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.

Hacking the Night Away

Hacker Evolution is, ahem, an evolution of Exosyphen's previous hacking games, of which they've developed several over the years. This is a good thing, as the current game is intelligently thought through and polished, and the puzzles cleverly designed (if at times frustratingly hard). That is, of course, a big advantage of reworking the same theme: you improve each time.

Many will compare Hacker Evolution to Introversion's Uplink, also an excellent game in this--well, there aren't enough hacker games to call it a genre, but "of this type" will do. Hacker Evolution =feels= more like you're actually hacking because of a design decision that in almost any other type of game would be obviously incorrect: The game is largely played on the command line.

Ball Labyrinth Meets Videogames

You may, from your youth, remember ball labyrinths: wood boxes with knobs on two sides you use to tilt a platform above the box, with the platform consisting of a wooden maze--with holes or slats in some areas which your ball, if you aren't careful, will fall through. You start at one location on the maze, and by tilting it carefully, try to get your ball to the exit. (The things we used to do for entertainment before videogames...)

Hazard Ball obviously owes a debt to those old puzzles; you control a ball in a maze, controlling it with the arrow keys; it has a degree of momentum, and the longer you hold a key down, the faster it goes, which is useful getting up ramps and such. Points are earned for collecting (running into) jewels and other objects, and there's the whole panoply of things you expect in straightforward videogames: gates opened with keys found elsewhere, powerups that give you special ability, hazards, moving opponents who try to damage you or knock your ball into a hole or opening into space.

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).