Scotch missed
Braveheart Eidos Interactive, £39.99 PC CD-Rom And now to this year's Blade Runner Award for tardy tie-ins... Yes, a full four years after Braveheart the movie comes Braveheart the video game. You can see why it took so long; it must have been a beast to programme. It's also a beast to play.
Taking charge of one of 16 clans, you must use espionage, trade, diplomacy and warfare to unite 13th century Scotland and rise up against your dastardly English oppressors.
Unfortunately, the range of tools at your disposal for this task is nothing short of bewildering. Resource management, taxation, combat tactics, diplomatic missions, scouting, job allocation, army training - this, combined with the unintuitive interface, is likely to leave you clicking till you're blue in the face.
You can delegate the more mundane duties to your computerised assistant, but be warned: the AI seems to have learned everything it knows about economics from Sarah Ferguson. The 3D mode, which you use to inspect towns, direct spies or enact battles, is rather more entertaining, but equally difficult to control, not to mention glitchy. And when the attention to detail is so great in some areas, it's all the more annoying to hear female peasants speak in the same throaty growl as the men.
You can't help but admire the variety and sophistication on offer here; but given that you'll probably spend more time reading the manual than actually playing the game, it's probably wiser to worship from afar.
Nasty but nice
B> Dungeon Keeper 2 Bullfrog, £34.99 PC CD-ROM
For the uninitiated, 1997's Dungeon Keeper was a strategy/combat title with a twist. You played the Keeper of the title, a decidedly nasty piece of work whose chosen subject was "Building underground kingdoms and overthrowing the forces of good".
After you had constructed your lair, you enlisted various unholy creatures to guard it, and filled the place with devious traps. Then you could either sit back and laugh as gung-ho heroes stumbled blindly to their doom, or physically enter the body of one of your minions and lead the battle from the front.
It was original, fun, and buggy as hell. The follow-up offers much smoother graph ics, an improved first-person mode, and a horde of new rooms, monsters and spells. Being bad never felt so good.
Buyers of the original game, though, are entitled to feel aggrieved at having to pay full price again. This is what Dungeon Keeper should have been the first time round.
Nasty but nice Dungeon Keeper 2 Bullfrog, £34.99 PC CD-ROM
For the uninitiated, 1997's Dungeon Keeper was a strategy/combat title with a twist. You played the Keeper of the title, a decidedly nasty piece of work whose chosen subject was "Building underground kingdoms and overthrowing the forces of good".
After you had constructed your lair, you enlisted various unholy creatures to guard it, and filled the place with devious traps. Then you could either sit back and laugh as gung-ho heroes stumbled blindly to their doom, or physically enter the body of one of your minions and lead the battle from the front.
It was original, fun, and buggy as hell. The follow-up offers much smoother graph ics, an improved first-person mode, and a horde of new rooms, monsters and spells. Being bad never felt so good.
Buyers of the original game, though, are entitled to feel aggrieved at having to pay full price again. This is what Dungeon Keeper should have been the first time round. Andy Bodle
Tight defence
Arcade Hits: Joust/Defender Nintendo Game Boy
Defender was not just one of the great games of the early 80s, it's arguably one of the greatest arcade games of all time.
The Game Boy version appears to be identical - it could well be an emulation rather than a rewrite - but the resemblance ends with the software. You don't get the huge cabinet, the sturdy handle, the thumping bass or the big screen of the arcade machine, and on the Game Boy's tiny LCD, some of the nasties are practically too small to shoot.
Joust - a medieval but mid-air game of lance-to-lance combat - has similar problems. While this two-game cartridge might be aimed at the retro/nostalgia market, many over 40s will find their eyesight is now too poor to enjoy the games, at least on a Game Boy Color.
Under 11s with sharp eyes and even sharper reflexes, however, might finally learn what "compulsive" really means.
Jack Schofield
