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In 1979, Moonraker was first shown in movie theaters. It's perhaps the dumbest premise ever for a James Bond movie: A super rich psycho with a Hitler complex decides to kill everyone on Earth via a bio-weapon in favor of his own specially picked humans. In order to kill everyone on the planet all at once he decides to build a space station to fire pods that would disperse the weapon from orbit.

The final battle takes place in and around this space station as a fleet of US Space Marines (yep, that's what they are called) head up in a space shuttle. The Marines and the villainous minions, all wearing bulky space suits, fire at each other with lasers in Earth's orbit. Again, it's really dumb for a James Bond movie but in another context, this kind of space battle had not really been seen before. In fact since Moonraker we have yet to see this kind of space combat duplicated for any other movie or TV show.

If you're itching for an action hack-and-slash role-playing game to hold you over until Diablo III releases, then you can't do much better than Torchlight. Developed by Runic Games, with a team comprised largely of people that worked on the original Diablo and Diablo II, this is probably as close as one can get to a Diablo-esque experience without actually summoning the Lord of Terror. Even the music is reminiscent of Diablo. That's not to say that Torchlight is any kind of rehash. The game generally carries a light tone, thanks largely to its cartoonish art style and bright colors. Even in the deepest depths of the mines that run underneath the town of Torchlight, with the blood setting turned on, you won't find a creature that can be characterized as horrific or scary, so the game does a good job of standing out on its own.

Download the Torchlight Demo (418 MB)
Check out all Torchlight Downloads

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

Once again, we return to the realm of free-to-play MMO shooters. We've covered Quake Live, Battlefield Heroes, and even Combat Arms, so maybe it's time to tackle something a little more new. CrimeCraft was released in August, and quickly went to the "free unlimited trial" system that boils down to being free-to-play. It's not great, and certainly not better than other free-to-play MMO shooters like Combat Arms (even with insane community), but it's passable and, at least on the surface, unique.

San Diego-based Psyonix is a full fledged professional game developer with lots of experience in using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 technology. Indeed the developer has collaborated directly with Epic on several of their games. However, the team also likes to experiment with new game prototypes and one of those efforts, the casual underwater-themed platformer Whizzle, has been turned into a full (and free) stand along game using Epic's now officially released Unreal Development Kit.

Big Download got a chance to ask some questions to the Psyonix team and its founder Dave.Hagewood to find out more about how Whizzle was made, what they think the release of UDK will mean for game development and more.

Games that are coming out soon have a lot of unknowns that the average person might not know. Who is this character inspired by? Is all the talk of volumetric fog or cel-shaded graphics really worthwhile? Do the game mechanics really seem solid, or are they lackluster? In All You Need To Know we provide information to help you fully appreciate what these upcoming games have to offer.

Feed your head after the jump.

Check out our collection of Diablo III related downloads here on Big Download!

It's said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it is a completely subjective experience, dependent upon the taste of each particular viewer. This is palpably evident in the video game industry, where one man's trash is another man's treasure. One need only review the relatively recent controversy over Diablo 3's color palette to realize the truth of this.

Have we evolved a different set of standards for the concept of beauty in a video game? Is there ever one prevailing standard, apparent and provable to all? Why is beauty so hard to define?

Futuremark has made its mark (pun intended) in the past with its benchmarking software, especially 3DMark which has become a defacto product to put high end PC hardware through its paces. However the company has also wanted to make games and in 2008 it announced its plans to start up Futuremark Games Studios.

Later today its first title, the multiplayer first person shooter Shattered Horizon, is scheduled to be released via Steam. As one might expect their first game is not the typical FPS as it takes place in Earth orbit with players as armed astronaunts shooting in zero gravity. Big Download got the game's lead designer Antti Summala to give us some more info on Shattered Horizon and get some hints about the future plans for the game.

