Jet Set Radio
Sega Dreamcast £39.99 Sega *****
Never has a comedy gang-warfare graffiti-spraying street-skating game looked this good. While the detailed, Crazy Taxi-style Tokyo city environments are built in standard "realistic" polygonal fashion, the lovable teen-tearaway characters are given heavy black outlines to resemble hand-drawn cartoon figures.
This "cel-shading" technique provides a glorious fusion of traditional anime style with high-powered computer rendering.
And it all moves beautifully.
Skating around bus stations, marinas or crowded nightlife hotspots, you "grind" on handrails and do tricks - à la Tony Hawk's Skateboarding, although the mechanics of the skating owe more to Nintendo's classic 1080 Snowboarding: very simple controls allowing fluid, almost balletic movement. You can hang on to the rear bumpers of cars to ride uphill, and jump and skid on to any available surface.
The object of each area is to cover buses, walls and cars with your gang's graffiti tag (you "spray" shapes with the analogue controller). This entails avoiding a hilarious force of baton-wielding cops, whose evil sergeant runs after you firing a gun. Later on, the police call in helicopter gunships and tanks. And you also have to deal with rival graffiti gangs who aim to cover your artwork with their own logos.
A soundtrack of pleasingly banging Japanese hip-hop is pumped via the city's local pirate radio station (hence the game's name), and there is even an onboard paint application for designing your own graffiti tags, which can then be uploaded to the Dreamarena website.
Occasionally the camera gets confused when you are in a tight spot, and there could have been a multiplayer option. But few games can boast such a strong, coherent design personality as Jet Set Radio. It is one of the freshest videogame ideas in a long while, and it is really, um, rad and phat. (SP)
Dino Crisis 2
Sony PlayStation £29.99 Capcom/Virgin ****
"You are food," say the TV ads and website for this game (see www.youarefood.com). Not quite. It is no fun being carried around in a dinosaur's jaws, but it doesn't swallow.
Actually, this game, descended from Capcom's Resident Evil, is for people who like killing, especially dinosaurs. At first it is annoying to have two or three pesky raptors leaping on you every time you move. Then you hit the first save point and find that you can buy really powerful weapons only in exchange for thousands of "extinction points", and a raptor is only worth 100. After that, you'd prefer they formed an orderly queue to get shot or slashed.
Clouds of blood fly up. The slaughter quickly becomes mechanical and is entirely tasteless.
Oh, I forgot the plot. You play a muscle-bound meathead called Dylan and a sharp, sexy redhead called Regina (but not at the same time). You make your way through the jungle and a military complex, do a bit of underwater work, collect files and find the keys to various doors. Presumably it all leads somewhere in the end.
The graphics are fabulous, and the game starts with stunningly cinematic intro .
But there are limitations. The camera hops about, leaving you vulnerable to off-screen raptors. Your character is sometimes very slow to aim. While there are different types of dinosaur, their movement patterns are repetitive. As a result, the game is less a matter of skill than endurance.
If you are addicted to run-and-shoot mayhem, this is a great buy. Non-addicts should borrow it. If you are any good, you will finish it in a weekend, and there's not much to provide replay value. (JS)
Shenmue
Sega Dreamcast £34.99 Take 2 Games ****
It is no understatement to call Shenmue one of the most eagerly awaited games of all time. A whispering campaign ensured that: "Did you know you can collect toys in the game and swap them over the net?" "Have you heard you can actually get a job?"
And every word of it is true. Shenmue is mind-boggling any way you look at it: in its beauty, its size, and its minutely observed detail. Every character - and there are hundreds - is unique, with his/her own voice, dialogue options, facial expressions, clothes and mannerisms. And if you go to the shops on Christmas Eve, they'll be playing festive Muzak.
The game opens with a cut scene in which a young Japanese man looks on as his father is murdered. As Ryo, you vow to hunt down those responsible. With little to go on, you set out from the house and start looking for clues.
But it's a big world out there, with a bewildering array of options. On any one day, add to your rip-off plastic toy collection, spar with your dad's pupil, listen to some tunes, feed the injured kitten down the road, go shopping, chat to the locals, go for a drink in the bar, hang with your buddy; play darts, pool, fruit machines, or, in the ultimate irony, kill a few hours at the local arcade.
You never feel completely comfortable engaging in any of this - you're supposed to be hellbent on revenge, after all - but the daily routines of your various leads and witnesses often leave you no choice.
Advancing the plot is a painstaking process - and a teensy bit dull. Tramp to and fro across town, talk to everyone, finally find someone with useful info, go on to X's house, find he's out, realise it's past 8pm and hurry home to avoid a ticking-off from grandma...
Because beneath the fantastically ornate trimmings, Shenmue is, essentially, a point-and-click adventure. Sure, it's a huge, detailed, sumptuous, epic point-and-click adventure with a bucket- load of sub-games, but as with your average sumptuous, epic movie, sometimes lacking in the action department. The neat-looking fights are so few and fast they feel like a game within the game.
Make no mistake, Shenmue is a grand vision superbly realised. As for whether you'll still be playing it in two months... I'll whisper it: nah. (AB)
