The great zombie game outbreak of the 21st century began with a single byte. It spread quickly, digitally infecting games with unprecedented numbers of undead. Before long, you couldn’t click an executable without launching an outbreak. And then the fightback came. Nation Red is a Diablo-ish take on the battle against the undead. Top-down battles against relentless hordes of pick-up dropping zombies. ...

While no sports game will ever properly recreate what it’s like to participate in the activity, they can at least make it look like you’re watching the sport on the TV. NBA 2K10 does this almost perfectly, with superb commentary and broadcast presentation making every game a big occasion. ...

Basketball-obsessed PC gamers (all four of them) haven’t gotten a lot of respect lately. But unlike EA’s recent crappy NBA Live PS2 ports, 2K Games’ NBA 2K9 is a full-blooded port from the current generation of consoles, with the kind of broadcast-quality presentational polish that EA used to be renowned for. ...

Zombies, vampires, huge spidery things with rocket launchers attached on various places of their anatomy and one long stream of enemies to mow down with your machine guns. NecroVisioN is a dinosaur, clinging to a lot of the gaming conventions we so viciously decried in our last issue – exploding barrels, switches, big boss monsters with inordinate amounts of health, etc. ...

No doubt about it, drafting in British developers Slightly Mad Studios has revitalised the series and turned it into a serious contender. Of course, it helps that Need for Speed SHIFT has clearly used last year’s king of the road, Codemaster’s brilliant GRID, as its benchmark.

Gone are the police. ...