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Action Games: Lock and Load

Action-oriented games, such as the first person shooter games in this section, make the heftiest performance demands on your PC. To effectively play the games listed here, we recommend you play on a PC with at least a 700MHz processor, at least 256MB of system RAM plus 64MB of RAM on your graphics board, and a graphics board with one of the modern, heavy-lifting 3D graphics chips from ATI, Matrox, or NVidia. While many systems older than two years may be able to load the games, the performance may be so poor that it renders the game unplayable (or, at best, not very fun). Any PC sold in the past six months should have no problems, though games generally run best on the newest, fastest systems.

Many of the games also feature online play. A few, like BeamBreakers, lack such options, but most are designed to be played over the Internet against other live players. Even though the games can be played over a 56-kbps dialup connection, you'll get the best performance and responsiveness out of the game if you have broadband Internet service.

Unreal Tournament 2003

Epic and Digital Extremes have dressed up this action standby with new characters, stunning arenas, and some fancy new weapons--they even call it "sports combat" now.

But this still ain't exactly brain surgery: It's about blowing the other guy to smithereens, and UT2K3 does it well. Building upon the original, the game offers better graphics, simple controls, and single and multiplayer options.

Whether you're in it for an old-fashioned death match, or the new Bombing Run (where you play a game of football, with big guns), this game is sure to please fans of the genre--as long as your PC has the chops to run it.

--Tom Mainelli

Genre: First Person Shooter

Price: $50; check latest prices

Unreal Tournament

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

When you launch Activision's Return to Castle Wolfenstein, you find yourself imprisoned in the dungeon of a German castle, about to be tortured by a Nazi scientist. Making a quick escape, and armed with anything you can find (from a sword to a flamethrower), you have to fight your way out and uncover the Nazis' foul plans.

But this is no Quake in 1943: Sometimes you'll need to exercise caution and subtlety to succeed, rather than jumping in with guns blazing. And just in case dozens of hostile Nazis aren't enough, they're helped by an army of undead zombies. Now that's an axis of evil!

--Ed Albro

Genre: First Person Shooter

Price: $35; check latest prices

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Battlefield 1942

This World War II-era Electronic Arts game leaves the Nazi zombies behind in favor of conscripting you into extremely realistic combat, fighting with either the Allies or the Axis powers on all the major battlefronts of the second great war: the Pacific islands, North African desert, the Russian eastern front, or the villages and beachheads of western Europe.

The game brings an incredible sense of realism to online combat, as if you and dozens of other players are participating in the invasion of Europe over the Internet.

Players equip themselves with period weapons and can take advantage of fixed weapons emplacements, vehicles (including tanks, jeeps, and aircraft), and buildings arrayed around the maps. With all the excitement of the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, Battlefield 1942 is a must-have for the online action gaming fan. It can be played as a single-player game on your PC, or in a multiplayer configuration online.

--Andrew Brandt

Genre: First person shooter

Price: $50; check latest prices

Battlefield 1942

Mobile Forces

This one's straight-up fun, at a bargain price, for the action set: this online-only first-person shooter game from Rage places your player as a member of an elite squad of special forces soldiers who battle one another on foot or from several kinds of armored vehicles.

Equipped with modern conventional weapons, the soldiers (on either the red or blue teams) compete in standard online first-person shooter games such as capture the flag. If the crazy arcade-like physics of the vehicles seems familiar, it's because the developers hired the same guy who did vehicle physics for the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series. Game graphics use the Unreal engine for highly realistic (though at times, graphically gory) combat.

--Andrew Brandt

Genre: First Person Shooter

Price: $15; check latest prices

Mobile Forces

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