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While Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw is currently rolling around in fame with his superb Zero Punctuation Flash reviews on The Escapist, there's an even better reason to know his name: his AGS adventure games. And best of these are the Trilby games - a series of stories spanning hundreds of years, following the recurring evil ghost of a murdered son, from his initial death all the way to a futuristic cult's base. So it's with glee that I discover the first of these, 5 Days A Stranger, is being remade in something called "3D".

While it's not Yahtzee's project, he's involved behind the scenes. And that'll do. It's still early days, but the project appears to be running with some enthusiasm. They're using the Source engine, which is rapidly becoming the engine of choice for indie adventure development, and will certainly give it a more modern look than the original's gloriously retro stylings. There's a dev blog and forum on the new site, and a recruitment page, so hey, get involved.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars went on sale in Europe on Friday and on Monday and the US. Clearly RPS has been a little distracted with Team Fortress 2, but there's every reason why we, and you lot too, should be playing ETQW. It's ludicrously good.

Fortunately, should you (like me) be intent on remaining posted at your keyboard 24/7, you'll be able to download the beast on October 5th in Europe and October 9th in the US: Steam is taking pre-orders for ETQW now. Why does it come out in Europe first? I have no idea.

In some ways it's a shame that ETQW's demo level was that particular map. It's one of the more underwhelming designs that Splash Damage have come up with. Just in terms of the palette used, it's rather middle-ground and didn't really sell the game. The mission itself might have been representative of the game mechanics (and therefore good for beta testing) but part of ETQW's appeal is the sheer beauty of its wartorn terrains, and some of the other maps simply have far more intense objectives built into them. The island (pictured) and the beach assault are particularly solid, while the Slipgate map... well, I'm going to post in detail on a couple of my favourites next week.

As the number of Beta Impressions of Hellgate spread across the net, deductive game-watchers will realise the embargo has lifted for us Journo sorts. Well, mostly. We can only use five grabs from the first part of the game or we'll be crushed by enormous fists. So, whilst other sites are doing useful things like telling you about the game, we're going to deal with a much more pressing question.

Is this really anything at all like London, or is Johnny Foreigner doing another Mary bleeding Poppins on us?

You may have noticed we've been frothing uncontrollably about Valve games for the last couple of weeks (actually, we're in complete control of our froth, thank you very much. What's that? Yes, I know there's drool on my chin. I just like the look, alright?). You may also have noticed that there's one component of The Orange Box that we haven't yet talked about much (we shall soon, don't worry). For a lot of people, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 is the vanguard of Valve's latest box of delights. To help them cope with the sweating and shivering and crying caused by having to wait another eight agonising days yet for more singleplayer Half-Life action, I can confidently prescribe Minerva: Metastasis.

If you're already familiar with it, then all you need to know is that the third (well, third and fourth, sorta) part's out, it's comfortably the best yet, and you should go play it right away. If you've never heard of it, then pray follow me into my word parlour.

You may be aware that as well as releasing splendid (if a little - er - twitchy) Soldier Sims, Bohemia interactive turn their Armed Assault (i.e. Flashpoint minus the intellectual property rights) into military simulators. VBS2 is actually developed by Bohemia Australia. Among their clients are the Dutch army, who recently arranged a game between five professionally trained soldiers and five gamers. Jerry Hopper was there.

The gamers would do whatever gamers would do. The Army would work according to official doctrine. Since the soldiers in question weren't actually familiar with VBS2, the results were perhaps a trifle predictable, but that's hardly the point.

RPS would challenge the SAS to a game of TF2 to decide who's the hardest three-letter-acronym group on the surface of the planet, but we're far too scared they'll slide a blade across our throats in our sleep or something.

If you've explored Team Fortress 2, you'll have listened to the developer commentaries explaining their thoughts on the game design and so forth. But you'll have noticed that missing is their thoughts on how RPS's Alec Meer plays the game.

Finally that gap has been plugged. Today, to accompany our Team Fortress 2 interview Part One and Part Two, and our Valve Compo, is a bonus treat in the form of a modern "internet video". Herein you'll get some properly useful tips from the game's developers.