We've been reporting for some time on the progress of Mytheon, the upcoming free-to-play action-RPG from developer Petroglyph and publisher True Games Interactive. Today, True Games has provided Big Download with an exclusive first look at three of the environments that the player will explore in the game. Mytheon is currently scheduled to officially launch in 2010 with a beta test said to begin soon.

When Croteam released the original Serious Sam game over eight years ago it was considered a bit of a novelty. It was a $20 game that was a throwback to the beginning of the first person shooter genre with only a tiny plot, tons of enemies on screen and co-op play through the single player levels. By 2001, first person shooters had begun to evolve away from these kinds of features to include stuff like real storylines and acting, only a few enemies on screen but with smarter AI and small levels.

Serious Sam The First Encounter didn't have any of that. What it had was fast arcade-like shooter gameplay, massive outdoor areas for levels, and lots and lots of weird but wonderful monsters. For those of you who played the game for the first time, tell us you didn't get scared when the headless kamikaze bombed-filled men started charging at you. You can't tell us that because you would be lying. You were frightened out of your minds. That's the kind of impact the original game had on our young minds back in March 2001.

If you combine the wasteland ambience and role-playing aspects of Fallout 3 and combine them with the four-player cooperative features from games like Left 4 Dead, then add in some giant creatures and a good dose of splatter humor, you end up with Borderlands. The player travels to the world of Pandora, where there isn't much to survive on, but the promise of vast riches in an ancient vault built by a long lost alien species. There are plenty of obstacles in the way, but luckily, they can all be overcome with a little skill and superior firepower.

Check out all Borderlands Downloads

It's a common thing to let the AI "cheat" in a real-time strategy game. Giving them faster resource gathering, knowledge of the whole map, or even extra units is something developers might do on higher AI difficulties. But why not just streamline out all the resources and construction and just leave the basics of the AI? That is to say, the basics are swarms of AI units that you must overcome to win. AI War: Fleet Command does this, and manages to set itself up as one of the best strategy games this or any year. It's a game that is perfect for playing with your friends, and easily surpasses the RTS 4X standards set by the excellent Sins of a Solar Empire. It shows that one man with a vision and make something just as good, if not better, than that of a large team.

Download the AI War: Fleet Command Demo

Sometimes you just need to sit down, slide a floppy into your A: drive, and enjoy gaming retro style. We know this all too well! That's why we have a list of the best and brightest from days long gone. These are some of our favorite games of all time, and we're sure that you'll love them as much as we do, if not more. Welcome to Boot Disk, and enjoy the retro ride!

There's plenty of great games floating around in the 4x genre. Games like Civilization 4 or Galactic Civilizations 2 are incredibly engaging and time-consuming, leading to that "one more turn" affliction that most 4X fans are afflicted with. The Civilization series pioneered the ground-based 4X game, but another series defined the space 4X. Master of Orion is an incredibly influential and highly-regarded series for a reason, and the most enduring and popular of said series is Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares. While it's interface and graphics may seem a bit antiquated by today's standards, it set the bar for depth and humor in the 4X genre, and is easily a classic in any genre.

Welcome once again to Mac Monday, where we preview the latest Mac game releases. This time around, we look at Trapped: The Abduction by Gogii Games, and Harvest: Massive Encounter by Oxeye Game Studio. And once again we find ourselves in a situation where one of these games isn't so great and the other is surprisingly compelling. Find out which after the jump!

Much like Dell's Alienware gaming PC division revamped their entire lineup of desktops last month, other gaming PC makers are doing the same with their products. Today Maingear announced a major revamp of their own desktop line which they have named Shift. Along with the new desktop line comes a new logo for the company and a new case design made specifically for the Shift brand. Inside the case Maingear plans to allow for a ton of high end hardware choices and with prices starting at $2.199.

Big Download got the skinny from Maingear founder and CEO Wallace Santos about Maingear's "shift" in direction, along with what he thinks about the newly launched Windows 7 and the future of gaming PCs.