Swordfighting sorcerers lose their charm
Wizards & Warriors PC CD Rom £29.99 Heuristic Park/Activision ***
He may not be as well known as Richard "Ultima" Garriot, but DW Bradley has a respected track record and his latest effort is an important release for the role playing games (RPG) community.
But, while it may have been four years in the making, the anachronistic Wizards And Warriors could have been released any time in the last 14 years.
Sporadically impressive 3D graphics or not, this is an RPG so dated that only the committed will care. Unlike Baldur's Gate and the rest, W&W plays in the first person, although Quake fans will find their reflexes remain untested.
Instead there is copious prose and a stash of spells as you set out to find a "magical sword". Thankfully this sub-Tolkein nonsense is bolstered by an imaginative variety of races - from magical elephants to crossbred lizards.
However, once you've raised your stat level a few times and bought that snazzy new chain mail, the paucity of original thought matters less.
Persevere and it is soon clear that there is little here that will appeal to the unconvinced. The game plays out exactly as you'd expect, with your party having numerous dungeons to loot and abundant quests to complete.
The control and combat work well enough but, with at least 120 hours of play, it's likely that most will never see the end credits. Also, with Baldur's Gate 2 offering similar thrills to the same audience, there may simply not be enough time to play both. One for the hardcore fans only. (GH)
Vicarious Viking vicissitudes
Cultures PC CD-rom £29.99 Funatics/THQ ***
The god sim is back, and this time it's personal. A little too personal, in fact.
Overseeing a small community of Vikings settling Greenland, you're on first-name terms with everyone: Sven the huntsman, Ingmar the scout, Frieda the, er, woman. And you must micro-manage every aspect of their lives: their jobs, their domestic arrangements, the layout of the town, even what sex their baby should be.
The big idea here is that each of your subjects is a genuine individual - no two look the same, and all, supposedly, have their own peculiar quirks.
With their sweetly animated features, it's all too easy to become attached to your little Scandinavians. Which is fine as long as you're building a happy community - but a different story when it comes to sending Benny and Bjorn into battle.
Because yours is not the only tribe trying to build a new life in the new world. There are Inuits and Native Americans here, too.
For a time, you will be able to coexist and trade peacefully, but eventually resources are going to run out, tensions are going to rise, and you're going to have to build a graveyard next to that woodcutter's tent.
This odd disjunction between cuteness and horror is one of many in Cultures: another is the disparity of timescales, which allows you to conceive a child, bring him up, train him as a soldier and send him to his death in the time it takes for Ingmar to recce the west of the island.
Furthermore, while some characters, such as bakers and fishermen, will happily beaver away unassisted, seeking out their own materials, others - scouts, soldiers, builders - crave attention like a rock star's daughter, having to be told where to go, what to do, even when to eat and sleep.
Given the prospective size of your settlement, the complexity of the infrastructure, and the fiddliness of the interface, this is no small task.
On the other hand, the pace of the game is so infernally slow - a coastal raid with these particular Vikings turns into a two-week beach holiday - that keeping tabs on them all is easier than you'd think.
In sum, then, Cultures is a thoughtful, jolly, ruddy-cheeked affair, put together with a great deal of love and attention - and, to be brutal, very little concern for playability. (AB)
Veteran racing champion is overtaken
F1 Championship Season 2000 Sony PlayStation £34.99 Electronic Arts **** Formula One 2000 Sony PlayStation £25-30 Studio 33/Psygnosis ***
When you load Formula One 2000, you wonder if PlayStation graphics have improved at all in the past four years. Then when you run F1 Championship Season, the full-motion video and fabulous tracks make you wonder why all PSX games aren't as brilliant as this.
Formula One 2000 is in its fifth year and the series has sold more than 4 million units. It has a commentary by Murray Walker, and while the starting interface is clunky, it is very easy to play. Overtaking is simple, and you can take long excursions across the greens and gravel traps and still win races. If other cars are in the way, bumping them up the gearbox often helps.
F1 Championship Season 2000 is a completely different matter. EA's second annual trip to the starting grid is a vastly more realistic simulation. The tracks, which ought to be the same, seem much shorter, and the corners are harder to get round, unless you brake well in advance.
Bump into other cars and shards of carbon fibre fly in all directions. Go off the track and you frequently end up pointing the wrong way while a dozen cars stream past.
Eventually you lose gears, wheels fly off, and you end up retiring rather than winning. The game is a bit more forgiving that the real thing, but 16 laps of precision racing is still a challenge.
The simulation continues in staggering detail through all the testing, qualifying and racing through all kinds of weather. And while you don't get Murray Walker (as a driver, you wouldn't), you do get realistic race intros from Jim Rosenthal and in-race instructions from your pit crew. The only real problem is that the controls are very twitchy and take some getting used to, though this could also be true to life.
Psygnosis's Formula One 2000 is still a good game, and after EA's F1, you get to appreciate the (unrealistically) easy overtaking and (unrealistic) on-screen map of the circuit. Its arcade option is great fun, especially in two-player mode.
While F1 Championship Season 2000 also has a quick race mode, its simulation takes the genre to a level we never expected to see on a PlayStation. I can hardly wait for the PlayStation 2 version. (JS)