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Lookee here. We've got a couple of hardback copies of Valve's book, Half-Life 2: Raising The Bar, signed by Valve top-dog Gabe Newell. Would you like one?

In order to receive one of these rather weighty tomes, we want to see your own local City 17. Let us explain...

Everyone lives near at least one building, or one patch of ground, that looks like the haunted remains of an apocalyptic attack. We want a photograph of the most derelict, wartorn, or ravaged-by-age locale near you. The two best, as judged by our highly trained eyes, will receive a signed book.

A quick note - Portal's ready for pre-loading on your Steam account.

To celebrate, here's a brand new exclusive screenshot of it. Click for bigness.

I was bouncing mails with Moonpod, arranging an interview about what they've been up to and specifically their latest game, when I realised that a lot of people may not even be aware of Mr Robot. Let's sort THAT out.

When I reviewed Mr Robot for PCG back in February, I described it as "Head Over Heels meets Final Fantasy with the plot of System Shock. But cute." before going on to say it was "the most enjoyable independent game I've played since Defcon". Which now, seven months on, still sounds about right. It's an isometric adventure game mashed with an Eastern Style RPG, basically, and feels a lot like a modern version of those character-lead, quietly perfect games which I cut my teeth on circa the Spectrum in the UK. I like it a lot and when you play the demo, you will too.

Just, for God's sake, don't use the mouse-controls. I mean it.

Knights of the Old Republic tends to be the only recent Star Wars game that anyone mentions with affection (yeah, I’m aware of a certain fanbase for Battlefront, but that doesn’t stop it from being absolute garbage). This is a shame. I give you Republic Commando, the lost Star Wars game.

Being bound in as it is with the boo-yucky prequel movies, RepCom is easily dismissed as just another easy cash-in. In fact, it’s the best Star Wars FPS since Jedi Knight 1 (I'd happily argue ever, in fact), and for all the sneering LucasArts is prone to from I Remember When All This Were Monkey Islands types these days, it’s strong proof that guys who really get games still work there.

This is mostly because it’s not really very much to do with Star Wars. It’s about four soldiers, not whiny farmboys with destinies or 20-something pretties moping woodenly at each other. It just so happens that those soldiers look a bit like Stormtroopers (pre-Palpatine makeover) and there are some Wookies in it. Republic Commando is free to do what it wants, and what it wants is to be a very accessible squad-based shooter. It's even cheerfully sniffy about Star Wars, your character glancing disdainfully at a lightsaber at one point and muttering "An elegant weapon for a more civilized time, eh? Well, guess what? Times have changed." Cue big gun action. Yeah.

Times change. They have to, as otherwise watchmakers go out of business. Sega have moved from beloved purveyor of bright skies, hedgehogs and underperforming consoles to beloved purveyor of bright skies, hedgehogs and heavyweight PC games. And the world's a better place for it, or at least for us, which is all that counts. Go self-interest!

Anyway, over the last few days they've released a couple of PC demos which showcase the dual sides of the publishers. First, we have the Sega Rally Revo demo, weighing in at 553.98Mbs (or 37.332 copies of Peggle), which features Rallying prominently. Secondly, we have two (count 'em!) demos of the Artist Previously Known as Championship Manager, Football Manager. The Strawberry edition is 523.47MBs in size, whilst the Vanilla edition is a more bandwidth friendly 103.19MB (That's 36.932 and 7.2793 recurring copies of Peggle respectively). The larger edition includes more footbally stuff to play, though xenophobes will be pleased to hear the Vanilla comes with the English and Scottish leagues. We'll report further if Sports Interactive decide to release a Chocolate edition, as we'll be sure to try and assemble some kind of home-brew neapolitan edition from all three.

A flashing IM tab appears on my taskbar. I open it to discover the message: "Seriously, have a play of this." It's a link for Counterclockwise - a Knot in 3D remake. My correspondent is correct. I should play this. I do. It's awesome.

