Game Zone reviews

PlayStation 2

When I first saw the term 'based on Luc Besson's blockbuster The Fifth Element', I thought that this was going to be as useless as the movie. Did anyone understand what the hell the film was about?
But scrap that. It's based on the New York of the film, the ultra-high-rise buildings, the streams of flying 'cars' with traffic at various altitudes. NYR is a racing game around that city, with up and down being as important as left and right. There's a dozen highly complex circuits and plenty of vehicles to choose from once you get some wins under your belt.
It looks just peachy, too, and for the simple reason that they got the people who designed the movie's cityscape to create this one. It's fantastically elaborate, and a bugger to drive around, but it's the first racing game I've played where you really do look around you - this town is some piece of work. Genuinely stunning, as far as this New York is concerned, I wanna be a part of it. (NP)

Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone

PlayStation

If you haven't read the book, seen the film, or at least admired the replica cloaks in M&S, you are a nincompoop. I have no time for you. PlayStation's Harry Potter makes every boy, girl, man, woman and dog's dreams come true - you get to play Harry Potter. You learn the spells and acquire the potions and then put them into play as the game unfolds.
Unlike the book, the PlayStation game opens at Hogwarts, but the real centrepiece of the game is, of course, Quidditch. All good clean fun. And no matter how ineptly gamers deploy Harry's arsenal of magic spells and potions nor how many malign trolls he encounters running through the halls of Hogwarts, the games' developers will not allow the most famous 11-year-old on the planet to expire. Nor will Harry kill anything.
Good thing too. I love Ron Weasley. (HM)

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