Flight Unlimited III, PC CD-Rom £34.99
Although not essentially "games", flight simulators have long been extremely popular with game-players. Microsoft's Flight Simulator has been around almost since the advent of PCs, it is the most popular and Flight Simulator 2000 will be available soon.
However in recent years upstarts such as Looking Glass Studios decided to get a share of the market and they released the highly acclaimed Flight Unlimited. This, the third in the series, remains true to its roots by maintaining a more informal attitude as opposed to Microsoft's more sombre approach. And while this is sometimes a good thing, the relatively flimsy manual isn't a great help for novice pilots. The city of Seattle, and Western America, is mapped out to a very fine detail in the game. There are 10,000 miles of photo-realistic terrain to fly around with resolutions down to 4 metres per pixel and there are over 60 real airports to fly to in the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. You can even fly by Bill Gates home, Microsoft's headquarters. There are 10 aircraft to choose from including the BeechJet 400A, p-51d Mustang, Lake Renegade 270 Seaplane and the Mooney 7ls Bravo. The weather system is one of the highlights of the game. Snow, Ice and thunderstorms are all recreated impressively and the sight of rain rolling up the windshield as you taxi onto the runway looks extremely realistic. Air traffic control is also a big feature and the challenges players face range from flying through hoops to chasing down a boat. Flight Unlimited III looks beautiful, but at a price - it nosedives if you haven't got a fairly high spec PC (although a patch to address this is expected soon from www.flight3.com). Nevertheless it is very impressive, although those who prefer a more ceremonial offering might prefer to wait for Microsoft's latest version to take off.
[Recommended: Pentium II 350/64MB/3D card/Win 9x]
The X-Files game, Sony PlayStation, £34.99
It is often the case that a movie is translated to a game purely to make more money from the franchise. Sometimes the result is reasonably good but more frequently, they are drab affairs.
The X-Files though, seems to lend itself more kindly to the nature of videogames, and there have been some good games (such as Gabriel Knight) which required you to investigate and solve riddles, without having a big name behind them.
The X-Files game is an example of how to create the most ludicrous game from fairly decent material. It is a point and click adventure which comes on four CDs. The full motion video (FMV) takes up about 90 per cent of the data on the CDs and every now and then - to break the sheer boredom of exploring your static environment - an FMV clip is played to carry the story along.
Conversing with other characters in the game is naturally very important, but there are no consequences to the questions. You just select all the options available, and eventually you will get the relevant information. There is certainly no need to figure anything out.
Other flaws include the movement of your character (not Mulder or Scully who appear much later in the game) sometimes clicking in one direction will turn you 90 degrees and other times 180 degrees. Locating items and clues is reduced to using the mouse to scan the screen until it lights up. The truth is the X-Files is a preposterous excuse for a game and to be avoided, even die-hard fans will be sorely disappointed.
Sales of Sega's Dreamcast got of to a good start in Europe. In the first four days nearly 200,000 were sold. Retail sales were valued at £52 million In addition, 350,000 software units were sold along with 280,000 peripherals. BT and its European partners registered 1.2 million Internet minutes over the launch weekend. Irish consumers however will have to wait until possibly the end of the year before availing of the Internet feature, one of the biggest selling points of the console.