The venerable Battletech franchise gets a new lease on console-based life in MechAssault. Featuring amazing graphics, destructible environments, and an incredibly fun online multiplayer through Xbox LIVE, this is definitely a big robot title with serious appeal.

If you don\'t have one of these kits at right, then you probably won\'t be able to find one right now. But have no fear -- new shipments of Xbox LIVE Starter Kits are rocketing out as you read this. Xbox LIVE has launched, and in the short time it has been available over 150 thousand gamers have signed up, making it the fastest growing online gaming service ever. Sound like fun? It is.

The time has come, online console gamers, to prove your mettle not only to the friends on your block, but also to the whole world. Are you ready? Well, we're not. In our first week of Xbox LIVE, we've taken some horrible beatings, but we've also learned that it isn't all about scores and stats “ it's about having a great time playing great games, and it's about ganging up on the guy using the cartoon voice mask.

Sierra and Vivendi Universal bring us a the followup to the hit spy shooter of 2000, No One Lives Forever. No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in HARM\'s Way brings the same great story, thrilling gameplay, and high quality sound and visuals to the PC in a whole new adventure featuring the lovely Cate Archer.

It\'s a common problem for those of us of the videogame loving persuasion. How can you get your loved one to love games as much as you do? It\'s a very practical problem, as games can take hours and hours to enjoy and love or family life can take similar amounts of time. Our ever-helpful mistress of the console box, Monica, delivers some useful guidelines for sharing your loves. Click here for the article.

Signed, sealed, and delivered, Microsoft has confirmed today that they have purchased mega-hit software developers, Rare, Ltd. Rare will create titles exclusive to the Xbox, including a sequel to Perfect Dark, which we are all very happy about. The first Rare title to hit the Xbox will be Kameo, due Spring 2003. Click here for more.

Microsoft brings us a console version (meaning an original game developed for Xbox) of their award-winning franchise, Mechwarrior. MechAssault brings console gameplay to the series, and that\'s a very good thing. Supporting Xbox LIVE, it\'s only a matter of time before we\'re all piloting big robots. Click here.

Dreamcatcher Interactive brings us a first person shooter that doesn\'t do a lot of new things, but should liven up your next LAN bash a bit. GORE provides the basic FPS experience we\'ve come to know and love -- lots of mindless violence and some nice graphics. All of this at a bargain price, too. Not bad. Click here.

Sierra brings its classic FPS franchise to the PS2, and all we can say is that Cate deserved better. No One Lives Forever is a disappointing console port, right along the lines of Half Life for the PS2. You can\'t beat the story and some of the gameplay in NOLF, but it is severely flawed. Click here.

It seems like everyone these days wants to get out the old Indy and dust him off. Spielberg has Harrison Ford all lined up for another flick, not due until 2005, and LucasArts returns to the franchise with Indiana Jones and the Emperor\'s Tomb. So far it\'s looking great, and games might be the perfect vehicle to keep Indy alive and whippin\'. Click.

So, as I was standing in line at 6:00 a.m., waiting for Big K to open and deliver me my PS2 booty, the hot topic amongst the fellow first-come-first-servers was DVD. None of us doubted the PS2 game system would be hot, but for many people DVD playback was what brought them out to brave hypothermia, and risk social rejection for years to come. (Hey, camping out for a PS2 is a hell of a lot cooler than doing the same for a Furby”you can't even give those things away anymore!) I have to admit I was skeptical.

Working Designs is a small development/publishing house that specilizes in finding some of the best Japanese titles available and giving us stateside gamers a chance to get in on the action. They've been delivering high quality games since the Turbografix 16 and have developed a signature style of addictive gameplay and superb writing. Most recently they've given us Lunar and Vanguard Bandits, two of my favorite RPGs on the PlayStation. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue will probably (hopefully) make its way into your PlayStation pretty soon, and Working Desings has two titles, Silpheed and Gungriffon Blaze, lined up for the Playstation 2 launch in October. I had a chance to ask Victor Ireland, President of Working Desings, some questions and get the skinny on their new titles, their creative approach, and those ever-so-sweet RPG translations.

I\'ve wanted to write an editorial about female gamers for a long time now; I just didn\'t know what I wanted to say. I toyed with the idea of slamming the sexist way women are portrayed in games, mainly because I felt like complaining about how sick I am of seeing Lara Croft\'s square butt everywhere. But I realized that both sexes are hyper-idealized in video games. Metal Gear Solid wouldn\'t have had the same effect if Solid Snake was a screechy-voiced, pimply-faced, fat guy (well maybe that would be kind of fun). We live in an age of equal opportunity sexism. Women have anorexic Vogue models to look up to and men have their muscle-bound fantasies fueled by Men\'s Health and GQ. I decided that it\'s not the games or the gamers that are the problem, but the damned video game advertisers along with a strong dose of our cultural stereotypes.

In the grand scheme of things the Dreamcast hasn't sold as well as it could have and I don't think there's any real mystery as to why this is so. A lot of people felt like they got burnt by the Saturn and they've lost faith in Sega's ability to deliver the goods. Gamers coughed up 299 bucks to take a stroll through the next generation system, but then a little something called the PlayStation showed up and preceded to whoop Sega's ass all up and down the isles of your local videogame store. When Resident Evil came out it gave gamers an experience they'd never had before and the Saturn was on the ropes. Sony landed jabs and uppercuts and if you listened closely you could hear bones breaking. Final Fantasy VII rolled out and "Fatality" echoed in the background. FFVII helped sell a bajillion more Playstations, and the Saturn basically just disappeared. When the dust settled and the blood was mopped up Sony was the undisputed champion of the console world and Sega's mangled remains were unceremoniously kicked aside, and the videogame world moved on.