UK shop Game has restarted its Play Now/Trade Later deal.

It means you can buy selected games and trade them in for a guaranteed amount, effectively meaning you pay a fiver for them.

Codemasters' superb racer Dirt 3 is on the list. Fear 3 on Xbox 360 (not PS3) is another.

Other games included are:

• UFC Trainer (Wii)
• Cars 2 (DS)
• Art Academy (DS)
• Call of Juarez: The Cartel (Xbox 360 and PS3)
• Hunted: The Demon's Forge (PS3)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (Wii)

If you trade in any of those games for credit before 12th August they'll effectively cost £5. The credit can be redeemed against any purchase in the future.

In February Game raised eyebrows when it guaranteed a £35 trade-in price for shooters Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm.

It meant you lost only £5 for 13 days of play.

Video:

Dark detective drama L.A. Noire has extended its reign on top of the charts, spending a third week at number one.

Co-operative fantasy fighter Hunted: The Demon's Forge was last week's major new contender, but the Bethesda-published adventure could only capture 14th place.

Hunted's platform sales broke down to 63 per cent Xbox 360, 30 per cent on PS3 and 7 per cent on PC (excluding downloads).

Sims 3: Generations - the life simulation's fourth expansion - fared better, knocking up a tenth place entry on PC.

Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is anchored in second, no doubt buoyed by the release of fourth film On Stranger Tides.

Codemasters' rally racer Dirt 3 revved into third. Colourful caricatured shooter Brink held fifth place.

The Wii bundle-backed Wii Sports Resort spends its 98th week in the UK Top 40, reclining in sixth.

Chart stalwarts COD: Black Ops, FIFA 11, and Portal 2 fill out seventh, eighth and ninth respectively.

UKIE Games Charts compiled by GfK Chart-Track.

Campaign co-operative play was once the preserve of the dedicated PC gamer, but these days it's become a standard gameplay feature and it's not hard to see why.

My experience playing Gears of War, for example, was infinitely superior once I had someone there to witness me punting a Locust corpse around a room while shouting that we do not negotiate with terrorists, and I know that Left 4 Dead was more memorable whenever someone had to fight their way across a level to save my life than it would have been if I'd just used a health pack.

The presence of a friend means that co-op is fun by default, and it would be nice to see more games embracing the concept from the outset rather than tacking it on.

Cue Hunted: The Demon's Forge. Developed by a team of RPG veterans at inXile Entertainment - the sort of RPG veterans whose reliance on pencils and paper for Dungeons & Dragons sessions was a quiet but competitive form of deforestation - it's the modern cover-based third-person shooter retrofitted as an eighties dungeon-crawler.

Two players take on the complementary roles of human powerhouse Caddoc and elven archer E'lara, and must work together to loot exciting swords and slay exotic demons as they explore the dark recesses of a traditional fantasy world.

Caddoc, whose accent wants to be English but whose dialogue sometimes isn't sure whether to be Scottish or Californian, and his haughty companion are mercenaries who begin the game wandering around swamps aimlessly. But they quickly find themselves drawn into a dark conspiracy - involving the orc-like wargar, minotaurs and demons - by a seductive spirit called Seraphine.

Their quest takes them through the war-torn streets of corrupted and impoverished Dyfed, into the depths of the dungeons that run far beneath it, across wild plains and port towns and far beyond.

Caddoc is a brawler with a shield at his back and a sword, axe or cudgel in his right hand. In combat he is a tank, working his way into the midst of the pesky wargar, where a flurry of light and heavy attacks decimate their health bars.

E'lara specialises in ranged bow attacks, the idea being that she can assist Caddoc from afar with covering fire and also degrade the influence of the enemy's ranged forces, in order that Caddoc can operate outside cover without becoming a sitting duck.

As you progress you gather crystals that both characters can spend on magical abilities, and these follow form - so E'lara gets things like explosive and freezing arrows while Caddoc can greatly enhance his strength and perform area-of-effect attacks that lift enemies up and dump them to the ground.

On top of that, either player can temporarily become more or less invincible if they happen upon 'sleg' - a combat drug that also underpins a lot of the story.

Initially combat can be hard going, but within a few chapters you're both pretty badass, and if you like blowing up demons cheaply and bathing in their gory entrails then Hunted is very much the game for you.

