Everybody remembers Command & Conquer. It was the game that defined a franchise for over thirteen years. The action was tight and exciting. The storyline was gritty and enthralling. The multiplayer was as engaging as it was addicting. Nobody, and I mean nobody could do it better than the original. Then came along Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Westwood Studios’ prequel to the cornerstone of Real-Time Strategy, and they proved us wrong. It was better in every way possible. The music, the movies, the action all culminated into one blockbuster package that sold millions and created a strategy community that could rival that of Quakeworld.

So what happens when a portion of that community goes and plunks Command & Conquer: Red Alert into the first person arena, challenging Quakers head-on? You get Command & Conquer: A Path Beyond, by Bluehell Productions. Here’s a team-based First Person Shooter that takes the ferocity and action of Red Alert and places it in as close to a picture-perfect adaptation of the Real-Time Strategy blockbuster as is humanly possible. The tanks, the vehicles, the nuclear weapons, the sounds and the music are all there in one neatly wrapped present.

Babo Violent 2, originally released as a network library stress test, is a strange mixture of 2d shooter and physics based puzzler. Best described as “Marble Madness meets Quake”, the player assumes control of a small ball, called a “babo”. This babo is then equipped with a wide assortment of weapons – that’s right, weapons – such as machine guns, bazookas, sniper rifles, and even esoteric energy weapons and “suicide nukes” which do well to wipe sections of the map clean in a brilliant flash of destruction.