Halo 3, coming this fall, is the next installment of the moody, bloody shooter that—with apologies to Sting—turned murder into art. The story (what we know of it) puts the surly, eternally helmeted Master Chief back on an Earth that has fallen to his alien foes, the Covenant, who are now divided against one another. This will be the first Halo designed for the Xbox 360, and it should set a new high-water mark for what a next-gen game system can do. Meanwhile, gentler, less hard-core gamers are looking forward to Spore, from Sims creator Will Wright, in which players nurture a life-form as it evolves from a single wee cell into a sentient, space-faring species.