Knot In 3D was Tron lightcycles in 3D, as coded for the ZX Spectrum back in the pixellated mists of time. Counterclockwise remakes the idea with your cycle flying around in a looped 3D space taking on a rival chaser (you can only go so far before coming back on yourself) and your own trail. The space rapidly fills up, and you you have a smartbomb and lasers to clear yourself a path - there's only limited ammo though, so you'll need to do tricks and combos to keep your resources up.

I don't think I need to say more other than to stress that it's really good. Play it.

In this first part of our two-part interview with Team Fortress 2 developers Robin Walker and Charlie Brown, we talk about the pathways from the modding community to working at Valve, the long development of TF2 and the changes it went through, Valve's thoughts on parallel mod Fortress Forever, and how the art design plays such a major role in how we play the game. In Part Two we get into specifics over the nine classes, how it was only by being funny that they were able to finish the game, and, inevitably, talk about Peggle.

TF2 developers Robin Walker and Charlie Brown are an excellent double act. Robin Walker talks, lots. Charlie Brown talks rarely. But despite this disparity, they gel neatly together, finishing each other's sentences (it’s just that Charlie finishes with a word, and Robin with another couple of paragraphs). Both represent an aspect of the ways Valve is different from any other gaming company I know of. Robin Walker, an original member of the Australian Team Fortress development team, still talks about himself as if he were a modder. He seems almost oblivious to his elevated position. Charlie Brown discusses coding in the way a quietly modest father might mention his pride for his son. Both talk about game development in terms of the player’s needs and desires. They still sound like gamers, perhaps in a large part because they, like every developer at Valve is required to, stay in constant communication with the people who play their games. And they seem to be enjoying themselves.

I began by asking Robin Walker how it was that the Team Fortress guys came to be working at Valve back in 1997. They were in demand at the time, their Quake-based mod attracting a lot of attention, with interest from Activision amongst others. But then Valve got in touch.

Since the Team Fortress Beta went live, the collective bodies of Rock, Paper, Shotgun have been running around with cartoon projectile weapons pretty much non-stop. When that "Pretty much" kicks in, we have a break and write about Team Fortress 2, just to mix things up and keep it fresh. The following are the nine short critical examinations (with gags) of the character classes that Jim, Alec and myself conjured up with special Word Science.

If these people find messing around with cranes, and tumbling down hillsides in jelly-tyred juggernauts half as entertaining as I do then Rigs Of Rods should sweep the board at next year's IGF.

The version the judges will be playing was unveiled yesterday. Bigger, better, and beautiful-er than before, it's one of two excellent freeware automotive sims released this month.

It's Feudalism, a Flash-based RPG-strategy hybrid with a little of Dynasty Warriors, a little of Final Fantasy and a lot of pressing the Spacebar.

I'm currently far too hungover to usefully ascertain its actual worth, but it would seem to have the requisite degree of slack-jawed repetition and obsessive-compulsive loot collection for my current, broken state of mind. It also has Ninjas in it, and charmingly awful graphics. Go play, and let us know if it actually is any good.

Here's Raph Koster talking about his proposed wikification of MMO's, Metaplace. The more I look at this stuff, the more I fear for how much random pseudo-gaming material I'm going to have to look at in the next couple of decades. "Jim, can you give us a round up of the best twenty spaces on Metaplace?" Cut to me scrolling through 73,000 incrementally different fantasy parlours. Gah.

What I'm trying to say is: I think this will probably be very big indeed. If Koster's team can get the toolset right, or even half right, this is going to be a very important aspect of how the web will working in a couple of year's time. It might not even be Metaplace the does it successfully, after all, we had There before Second Life swamped the web, and Everquest before World Of Warcraft became the best thing since sliced undead.

Anyway, take a look. It's pretty brief, but the idea is in motion:

I'm trying to work out what's changed.

Back in Team Fortress Classic, I was all over the spy. Hell, I played under the name KING SPY! such was my delusions of grandeur - and, being such a mediocre spy, they really were delusions. But now, I only really don the Balaclava of Backstabbing when the game dictates our team needs one - an area too packed with turrets to be penetrated with anything short of a medic/heavy-ubercharge-combo, a stalemate in a narrow area with all the teams facing a single point, whatever. I do the job with surgical precision and then get the hell out.

