Something for the Weekend: 800 points or less – a weekend of violence

It’s the weekend and it’s raining. Well, it is here, anyway. It’s twenty days till payday, our wife has left us, and even the family dog’s died. There’s really nothing else to do except drown our sorrows with some lovely cheap supermarket alcohol, but unfortunately we’ve just had a liver transplant, and until it fully ‘takes’, we’re not even allowed on the Special Brew.

At a time like this, we need to lose ourselves in some cheap, mindless, violent entertainment. Thus, here’s the definitive list of thrills and spills for any “lost weekend”.

Military Sniper Sim 3.18 – 80 MS points

It’s all about hiding in bushes and being very quiet on the 360 at the moment, with the mediocre-at-best Sniper Ghost Warrior continuing to cling mysteriously to the upper echelons of the retail sales charts, while this little gem rides high as the best-selling Indie game at the moment. A technically adept, almost military-grade sniping simulation, this will teach you many of the true fundamentals of actually firing a sniper rifle, taking into account wind speed, air resistance gravity… you name it. Mastery here will soothe your bruised ego and make you feel so much more like a man. (Even if you’re a girl – it’s that powerful).

Vanquish demo – FREE

There’s a lot to do in the Vanquish demo. Not only can you slide around on your knees blasting hell out of lots of robots, but you can  hijack enemy AT-ST style walkers, commandeer gun turrets, and take on an incredible, giant transforming robot boss. It’s one of the greatest slices of gratis 20-minute entertainment available right now.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero – 400 MS points

While a rather watered-down taster of the full zombie-splatting experience, Case Zero is pretty much a mini adventure in its own right, set in an entirely different map to the finished product, and with a unique story of its own. Still perhaps more demo than standalone game, it’ll definitely leave you wanting more. In the meantime, there’s hundreds of zombies to stab, beat, chop up, blend, fry, squash, percolate, griddle and dismember, for only a few pounds. Excellent.

And there you have it. Strategic violence, twitch violence, and simple violent violence. Slope back to your rancid bedsit and indulge yourself. It’s what we’ll be doing.