The setup's reasonable enough, then, and there are some nice ideas along the way. These mostly occur when the game is confident enough to divert its attention from the story and let you follow a path away from the otherwise linear, corridor-based progression.

The riddles and puzzles you encounter here wouldn't exactly floor Dr Kawashima (or even Dr Nick), but the developers know how to arrange recessed switches, haunted crypts, false walls, eternal flames and giant spiders so that the 756-attack-point War Scepter at the end of the fight feels like an epic relic recovered rather than just another percentage point on the invisible completion meter.

And of course co-op means that when the going gets tough, the tough can get organised. Providing you aren't plagued by connection issues, you will be able to work together in combat to conserve health and mana, prioritise tougher enemies and make use of the environment.

Video: Hunted: The Demon Forge's first 15 minutes.

If you're anything like us, you'll also amuse yourselves with unofficial pastimes like "deathstone lottery" - the game of guessing whether the next ghost whose collectible voice recording you uncover will be Scouse, Irish, Brummie or whatever. (Winner gets first refusal at the next character-swap gemstone.)

In these days of launch patches it's hard to say whether connection problems will be an issue by the time you play Hunted, but we fared reasonably well pre-release over Xbox Live.

My first party of two averaged one and a half chapters - around 90 minutes of content - before one of us dropped out. The lobby system isn't very transparent but seems to work OK and in-game lag isn't an issue. (The game's also fully playable in split-screen.)

We do recommend you find someone to play with, too, although perhaps not for the gameplay reasons you imagine. While the computer AI does a decent job of filling in for another human if you do have to play the game on your own, it's much less fun to play when nobody else is around to frown moralistically at E'lara's ridiculous outfit, or comment that it's nice to hear the soundtrack from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time getting another run-out.

You tend to need that because, left to their own devices, Caddoc and E'lara aren't exactly the most compelling people to keep you company. Their relationship is business rather than pleasure, but for people who seem to have voluntarily spent years together there's a surprising lack of chemistry and humour in their banter.

E'lara's snooty refrains and double-entendres clash uneasily with Caddoc's awkward pseudo-paternal everyman patter, and most of the dialogue is just flat. "We sent that demon back to hell," says E'lara. "Right where he came from," says Caddoc.

The greater shame though is that the relationship also has to be somewhat forced on the battlefield. On paper, E'lara's skills should complement Caddoc's brute force and create interesting opportunities - but while you can get more out of the game by co-operating, it is far from required.

On anything but the hardest difficulty setting either character can charge into battle from chapter two onward without too much concern for planning or coordination, and for most of the game the lightning spell and occasional button-mashing sees you through, whether the latter is Caddoc's hacking and slashing or E'lara's aim-and-explode archery.

There are times when co-op is mandatory - E'lara has to fire flaming arrows to activate puzzle-specific items, for example - but the majority of prompts to bring both characters together seem to have little to do with gameplay.

"Why are all these doors so damn heavy?" Caddoc moans at one point as you are both obligated to stand next to one another to progress to the next area. The answer is more that the programming requires you to cross that threshold together rather than anything to do with the core co-op conceit.

A solid eight hours of action takes you through to the end of the story, after which you can extend the life of the game through Adventure+ mode (toggling various tweaks) or by creating your own arena-mode extensions with the Crucible Map Creator.

Crucible is like Horde mode in Gears of War 2, except you can choose the manner of your destruction, specifying the sequence of rooms you face and the make-up of the enemies to be spammed upon you. After the story mode's six chapters, I feel I've had my fill, but if you want more of the core combat then this is a flexible and welcome extension.

Hunted isn't exactly Left 4 Dead for the fantasy genre, then. It's seemingly, and in the end rightly, insecure about its co-op credentials so it never fully embraces them, and the result is a fairly standard fantasy third-person action-adventure that can happily be played with a friend but for which you needn't rely on one.

Given the excellent concept that gave life to it in the first place, that's a rather disappointing conclusion. But those who can overlook Hunted's design shortfalls and occasionally tepid fantasy backdrop will extract a good few hours of fun slashing and exploring before something better comes along.

7/10

Swords and shields adventure Hunted: The Demon's Forge hopes to capture your imagination this week. By virtue of it being the only major release, will it capture the contents of your wallet too?

