Hovercraft Racer

H-Craft Championship looks surprisingly good for an indie racing game--after all, major publishers spend millions polishing the graphics for games of this type, and its impressive that a small team was able to produce something that looks so nice.

It's science fictional, in that the racing vehicles are hovercraft that apparently tool along great superhighways in the sky. Also apparently, in the future, road safety is not a major concern of the authorities--perhaps the world is overpopulated and they want people to plummet to their deaths--so that failure in steering doesn't mean, as in other games, that you go off road and lose speed, but instead lose the game.

A Hit on Xbox Live Arena

Heavy Weapon is a sidescrolling shooter in the classic style; you control a tank, blazing away at enemy aircraft moving overhead and trying to bomb you into oblivion. In Mission mode, there are 19 levels (each with its own boss), and there's also a Survival mode with no pause in the onslaught. Scads of weapons and powerups, as you might expect. On the whole, good brainless fun.

If Sam Goldwyn Were Alive, This Would Be His Favorite Game

That's because Hollywood Mogul 3 is what it says it is: a game for wanna-be studio heads. If you'd rather be Michael Eisner than Martin Scorsese, this may well be the game for you.

Hollywood Mogul 3 is to Molyneux's The Movies as Football Mogul is to John Madden Football. That is, it's a data-driven game with enormous detail in which your role is to manage the studio, not watch cute animations or move animated characters around. Visually, it's far from stunning--some have likened it to a spreadsheet--but the level of detail, and the complexity of the underlying model is stunning (and somewhat overwhelming to a first-time player; luckily, there's a good tutorial).