Sky Odyssey
PlayStation 2 £39.99 Sony ****
Marketing triumph it may have been, but Sony's Play Station 2 has seen some distinctly underwhelming games. While Sega's Dreamcast, flooded by quality software, has met with fatal indifference from the punters, the PS2 has sold well despite having only two decent titles (SSX Snowboarding and Star Wars: Starfighter).

Actually make that two-and-a-half. Sky Odyssey is a welcome, if flawed, release. Eschewing violence, guns and, at times, enjoyment, Odyssey lets you fly a variety of planes around a deserted archipelago.

In a manner similar to Nintendo's classic Pilotwings, hoops have to be flown through and checkpoints reached, but it is the slow, yet rewarding, pace that shines.

Each aircraft, from bi-plane to jet, flies differently and, although anoraks will appreciate the realism, relative accessibility means newcomers should not be put off.

Once in the air you will be flying through wind, rain and snow to complete missions ranging from A to B jaunts to flying through caves. It can be tricky to play but the main problem is the graphics.

When the PS2 was announced, bold claims - animated blades of virtual grass and so on - were used to highlight the console's graphics. This is nonsense, of course, as Odyssey shows.

Yes, the planes and landscapes look fine but get up high and watch in horror as mountains pop up out of nowhere. Elsewhere, blemish-hiding fog keeps even the sunniest day smoggy.

Nevertheless, you can forgive the graphical imperfection, because looping through caves or hovering just above sea-level is exhilarating.

While arcade fans will fidget throughout the slow-paced "action", gamers looking for a more relaxing way to use a joypad will enjoy mastering the aircraft and completing the challenges.

Though by no means perfect, Sky Odyssey is a PlayStation 2 first: it plays better than it looks.

Daytona USA 2001
Sega Dreamcast £39.99 Sega ***
If you used to hang out in seedy arcades playing Daytona USA, the home console version provides almost everything except the flashing lights and the need for a continuous supply of coins. But if you want much more than this, this game hasn't got it.

Daytona USA 2001 provides a superior sort of stock-car racing, with lots of cars and daredevil overtaking. If that's your bag, try starting 40th in a four-lap race. This is not a formula one simulation: you have to drive on an adrenaline rush.

But you only get a choice of four cars initially, set-up is minimal, and there are only eight circuits. Three come from Daytona USA, so you start off rolling, in familiar territory. Two tracks have been rescued from the Sega Saturn version of Daytona, and three are new.

Racing is fair. The controls are twitchy, and while cars are easy to drive on automatic, manual gear changes are tricky. You can get away with a few collisions, but damage slows your car down, and going into the pits for repairs is a good way to finish last.

Winning is hard, at least over short races - I never managed it. Finishing in the top five would be an achievement, although no doubt it gets easier if you put in the hours needed to master the tracks.

There is a two-player split-screen mode, which gives the game a bit of longevity. However, the online mode, where up to four can play, has gone missing from the European version.

It's hard to complain about Daytona USA 2001. It is a good reproduction of the venerable arcade classic, plus a few extras such as championship and time- trial modes. It provides more or less instant playability, which should appeal to the back-from-the-pub crowd.

It is fun. And while it has a distinct lack of depth, even for a console racer, depth was never part of its appeal. (JS)

Tribes 2

Dynamix/Sierra £TBA PC CD-Rom ****
Right, where am I? Boom. Oh. Well, wherever I am, I'm dead. OK, let's restart. Now, that looks like our base - screeeeee... Dead again... restart. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Dead. Restart...

If the above sequence of events sounds familiar, you've probably sampled online combat - and discovered that you're nowhere near good enough. If that's the case, you should think carefully before purchasing either Tribes or its new sequel Tribes 2, commonly and correctly regarded as the hardest multiplayer experiences around.

While the game looks and feels like a first-person shooter, team play is the order of the day. So whereas in a Quake 3 bloodbath the chief idea is to protect your own skin at all costs, you may well, in an intense Tribes 2 battle, be asked to lay down your life for the sake of your team. You'll also find yourself using some rather more impressive toys: forcefields and gun turrets; armoured vehicles; and even a jetpack.

You can play as male, female or bioderm (what we oldsters would call a cyborg); swear allegiance to one of six guilds; wear light, medium or heavy armour; play capture the flag, rabbit, hunter, bounty, capture and hold, or deathmatch; play defensive, evasive, or all-out stupid.

Of course, the choices mean nothing if you're going to be eating dirt every five seconds, so a jaunt through the comprehensive training mode is essential. Start off setting the computer AI to Utterly Witless, run through the five missions, then up the difficulty level gradually. A hundred times. After all that, you might be good enough to join the mayhem online.

There's one more condition: if you want smooth gameplay and pretty graphics, you'll need a supercomputer with enough processing power to beat Garry Kasparov, solve Fermat's theorem and invent a perpetual motion machine.

Now, there aren't many games worth shelling out thousands of pounds for, and months and months of practice, but Tribes 2 might be one of them. (AB)