Set for cult status
Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly (Director's Cut)
Xbox, £39.99 Tecmo/Microsoft, ****
If you're tired of the Christmas blockbusters and fancy something a little more leftfield then this should fit the bill. This superior survival horror game is genuinely unnerving, despite some annoyances.
It is a dark and gritty tale. The game dumps you in a series of spooky locales as you take control of twins Mayu and Mio after they stumble into a seemingly deserted village.
In true survival horror tradition, progress involves finding keys and solving puzzles. The main difference between this and the likes of Resident Evil is the choice of weaponry. The girls defend themselves by using a camera that can see and destroy the ghosts that inhabit the game.
Typical play involves creeping around in the flickering light, becoming aware of something in the room and quickly changing to the camera view as a deformed ghost gets closer. It may lack the guns'n'gore of Resident Evil but it is far more chilling.
The audio deserves a special mention as white noise and ethereal voices combine to create a disturbing atmosphere. Annoyances are few, but important. The controls, while not as rigid as Resident Evil, are still constricting, and progress can be halted by innocuously missing a cut-scene. Less experienced players could find the game a stop-start journey as they puzzle over what to do next.
But overall, Project Zero 2 is wonderfully atmospheric and destined to become a cult classic.
Greg Howson
Classic fun
Castlevania/ Dr Mario (NES Classics Series)
GBA, £14.99, Nintendo, ****
Nintendo never likes one of its own classic games to die and just in case anyone forgot where we came from in the run-up to the launch of the new DS handheld, it has brought out a series of NES games for the Game Boy Advance. Whereas the first release in this series was a mixed bunch, the second wave of four titles is a big ol' helping of goodness.
Metroid and Zelda II: The Adventures of Link need no introduction, but the first outing of Konami's Castlevania series and Dr Mario, one of the best Tetris clones, bring up the rear in splendid fashion. Both are pretty much direct ports of the originals and neither suffers for it.
Castlevania, which features the whip-toting, holy water-throwing Simon Belmont versus the non bat-biting Prince of Darkness, is still devilishly tricky. Even though the graphics might be squashed and muted by today's standards, the side-scrolling gameplay is solid and fun.
Dr Mario is still fairly challenging. This time it is raining vitamin pills like an explosion in a health food shop and you have to arrange the colours to vanquish evil germs. It is basic, but hideously addictive and the Doc is also brought up to date with a multiplayer mode that runs through wireless adapters or a link cable. Both titles are true classics.
Rhianna Pratchett
Cheap and cheerful
Ford Racing 3
PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC, £19.99 Razorworks/Xplosiv, ***
The games industry always receives flak for churning out games on the back of films that are little more than merchandising, so a cynical public might not be very impressed by a racing game based on something as mainstream as Ford. However, Ford Racing 3 costs half the price of average games and, unexpectedly, has some merits.
It cleverly takes cues from the popular Burnout 3 - the single-player mode presents a selection of racing mini-series, each containing varying modes that you work through in quite a non-linear fashion.
The ultimate goal is a racing series that puts you behind the wheel of the Ford GT. This is probably the closest any of us will ever get to a GT, as only a limited quantity are being made and its introduction has been repeatedly delayed - even Jeremy Clarkson has not received his yet.
With Gran Turismo 4 - a deadly serious racing game with classic and ultra-modern machinery - apparently imminent, it is easy to ask why anyone would want to buy this. But it is on sale now, cheap and full of classic Ford cars, ranging from the Model A to the GT90 concept car. At first, it seems laughably easy, but it eventually offers a challenge by introducing modes in which the last two cars are eliminated at the end of each lap, and in which sticking to the racing line earns you nitrous oxide boosts.
It is a credible arcade-style racing game that the Ford-obsessed will enjoy. As a happy BMW owner, I wanted to hate it, but could not.
Steve Boxer
Top 5 games
GameCube
1 The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
2 The Simpsons: Hit & Run
3 Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
4 Sonic Heroes
5 Sonic Mega Collection
· Source: Elspa, compiled by ChartTrack
