The 10th Planet
Bethesda Softworks

Naturally, the real blood and guts of The 10th Planet lies in the beautifully rendered 3D combat sequences. Battle everything from enemy fighters to enormous motherships, all the while avoiding deadly asteroids or defending your precious battlestations. Because The 10th Planet supports 3D acceleration, the game is capable of some really spectacular visual effects, like realistic light sourcing and flying debris and particles. And if battling it out among the stars isn't enough of a challenge, you can even take the fight down to the planets' surfaces and do a little terrain skimming.

Even though The 10th Planet will have solid single-player action with hundreds of missions and battles, multiplayer support will add even more mayhem to the mix. Up to eight people can compete over a network, or two friends can beat the stuffing out of each other in head-to-head, modem-to-modem mode. It's good to know the developers of The 10th Planet see the value in both types of gameplay, and have devoted just as much time to each.

As the science fiction genre grows in popularity, so does the pile of games on store shelves. Unfortunately for gamers, many of these games are simply trying to cash in on the craze without offering anything new or original. The 10th Planet looks like a pleasant breath of fresh air. It's really surprising to me that no game has yet succeeded in combining all of the best elements of the various science fiction games. But The 10th Planet's got it all -- 3D space fights, research and development, strategic deployment of ships, and on and on. If this game doesn't satisfy those hard-core sci-fi cravings, nothing will.