Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers
XBOX
The original Full Spectrum Warrior gave you command of two American fire teams as they fought through a fictitious Middle Eastern city. Moral niceties and the question of why you might find yourself there in the first place have no place in this series - part paid for by the US Army for use as a training tool for teaching infantry tactics. The follow-up takes place in Ten Hammers, a corruption of the fictional Tien Hamir district in which insurgents, separatists and coalition forces all fight over the Tien Hamir bridge, and puts renewed emphasis on action, letting you wrest control of any team member's weapon for a spot of DIY bullet riddling.
It's not all successful however, and your teams' chatter quickly becomes psychotically repetitive, as do a few ambitiously lengthy checkpoints, forcing you to redo occasional sections ad nauseam. Overall, however, and despite some rough edges, this is a more challenging and gripping game than its accomplished prequel.
· THQ, £40
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Nintendo DS
Originally released on GameCube, Animal Crossing is actually a complete other existence, lived in a town populated by friendly animals. In this world you arrive, work, pay off your mortgage, dig up items for the museum, make friends, redecorate your house, get a new job, do some gardening and occasionally even get ripped off by animal charlatans - if that all sounds in any way mundane, be assured that the experience of playing it is just as powerfully attractive to the very young as it is to stubbornly cynical grown-ups.
The DS version also lets you visit friends' towns via the internet, although practically everything else about it will be instantly familiar to GameCube owners. Wild World proves to be a benign and entirely non-violent addiction.
· Nintendo, £30
Electroplankton And Shure E4g Game Headphones
Nintendo DS
It's a sign of the times that Shure's E4g headphones are being marketed as "games" headphones. Partly because Sony's PSP also lets you watch films and listen to music, both of which sound dismal though the system's own flimsy speakers, and partly because gamers' joy in technology may be more likely to part them with £150 for a pair of headphones.
Going deep inside your ear, they manage to make games sound staggeringly intense, and the effect is never more pronounced than with Nintendo's forthcoming Electroplankton. Billed as "touchable media art" rather than a game, it lets you interact with miniature musical creatures via the DS touch screen that make sounds in stereo as they move and collide, creating an almost trance-like experience. Due here at the end of April.
