Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Is "Snake Eater" a dopey subtitle? Probably. Was "Pandora Tomorrow" a million times worse? Absolutely.

The playable(!) demo shows off some of MGS3's new features... the jungle environs, the camoflage percentage rating, and the ability to turn local wildlife into little boxes of processed food with your tranq gun. I suspect I'll be spending a lot of time trying to catch every possible animal in the game, because that just screams 100% minigame to me. The underlying point is to stockpile them to eat when your stamina meter runs down. There's even a veg option of eating mushrooms and fruit... but the game is set in the '60s; we probably don't need Snake being labelled any more of a peacenik than he already is, the anti-war hippie.

Although this likely isn't Snake, but instead his genetic clone-father Big Boss. The difference is irrelevant right now.

Like any good demo, you're given way more weapons than you should have. Once you get through the harrowing "go find your backpack" mission, you have access to half a dozen weapons and a full slate of gadgets that probably didn't exist in 1964. They did downgrade Snake's everpresent CODEC tech: it's now a visible earpiece with a chest mounted on/off switch. No "it directly stimulates the bones of your inner ear" crap. But - and MGS-haters can rally around this one - the CODEC conversation screens are still interminably long-winded. Some things never change. One time-honored facet of the conversation could be gone, however: Snake's hilarious habit of incredulously repeating whatever was just said to him. I don't recall a single instance of that in the demo, compared to nearly every conversation in Twin Snakes. "Nearly every conversation?!?"

Here's a silly over-weaponed example. I tranqed a guard too close to a second guard, so Mr. Man #2 turned on Alert Mode. At first I ran backwards, but that was where the reinforcements were pouring from, so I ran ahead and hid in some tall grass just behind an old brick wall. (Camo rating: 95%. Damn near invisible.) When the guard team stalked past the wall, I switched to the shotgun - which you plainly should not have - and unloaded into all three of them at once. Zero Shot! Triple Takedown! Shine Get! That makes for a fun demo. "A fun demo?!?"

Watch the pause menu. If you leave it in untouched pause for too long (maybe a minute?) the game auto-exits to the main demo disk screen. "Untouched pause?!?"

Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal. How's that subtitle grab you? The developers of the 1999 PS1 game "Tiny Tank: Up Your Arsenal" certainly liked it. It's only a British pun anyway. No one in the US will notice.

Another great demo. Although, with the exception of the side-scrolling Quark level, they might as well have said "You want a demo of R&C3? Go play R&C2 again. There's your demo." It's really hard to find anything wrong with the Ratchet & Clank series, so that is no bad thing. You know, speaking as a Ratchet fan, it feels good to be heading back into that universe. These are fine, fine games and everyone expects R&C3 to live up to the legacy,

3 adds online multiplayer (with voice chat!) and the demo has a short movie showing it off. It doesn't reveal much. Online multiplayer looks an awful lot like offline singleplayer, duh.

One of Ratchet's new weapons is a flaming holo-whip, which can strike down swarms of little baddies in one swing. And if I know my R&C, there will be plenty of swarms of little baddies. The demo also lets you use a viral gun that forces enemies to turn on each other, which is a friggin' hoot. This game is a Day One purchase, despite a release date hidden in the shadow of GTA: San Andreas. That's a long shadow.

The demo for Silent Hill 4: The Room surprised me, as I've pretty much given up on that series. It just seemed to me like the franchise was doing whatever it could to gross you out, instead of doing whatever it could to scare you. So I switched over to Fatal Frame and never looked back. The Room makes me want to look back.

The trademark horrors of Silent Hill are in force: twitchy pulpy beasts and dark side/light side environments. But I like the psychological tact I saw in the demo. As it begins, you're stuck in your apartment with no way out... well, the rusted metal evil version of your apartment. A baddie climbs out of the wall to kill you, and you wake up. Whew! It was a dream! You walk around your normal apartment (this part is all in first person, by the way... the controls are awkward but you do get a pleasant adventure/exploration game vibe out of it) and find that you can't get out of this one either! The door is chained shut from the inside.

Not long after, you find a hole in your bathroom wall to climb through, which appears to take you inside somebody else's dream. Weird. I actually couldn't figure out what to do much beyond that. The bits like that one, being outside your apartment, are regular third person action, with you clubbing fleshy skin-dogs to death with a baseball bat.

One thing I really liked was looking out your apartment window. You can see people inside their homes across the way, or just watch the nearby traffic intersection. I could sit on that for hours. There's also a neat scene through your apartment door's peephole.

So congratulations Silent Hill 4: The Room. You're on my list.