ant to be a gadget-hoarding, fashionable yuppie? Or are you one already, and wish your life's firmware, so to speak, could be upgraded? EA Montreal meets the demands of young, affluent, and technologically inclined Sims with expansion pack The Sims 3: High-End Loft Stuff. Access entertainment systems, avant garde, and electronic tchotchkes galore. Can you afford to fill your swank flat with modern extravagance? When in Rome: charge it.
Though convention-bound Trekkies have been doing it for years, Cryptic Studios offers fans of Star Trek the chance to step into the shoes of the heroes from Gene Roddenberry's science fiction dynasty. MMORPG Star Trek Online recruits players as captains serving the United Federation of Planets or the Klingon Empire. Can the game match expectant imaginations cultivated, literally, over generations? In the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "Let's see what's out there."
If you have ever seen photographs of the abandoned Ukranian city of Pripyat, you know that the only sight more chilling than a day in the jackbooted life of the Soviet Union is one frozen in irradiated time by the Chernobyl disaster. Bulgarian developer GSC Game World, which conflated history with popular post-apocalyptic fiction in 2007 with STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, releases the Geiger-ticking, mutant-infested sequel, STALKER: Call of Pripyat.
