F1 Career Challenge
PlayStation 2, GameCube, £39.99 EA Sports
****
For several years, Sony and Electronic Arts have shared the official Formula One licence, but now Sony has managed to grab it all to itself. Hence the name change for EA's annual F1 offering. EA has made much the best of what could have been a bad job, in a rather clever way.
It still holds the licence for earlier Grands Prix, so has created a game that spans the seasons 1999 to 2002, thus allowing you to pursue a mini-career. To do that, you must acquire your superlicence, by completing several exercises.
Sony's Formula One 2003 is a mighty fine game, but F1 Career Challenge is even better. Its level of graphical detail wrings the absolute maximum from the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, and the cars, even with all the assists turned on, handle in what feels like an utterly realistic manner.
The steering is less twitchy than in Formula One 2003, and for rookies, the artificial intelligence-powered rival cars are much more forgiving. The in-game sound is amazing - you can even hear when the traction control kicks in.
In the interest of realism, you are punished much more heavily for sliding off the track than you are in Sony's game. The only comparative downside is that F1 Career Challenge lacks this year's adrenaline-inducing single-lap qualifying.
If you can live without that, and are a confirmed petrol-head, you will find F1 Career Challenge a more than satisfactory purchase. And the Game Cube version, bearing in mind the console's dearth of software, is an essential buy.
Steve Boxer
Futurama
Xbox, PS2, £39.99 SCi
***
It may have been cancelled recently, but Futurama was a great TV show: inventive, well written and genuinely amusing. With such rich source material surely videogame glory awaits? Well, in the non-interactive sections, yes. The cut scenes and dialogue are broadcast quality. The actors from the show all lend their voices and the production is slick throughout.
Sadly, the playable game is a stodgy blend of jumping and combat so shamelessly derivative that even Bender - the thieving robot anti-hero - would overload his blush circuits. Each level is a generic mix of platforming, collection and combat that sees Fry, Bender and Leela battle against the evil Mom.
Loose jumping controls and dicky camera aside, Futurama is fairly solid, but at no time do you experience anything that hasn't happened in a million other games. From moving platforms to object collection, this is gaming by numbers. But before your mind wanders from the action completely, a cut scene or wisecrack will drag you back.
Often these will compel you to play on, in the hope of finding some gameplay variety. But even the Bender levels - the best in the game - are variations on a well-trodden theme. The plot is one of the strong points, and the urge to see what happens next is the main reason to play on. Futurama is certainly better than the Simpsons games, but unimaginative design makes the game a disappointing use of a great licence.
Greg Howson
Aquanox 2: Revelation
PC, £29.99 Koch Media/Massive Development
***
The world is a very different place in the year 2666. Through a series of natural disasters mankind has been driven into the seas to forge a new civilisation below the waves. Into this aquatic world comes William Drake, the young, dumb and wet-behind-the-ears heir of a dilapidated undersea trading company. He dreams of life as a mercenary, although he starts out so witless, you wouldn't put him in charge of a rubber duck.
After answering an SOS and returning to his frigate to find that it's been taken over by renegades, Drake finds his life has become a lot more exciting. There are 30 missions that make up the structure of the gameplay with plenty of other sub-goals along the way, allowing you to pilot and upgrade various aquatic ships. The underwater environment makes for some interesting physics, especially in simulation mode, which allows you to control your ship's movement in a more realistic way.
The game has a definite Wing Commander feel to it, right down to the dubious characters with whom you interact. (This is either a good or a bad point, depending on how fondly you remember Origin's space adventure series.) The voice acting behind the characters is decent, but while Wing Commander utilised full motion video to bring its characters to life, Aquanox 2 opts for horribly static interactions.
The Aquanox series seems to be heading in the right direction but, although this sequel offers pretty good entertainment and a nice graphics engine, the gameplay suffers from a retro outlook.
Rhianna Pratchett