You play as couple of money-obsessed mercenaries who would never help anyone without the promise of gold. So of course you must gradually find a moral compass and become world-saving heroes.

What else is out this week? PC megahit The Sims 3 launches its latest expansion, Generations. We don't normally cover add-ons here, but it's a retail release and, well, new pickings have rarely been slimmer.

It's worth noting that Sony has promised PlayStation Store services will resume this week - meaning free games for PSN users and, fingers crossed, a bumper crop of new software. There are plenty of downloadable releases to catch up on after six weeks offline.

Still heard nothing that takes your fancy? Well, a glance at the calender shows next week looking far busier: inFamous 2, Duke Nukem Forever, Red Faction: Armageddon, plus a Green Lantern movie tie-in. Oh, and something called E3.

This Week in Shops!

Hunted: The Demon's Forge

• Developer: inXile Entetainment
• Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
• Formats: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

What is it? A co-operative action game set in a high fantasy world. Gruff, balded-headed Caddoc and flighty, jiggly-boobed elf E'lara are an experienced mercenary duo. One night Caddoc dreams of a scantily-clad lady with a quest in hand, and it all goes downhill from there. What does Eurogamer think? Eurogamer's review is in captivity until Thursday.

Video: Forge out of ten?

The Sims 3: Generations

• Developer: EA Play/The Sims Studio
• Publisher: EA
• Formats: Mac, PC

What is it? Extra content for your gibberish-spouting Sims. New additions include body hair, partying and a love of pranks for teenage Sims. Weddings and mid-life crises are doled out for grown-ups. What does Eurogamer think? A Eurogamer review has yet to be scheduled.

Video: The Generations game.

What Else?

• Jewels of the Ages (DS)
• Traffic Manager (PC)

PSN Store relaunch update:

• Alien Crush (PSN)
• Bonk's Adventure (PSN)
• Wizardry: Labyrinth Of Lost Souls (PSN)
• Sega Rally Online Arcade (PSN)
• Star Raiders (PSN)
• Red Johnson's Chronicles (PSN)
• Under Siege (PSN)
• Back To The Future: The Game – Episode 3 (PSN)
• Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp (PSN)
• Bomberman '94
• Learning With The Pooyoos – Episode 1 (PSN)
• Missile Command (PSone classic) (PSN)

Chart Predictions!

Each week one of the team steps up to predict the UK all-formats chart. The following predicts the outcome for the week beginning Friday 3rd June (to be reported on Monday 6th June).

Martin Robinson, Features Editor, Eurogamer.net

"It's my first time behind Eurogamer's crystal ball, so apologies if I'm being a little unimaginative, but with all eyes on what's about to happen in the conference halls of L.A. and a relatively slim release list it's hard to see too much in the way of change in the top five.

"No disrespect to this week's biggest title Hunted, but it doesn't quite have the pull to dethrone L.A. Noire or DiRT 3, though I do see it knocking its Bethesda stable-mate Brink out of the top five. Zumba Fitness will continue its unlikely success story, and Lego Pirates of the Caribbean will slip down as FIFA 11 makes the most of the post-season blues."

1. L.A. Noire
2. DiRT 3
3. Zumba Fitness
4. Hunted: The Demon's Forge
5. FIFA 11

Eurogamer Reviews Edtior Oli Welsh attempted to predict the future last week. Here's our fancy table to show how well he did.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge will let you make and share levels with friends via an unannounced (but leaked nonetheless on some very naughty shop websites) Crucible feature, developer inXile has told Eurogamer.

"There's a couple of things that happen [once the game has finished] that we're not talking about yet, but I'll give you a little... We have something that we're not really announcing yet but since it's on the menu screen we're allowed at least to talk about it. And that's The Crucible," founder Matt Finley revealed.

"This is a map creation system, which will allow you to... Basically we want users to be able to create maps and share them with their friends. And you'll be able to take your characters through maps."

Characters, that is, you've taken through the main Hunted campaign, which lasts somewhere between 12 and 20 hours depending on the amount of exploration you do.

Hunted is a co-op, cover-based fantasy action game - a bit like Gears of War but with bows and magic and swords. So does that mean there'll be more typical multiplayer modes on offer?

