Ok so you might have played the Aliens vs. Predator multiplayer demo and either thought; "Damn this is badass!" or "WTF is this?" Well AvP may have the same priniples as any other multiplayer title: kill or be killed, but it has a more subtle style of gameplay that players will need to adopt if they want to be top in the intergalactic-race war.

Rather than going all Quake or Unreal - running around using as much ammo as possible on your enemies until everything stops moving - you are going to need to learn how to use close combat techniques.  AvP might not give you a true Jackie Chan fist-fight experience, but the melee combat is a tad more advanced than most FPS titles out there.

Especially with the Alien (who doesn't have any proper long range attacks) you will need to understand the art of blocking and how to use your heavy

Yeah, you Americans and Japanese might be thinking: "Wait a minute, this game has been out for ages now."  Well for us poor people living in the PAL lands, we haven't been able to get our hands on Bleach: The 3rd Phantom yet, (well unless we bought it from the US or Japan).

But now the time is finally upon us! Come February 12th (this Friday) Bleach: The 3rd Phantom will be released, for the DS, across Europe and we can finally take on the role of our favourite Shinigami and some new additions to the franchise (not seen in the manga or cartoons) in this Strategy RPG.

But if you are from Europe and don't know much about the game, then perhaps you should take a look at our review first.  It's a bit weird that it's taken so damn long to come out over here - especially as the DS is region free.

Oh yeah! SEGA has now released a playable demo of Sonic & SEGA All-Stars racing on Xbox Live Marketplace.  The demo allows you to play as Sonic or Banjo (oh you love him really) and on one of tracks, "Lost Palace".

Weirdly though on the SOE Blog they say that you play across "a selection of tracks" - but it looks like you can only play on one - though that's not a weird thing for a demo.  But that doesn't stop it from being a really fun demo; I've already played through it about five times and that's only the single player, I'm still yet to tackle the multiplayer option.

The only downfall is that the demo is a pretty weighty 1.03GB download.  Not the biggest ever, but it'll take a little longer to arrive on your hard drive and if you are impatient, like me, then it's a real bitch.

But that's not all for Xbox 360 users. 

~In case you haven't seen it; the new Marines trailer~

In case you haven't checked, the Aliens vs. Predator multiplayer demo should now be available from a download service of your choice; XBL, PSN and Steam.  The demo was (supposedly) released last Friday 5th Feb, but I didn't see it appear on my XBL service until last night, maybe I'm living in a black hole or something.

The demo allows you to play with some friends and/or play a quick match against some randoms online.  There is only one level to play, "The Refinery," but you can play as all three species; Alien, Marine or Predator.

Anyway, it seems that PC and PS3 users of the demo over the weekend were plagued with some issues, which Rebellion has now apologised for; while the Xbox 360 version was unaffected.

PC gamers, playing via Steam, had issues with

Yes that's right, SEGA has now confirmed that Project Needlemouse is in fact Sonic the Hedgehog 4.  This is the first title in the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" series since 1994's Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - all other additions to the Sonic franchise have taken our blue friend on different paths, trying out new things such as isometric 2D, full 3D, adding new enemies and playable characters.  Some things worked, plenty didn't.

But SEGA is looking to bring the series back to its roots, but with plush new HD visuals, keeping the same old-school gameplay, level design, baddies and of course, Robotnik.  The only difference is that this game willl be coming in a number of episodic downloads.

However, don't let that worry you, previous information leaks have led us to believe that each 'episode' will be the length of