The year 2000 - turn of the millennium. It passed so very very quickly and a good chunk of 2001 has already been lost to the etha. Time flies when you play a lot of computer games and last year certainly offered up some tasty titles. For me and surely many others 2000 will always be the year of Counter-Strike. This team player anti-terrorist Half-Life modification has taken the online world by storm with more people indulging in this addictive 'real-life' shooter than the rest of its online ilk put together. Sierra saw this success early on and Counter-Strike is now a fully-fledged game available from stores worldwide, bundled with several other team based mod, and set at a very wallet happy price.

Another title that shone through last year was Deus Ex, a futuristic mix of RPG and FPS from those bad boys at Ion Storm. Throwing the goblins and dragons a-side Deus Ex with its nano-technology implants, technology based skill tree, non-linear story line and gloomy organised crime setting proved a refreshing and very enjoyable ride. Based on the unwieldy Unreal engine the game's SDK and multiplayer patches are now available ensuring further longevity.

As with just about every other year in gaming history sequels were abundant in 2000. At the top of the heap were some excellent updates; the massive Balder's Gate 2 arrived later in the year with more classes, levels, story and an improved resolution, Red Alert 2 was a return to form for Westwood and Grand Prix 3 was as excellent as everyone hoped it would. The stagnated RTS genre received a nice boost from true 3D titles like Ground Control and everyone seemed to be jumping on the MMORPG band wagon with a wealth of new titles and sequels announced or hyped further in 2000.

Now that everything has settled after some serious Christmas binging and the January sales are a distant memory, what can we expect in the upcoming months? What titles will emerge and which ones will be worthy of or hard earned cash? Here at Speedy 3D we have our finger firmly on the industry pulse and take a look at a number of choice titles from a range of genres, countries and developers that should - but don't count on it - be released over the next ten months.

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