Earthworm Jim
Game Boy Advance £24.99 THQ **
Pitfall: Mayan Adventure Game Boy Advance £24.99 THQ **
The Game Boy Advance should really change its name. Game Boy Retreat perhaps? After all, there are only so many retro games that a handheld gamer can cope with. Sure, conversions of seminal titles such as Mario Kart are welcome, but the amount of gaming nostalgia on the GBA is becoming overwhelming.
Take these two latest releases, for example. Both Earthworm Jim and Pitfall: Mayan Adventure first appeared in the mid-90s - the latter an update of the 80s original - but portability aside, neither offers anything new. Pitfall, set in a Tarzan-style jungle, is a shockingly average platform game involving jumping, vine swinging and huge frustra tion. Waves of annoying assailants and sloppy controls are compounded by the GBA's dark screen, which makes finding your path through the background vegetation even more difficult. At least both games look the part, with Earthworm Jim boasting impressive animation and backdrops. And ol' Jim is a bit of a character with comic moves and a multi-purpose head. Then there is the variety, with snot bungee jumping and cute doggie whipping, offering a tasteless break from the platform action. But at its heart, Earthworm Jim is a standard platformer with little real innovation. Of course, this applies to both releases and it wouldn't really matter but for one fatal flaw.
There are no save points or batteries on either game. That's right. You have to play both games in one sitting. Forget having a leisurely 10-minute go on the bus, both titles need unrealistic, and ultimately unrewarding, commitment. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. (GH)
Resident Evil - Code: Veronica
PS2 £44.99 Capcom ***
It is only now the Dreamcast has gone that you realise how many great games adorned it, albeit fairly anonymously. Shen Mue, Dead or Alive and, yes, even Resident Evil, originally a PlayStation exclusive but gifted with its own version of Code Veronica a full year ago. Naturally, this new PS2 version has some improvements, but not so many that a novice would be able to spot the difference.
In case you have missed the previous instalments, Resident Evil is now the archetypal survival horror series: a third-person arcade adventure involving limited ammo, spooky abandoned buildings and an army of shuffling zombies after your brain. Veronica picks up where Res 2 left off, with your heroine Claire Redfield searching for clues about her missing brother, Chris.
This time you are stuck on a secret island base from which you must escape once you have solved the mystery but, above all, before it is overrun by the undead. As always, there are multiple locations to be explored, ammo and extra weapons to discover and a huge amount of back-tracking to avoid the obvious discrepancy between dangers and available ammo. Unlike the Dreamcast version, here the backgrounds are fully rendered in polygons rather than flat textures. But other than that, it is the same game with all the same flaws. Central is the infamous control system, where Claire still has to be clumsily pointed in the right direction, which makes for shambling progress down narrow corridors.
To compensate, the musical score remains excellent, and this version contains an extra 10 minutes of quality video footage. For pace and tension, Res Evil still leads the pack - but you can't help feeling Capcom should be spending its time developing new ideas and engines, rather than porting games from one machine to another.
Veronica is still a large and challenging game, but remember what happened to Westwood with the Command and Conquer series? Standing still in this business is dangerous, whether your audience is made up of zombies or simply gamers looking for new directions from their shiny new console. (MA)