"There's nothing that we're talking about," chuckled an evasive Finley.

"For us, multiplayer modes are those things where you finish the game and then you work on those. And that wasn't that interesting to me. And I don't really play multiplayer modes because I don't like getting shot in the head by a 14-year-old kid who then dances on my dead body and makes fun of me."

One thing inXile offers players looking for replayability is a "very hard level of difficulty" dubbed Old School. Not only is it fiendishly tough, but you're also required to discover all hidden rooms and side-puzzles so that you can progress.

Right now, Hunted: The Demon's Forge has passed beta and is entering the submission phase, Finley revealed - "All we're doing now is typical Q&A bug fixes."

Finley doesn't know if a demo has been decided upon, but realises - with belly rumbling chuckle - how he'd be "a dead man" if he let the news slip.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge is taking aim at June. If it sells, a sequel will be made - it's as simple as that.

"It really comes down to the simple fact that does Hunted sell well enough to warrant more of them? If Hunted is very very successful I think you're going to see more of them," said Finley. "If you see more of them then anything is possible: doing one fast and furious with the tech that we have or switching to id Tech 5 - we're open to anything.

"The business has just become that way. It's not a negative, it's just a fact of life and a reality. You look at what happens with television shows and they're getting cancelled after one episode. It's expensive! When we were making these games 15 years ago we were doing it for £400,000, £500,000," he said, laughing at my suggestion about the costs sky-rocketing to £40 million.

"It's a huge financial investment and if [Bethesda] see a return on that they're going to want to make more of them.

"Nothing would make me happier than to be doing Hunted for the next 10 years."

Incidentally, did you know that voluptuous heroine Elara isn't simply wondering around in her war-styled lingerie? No - according to Finley those are "traditional elven mourning robes", and there's even a line in the dialogue that makes a joke about it.

Video: I Hunted this clip out for you. What?

Last week Bethesda challenged the sexual active population of the world to conceive now so that a baby can be born on "Skyrim Day" - 11th November 2011 (TES V: Skyrim's release date).

The Elder Scrolls maker even challenged nutty parents to call their newborns Dovahkiin - Dragonborn in the game's fancy fantasy speak.

But Bethesda has other high profile games coming out before November. So what do the makers of Brink and Hunted: The Demon's Forge think about Skyrim babies and perhaps fans of their games following suit?

"It's an interesting idea," Paul Wedgwood, head of Brink maker Splash Damage, mulled to Eurogamer. "Having just had a 10 month-old I think I'd rather not have a baby as a great game came out, but I am looking forward to Skyrim very much.

"If they did [call their baby Brink] that would be a little bit crazy," he added. "That said, my son's called Fox and it's not exactly a popular choice unless you happen to be an X-Files man, so I would be the last to criticise other people's name choices.

"If they did [call their baby Brink] I would be deeply honoured."

Matt Finley, founder of Hunted maker inXile Entertainment - and veteran of Interplay - was more ebullient.

"Hah!" he snorted to Eurogamer, "I would love to see a bunch of baby Elaras and Caddocs out there - that would be truly awesome!

"I almost wish I'd have gotten someone pregnant in time, a ha ha ha! Yeah anyone, send someone over ha ha ha ha!"

Eurogamer's hands-on impressions of Brink and Hunted were published moments ago.

Video: Hunted: The Demon's Forge.

Co-op fantasy monster-masher Hunted: The Demon's Forge lands this summer, yet I bet your knowledge of it is still fuzzy and disorganised. Maybe you've read our preview with inExile founder Brian Fargo talking about how the game is "bringing the classic dungeon crawl back". Perhaps you've heard the community chatter that dubs the game "Gears of Warcraft". Maybe you've looked at a picture of it and thought: breasts! And who could blame you? If I were Brian Fargo, I'd have called the game Bones 'n Breasts, in a classy nod to 1988 classic Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

While Hunted definitely carries the tone of an old-school fantasy romp, and it certainly does resemble Gears of War in its camera, scale and cover system, my point is that I bet you don't even know the plot of Hunted, or quite what it's like to play. Last week Bethesda invited Eurogamer to play the opening of the game, plus a much later level with some upgraded characters, so I can finally report that Hunted's plot is every bit as cheesy, dramatic and eager-to-please as you might have hoped.

