Zombie [zom-bee] - noun. 1. (In voodoo) The body of a dead person given the semblance of life usually for some evil purpose. 2. (Informal) A person whose behavior or responses are wooden, an automaton. 3. (In computer games) Something that is enormous fun to hit with a cricket bat.

The original Assassin's Creed was, I admit, one of my favourite games. However, when mentioning to a friend how much I had enjoyed it, I was bombarded with criticism over how terrible it was. In a vain attempt to prove him wrong, I unearthed the first game for a bit of a play, and to my horror, I realised how unbelievably repetitive and oddly boring it really is; nothing like how I remembered it.  Needless to say, I was more than a little bit worried for Assassin's Creed II.

When the little box popped up in Modern Warfare 2, twice alerting me of the potentially offensive mission to follow, I was giddy with excitement. I’d heard the disturbing rumours and I was in. Titled "No Russian," this mission has the player - acting as a covert CIA agent who has infiltrated a Russian terrorist cell - take part in the killing of civilians in an international airport.

Hyped as the heavy metal parody game fronted by Tenacious D’s Jack Black, Brutal Legend is the return of adventure game pioneer Tim Schafer. With credentials such as his, I was expecting something special, and while the game is certainly not bad, it’s disappointingly unspectacular.

Modern Warfare 2 annoyed me before it had even landed on the shelves. First came Activision’s arbitrary price increase across all platforms, which made all gamers of the world grind their teeth in anger. Then Infinity Ward announced the PC version would not support dedicated servers, sparking an online petition signed by over 200,000 people, including myself.