Why don't I love the Spy anymore? What's changed?

After some serious head-scratching, I worked it out

God, Battlefield 2142 takes a really long time to install. It takes an even longer time to patch (a good 20-odd minutes for the most recent one), which makes me shout "so exactly what is it that's so special about you?" at my supposedly super-fruity quad-core CPU. This rather complicated my plan to take a quick look at First Strike, an interesting and just-released Star Wars mod for DICE's most recent teamshooter. Awful name, of course, but: spaceships!

My, what a lot of colons. Wouldn't it be nice to see a game mix up its punctuation a little, a throw in a semi-colon even an interrobang? I digress. PC Gamer have lobbed my review of the first real Guild Wars add-on pack online. In it, I say things like...

Even a couple of years after launch, Guild Wars remains unique in the pantheon of online RPGs. No monthly fees. No perpetual level grind. No integrated PvP. No races. No open communal adventure areas. No jump button.

And then go on to mock my own usual rants about Guild Wars, which I've done far too many times and won't bore you with for now. Go read.

The plot of Techland's recently announced Dead Island promises a fun time: a tropical tourist resort turns into a zombie apocalypse. You, as a tourist on the package holiday to hell, must put things right and bash the horrors. It's cocktails and crowbars on the beach as you battle with decomposing partygoers. Yum.

Techland promise open-ended first-person survival shootiness in a large island environment. Using the environment to drop things on zombies, and to find clubs to beat them with looks like it'll be the order of the day. Your overall objective is to find your lost wife, who was presumably out shopping for a nice beach towel before the arrival of the undead. So it's a sort of Stalker-comes-to-Hawaii. (Could the twist be that you are your own wife?)

I'm betting research was fun for this game: "Yes, we all have to go to a tropical paradise island for... authenticity." Techland are also boasting "a liquid, gas and electricity physics simulation system, which allows you to create your own unique ways of eliminating enemies", which is a claim I'm sure I've heard somewhere before...

We've been having a bit of a chat about the scout's character. Well, more precisely his apparent lack of it. Unlike the other grizzled, weird, or exuberant Team Fortress classes, this is a character with a distinctly indistinct mannerism. He's just some skinny guy. There are no towering personality traits to latch onto, no cuddly cartoon charisma to grab hold off. In fact, he's not loveable in any way: he's an nasty little thug.

Think about it: while even backstabbing bastard Spy has a certain panache, the scout is a dude in a cap and T-shirt who sounds a little too smarmy and self-satisfied.

And really, what does he have? His gimmick is nothing more than his pace. He can run faster than the others – he can get across the map in half the time of his larger chums. But that's it. Nothing doing.

This is why I love the scout best.

[This time we're going retro, and UK-retro at that. On our blighted isle, Cannon Fodder was one of the more iconic games in a generation of software with one of the greatest theme tunes of all time. For the making of the sequel, I talk to Stuart Campbell, the designer. Stuart is better known for his games writing, where he remains the most controversial journalist the UK has ever produced. That is, a lot of people hate him, which is always a sign you're doing something right. If you like this, Stuart has gone into enormous detail on each level of the game over at his site. CF2 is also available on The Underdogs.]

Cannon Fodder had everything. A pixel-perfect blend of action and strategy with a small squad of men versus intricately designed levels. The greatest game theme tune of all time in the form of the lazy skank of “War’s Never Been So Much Fun”. A splash of controversy over its use of the military poppy, with national outcry from the tabloids over its insult at the old boys. Ironic, when you consider that Cannon Fodder was one of the most anti-military wargames of all time. How do you follow all that?

Let's all practise our alphabet.

Except in a really confusing way.

