Putting it nicely
Real World Golf
PlayStation 2, £49.99 (including controller)
In2Games, ****
In2Games' Gametrak must be the strangest videogames input device ever. It is a plastic unit that sits on the floor in front of your TV, with two vertical wires attached to gloves that you wear. The result is a cumbersome-looking object that tracks hand movements - like Sony's Eye Toy, only with greater precision.
However, the Gametrak works like a dream, and Real World Golf (available for £29.99 if you have a Gametrak controller) showcases its abilities much better than Dark Wind, last year's beat-'em-up for the system.
It comes with a foot-long plastic golf club, designed to stop you smashing furniture as you swing, although you can use a real club. The game is a typical, if basic, simulator, with five courses and an extensive tutorial with driving, putting and chipping ranges. Choose your course, grip your club and let rip with your best approximation of a swing, and the virtual ball responds accordingly.
To alter your aim, select the correct option after stepping on the foot pedal and extend either hand. Approach play often involves employing a truncated swing - the game gives you a percentage of the full swing required, and you can step back to practise achieving the correct weight. Putting is something of a cop-out: the game automatically aims for you, and, as with chipping, you merely need to get the weight of shot right.
Up to four can play concurrently (each will need a controller), and there are diverting mini-games. But the game starts to impress when you begin to work out, for example, how to fade and hook shots. Bizarre, but extremely beguiling.
Steve Boxer
A wall of muscle
The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
PlayStation 2 (also GameCube and Xbox), £39.99
Radical Entertainment/ VU Games, ****
In Radical's first outing with the big mean green one they tried to mix up the gameplay, giving us the opportunity to play not only the Hulk, but take on stealth-based action as Bruce Banner. This time, they have kept things simple and gone for Hulkish shenanigans the whole way, a level of purity that serves the game well.
The main part of Ultimate Destruction involves story-driven missions where the Hulk is used to help find a cure for Banner's condition using a mind-controlling contraption built by his friend Doc Samson. There's also the opportunity to take on side missions and earn more of the smash points you need to buy new moves.
And there are an impressive number of ways to reduce everything to rubble - from breaking cars in two and using them as giant metal gloves to smashing up the scenery into a source of deadly projectiles.
There are only two main mission areas - the city and the badlands - and after a while you yearn for new things to break. But as you pound down the street, smashing your way through enemies, leaping on to buildings and knocking helicopters out of the sky, you get a great sense of what it is like to be a walking wall of green muscle.
Rhianna Pratchett
Mid-table kickabout
World Tour Soccer
PlayStation Portable, £34.99
Sony, ***
Cricket may be all the rage, but when it comes to videogame sports, football is still top of the league. This is mainly because the beautiful game is far simpler to recreate in digital form than trying to work out the idiosyncracies of cricket.
The launch of the PSP allows developers to move the action into 3D with World Tour Soccer - the first footy game for PSP. The game takes a lighter approach than the best in the genre, Pro Evolution Soccer. It does lack the glamour of Fifa's presentation, although a surprising number of licensed teams are included.
There are cups, leagues and multiplayer options but it is the challenge mode that really grips. This gives points for passing and scoring and subtracts for missed tackles and goals conceded. Do well and you are rewarded with new teams - such as 70s Liverpool - and gear.
The quick and easy action is perfect to pick up and play on short journeys, while the controls are generally responsive. However, players don't always react correctly. It is easy to string together nice passes and scoring is satisfying, even if the focus is more on 30-yard screamers than more realistic tap-ins.
The game looks pretty impressive, with top players fairly lifelike. It was always going to lose out to bigger name rivals, but as a mid-table kickabout you can't go too wrong.
Greg Howson
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Top 5 games
All formats
1. Ridge racer
2. Brian Lara International Cricket 2005
3. Wipeout Pure
4. Virtual Tennis: World Tour
5. Metal Gear Acid
· Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, © 2005 Elspa (UK) Ltd