Hunted's first level sees protagonists Caddoc the human and E'lara the elf, who resemble ALL THAT IS MAN and ALL THAT IS LADY respectively, hiking through the wilderness on a quest to locate an ancient ruin. After a brief encounter with some chitinous creatures the size of wheelie bins designed to teach you the basics of using your crossbow or bow and the game's cover system, the pair find what they were looking for: a massive fountain of opaque blue water, which will fill more than enough mana potions for their "client". Following the example of the best fantasy heroes, it's revealed that Caddoc and E'lara are in this for the money.

It's here that the rickety rollercoaster of Hunted's plot begins its downward acceleration. Right next to the fountain is a mammoth stone door, covered in ominous engravings. E'lara, by far the more suicidal of the two, suggests they see what's behind it. World-weary Caddoc comments sarcastically about the wisdom of opening doors covered in scary faces, but they open it anyway.

It's on the other side of it, at the top of a breathtakingly beautiful gorge wreathed in waterfalls and thick foliage, that the scene is set. A portal opens and out steps a woman with pupil-less eyes, skin the colour of poisoned milk and an outfit that leaves one thing to the imagination: how she got into it. Introducing herself as Seraphim (and voiced by Lucy Lawless), the lady requests that Caddoc picks up a small, dark stone on the pedestal next to her, referring to it as a "Death Stone".

Understandably, Caddoc has some doubts about the whole situation. Professional mentalcake E'lara does not, however, and snatches the thing up, thereby attracting the ire of some kind of terrible demon, empurpling the entire valley and sparking the sky into a broiling tub of lightning. It's from here that the game's action would appear to stem from, with cities abruptly finding themselves besieged by whole armies of nasty creatures.

Or perhaps the whole death stone thing turns out to just be a side-plot. It's that kind of game.

It's also the kind of game where you could happily get by without knowing precisely what's going on, and of greater importance is whether the sword that just came cartwheeling out of the weapon rack you just smashed is better than the sword you're carrying. Or, to put it another way, it's the kind of game where you remove weapons from perfectly functional weapon racks by smashing them.

On the subject of Hunted's easy-going design, both Caddoc and E'lara can swap between melee weapons, their ranged weapon and magical combat at the touch of a button, though this doesn't feel immediately tactical as much as it does entertaining. While Caddoc specialises in melee combat and E'lara bow is much faster than Caddoc's crossbow, the two of you can go scything into a mass of enemies with whatever close-combat weapons you have equipped, one of you could provide long-range fire support for the other, or the person playing Caddoc could use magic to Battle Charge E'lara, causing her arrows to blow up enemies like fleshy grenades.

Once you consider that each of the characters can be upgraded with nine very different magical abilities (which can in turn be upgraded further), you get combat with more of an emphasis on reacting than playing by any hard and fast rules. Half-way through my time with Hunted my co-op partner and I had developed a tactic of our own: placing my upgraded Sigil of Pain on the ground, goading a load of enemies onto it, and then keeping them there with our sword and mace like riot officers enforcing the world's smallest kettle.

But where Hunted's combat seemed happy to keep things simple, its environment was a little trickier, with secrets, puzzles, traps and even side-quests. This peaked with a trip through a stereotypical fantasy sewer, containing as it did barely any water and architecture that included (but was not limited to) an eight-foot tall stone face that spoke in riddles, poison arrow traps and a haunted crypt.

With the exception of one very brief ambush by a giant spider, it was this entirely optional crypt that proved the highlight of our session when its guardian showed up - an eight-foot tall animated skeleton who demanded something resembling teamwork. He caused such crippling melee damage that more than once we had to use our limited number of revive potions, which work in an excellently heroic way - you simply throw them at your downed ally, allowing them to break nearby in a flash of blue light.

All told, Hunted's looking like a fun dungeon crawler after all, and we still know barely anything about the "Crucible" mode where you'll be spending all your gold looted during the campaign. All inXile is saying at the moment is that it'll be a "Map generator". Randomly generated dungeons, with build parameters unlocked by your cash? Or random dungeons of varying difficulty, with your gold used to buy equipment? A full-on map editor? We'll have to wait and see.