got some hands-on time with Borderlands, the hybrid shooter/RPG due out later this month. We played a massively power-leveled Lilith character in two of the game’s later areas: Old Haven and The Crimson Enclave. Old Haven is a ramshackle city setting, while the Crimson Enclave is the high-elevation fortress of the Crimson Lance. ...