Super Letter Game is a Flashy little number that requires you to find all the letters of the alphabet hidden inside a sea of Zs (which only sounds good if you pronounce it the sensible American way). It's not easy though. The letters swim and spin in the direction in which you move your cursor. So move toward a letter and it will dash away. It's all about carefully moving in the opposite direction, and then pouncing at the right moment. And missing those evil Zs. It's the work of Laurie Cape, a Leeds-based web designer, with a strange mind.

In a year when great FPS aren't exactly as rare as ammunition in a survival horror game, Clive Barker's Jericho has kind of slipped through the cracks. Now with its 1.06Gb 1 level demo released, it's time for it to get a little more attention. Barker's been involved in games before, of course, most notably Clive Barker's Undying (Which always sounded like a warning more than a game title to me - i.e. "Do not fight Clive Barker - your blows with slide from his skin like gentle rain!") as well acting as gaming's brave knight riding forth against the the dragonish Ebert. Jericho is at once Very Clive Barker and also Very Videogame. That means you have things like this looming out of your screen at you. Growls!

The oddest thing about Jericho is what it reminds me of.

Daikatana. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

While chatting with Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker, he let us know, "We're going to do a Pyro tweak in the next couple of days."

Specifics of the changes weren't clear, but when we put it to him that people felt he was comparatively underpowered, Walker diplomatically replied,

"The Pyro doesn’t get lag compensation with the flamethrower in the same way which other characters do for their weaponry, which I think has a really subtle effect on perception, and it gets worse as your net connection gets worse. It’s one of the vagaries of multiplayer. Sometimes you think that what’s going on might not be what's going on. But this is why we gather lots of data."

You'll have to excuse me if you've seen this one before, but the consistently excellent Indygamer just happened to link me in the direction of Bear Go Home. It's a peculiar creature, and has washed up on our link-logging shores thanks to the Dare To Be Digital competition, which pits student game designers in a fight to the death game design competition.

Anyway, the titular bear has to head home, and you'll get him there via pulling at bits of his anatomy with the mouse-pointer - pulling his tail and letting go to make him move faster, pulling him up by the scalp to jump, stretching his jaw to catch fruit, that sort of thing.

It all looks super cute, especially with the wrapping-paper-illustration visuals. Terrifyingly, however, the background music is some kind of looped playground chant, as sung by little girls. I can only imagine them as the little girls from The Shining. It couldn't be more sinister if it tried.

Well, lookie what's gone up on Eurogamer just this minute - it's my review of Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, the standalone expansion for what was anyone with a brain's RTS of 2006. Or, arguably, ever.

I could easily have done a Gillen'n'Boiling Point and given this multiple scores. One for Joe Ooh-I-Like-Tanks-Public, one for established RTS fans and one for people who really, really dig Company of Heroes. It was a tough decision, but I think I hit the right compromise.

Oh, and here's a quote in case it helps you summon the extra reserves of energy you need to click through to the review.

Oh, praise the Lord of Gaming - someone, finally, agrees with me about Peggle.

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, developer of the wonderful Trilby adventure games, and now Mr Famous for his ludicrously good Zero Punctuation Flash reviews on The Escapist, entirely concurs with me that a) Peggle is fun and distracting, but not incredible, and b) Bookworm Adventures is better! Mr Yahtzee - marry me. Here it is:

When the team clearly needs a medic and no-one else is doing so, I play a medic. When the team clearly needs to an Engineer - and, despite the current wave of wrench-monkeys filling servers, it does happen - I'll play an Engineer. When the team clearly needs a Spy and no-one is, I play a Spy.

But when I get to pick, I pick The Soldier.

The Soldier is Team Fortress showing its cultural roots. Always remember that it was a Quake mod and, far more than anything else, the Soldier is the character who has still got one foot in that prehistory. It's all in his primary weapon - the rocket-launcher. Doom's most iconic weapon was the shotgun. Quake's, due to the addition of the true vertical axis and the emergence of a certain skill we'll be getting to in a minute, was the Rocket-launcher. The Rocket-Launcher, fundamentally, hasn't changed much from Quake 1. Yes, it shoots slower. Yes, you have less ammo. But the abilities it feeds off are right there. You're still playing to its strengths, and it's still working.