The first thing that becomes apparent when playing Play 2 is that the people who made it have done this before. After a disappointing drought, there's been a deluge of EyeToy games over the last few months, but all have had a slight air of hesitant experimentation. Play 2 really knows what it's doing. The range of movements it calls upon you to produce is bigger than in the original, and their detection is more precise, a combination which opens up a much larger range of gaming possibilities. ...
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2 Nov 2004

Lord of the Rings: Third Age

PS2 Review

You enter the CORNER SHOP. You take a can of full-fat COKE from the fridge when an OLD LADY leaps out. She casts B.O. but you defeat her with a sharpened carton of BANANA YOGHURT. She dies and you receive FALSE TEETH. Then you walk into the street where a CHAV attacks, with the OVER-CHARGING SHOPKEEPER. You restore your HIT POINTS with a slug of sugar and dive into combat again...Give thanks that life isn't like an RPG. Otherwise every day would be like the one above, times about twenty. But ...
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11 Oct 2004

FIFA Soccer 2005

PS2 Review

Office debate no. 963. There's something wrong with FIFA 2005. But nobody can agree on what. "It's less, err, fluid than PES4," murmurs writer, Nathan. "The set pieces are rubbish," argues art monkey, Milf. "No, that's not it," offers a mystery voice from a neighbouring Xbox magazine. "The problem is that while PES4 feels like a simulation, FIFA 2005 plays like a game - you've got to think about every move, rather than acting on instinct." The office falls silent. The inability to define the ...
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6 Oct 2004

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

PS2 Review

The most controversial series in videogame history has spawned an unarguable truth - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the best game on PS2. Fact. If not, one of the best console games - and we've thought long and hard about this - ever, matched only by such epochal titles such as Halo, Super Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII. In some respects, Rockstar's achievement is all the more daunting because San Andreas delivers relentless, sublimely balanced and uniquely varied gameplay for at least 50 ...
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28 Sep 2004

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005

PS2 Review

It's not much of a secret to admit that when we do reviews of sequels the first thing we do is check out what we thought about last year's offering. Does the new game play any better? Does this year's version fix the faults we found last year? And how much new stuff is there? Last year the 'Woods disappointed us a little. There was a tiny amount of new features and what was actually new (lot's of daft comedy characters) was actually a bit pointless. We suggested that the game was actually ...
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23 Sep 2004

Star Wars Battlefront

PS2 Review

For the most part, online gaming is utterly detestable. The servers are almost always loaded with despicable American mentalists who should be sealed inside a barrel and kicked into the ocean. And, as the omnipresent rumble of indecipherable mumbling coarses through your headset, you ask yourself "Why am I here? Why am I playing videogames with a bunch of feckless, furrow-browed simpletons?". Then you retreat to the cosily predictable world of artificial intelligence, snug in the knowledge that ...
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22 Sep 2004

TOCA Race Driver 2

PS2 Review

Every cloud, they say, has a silver lining. That might be because every cloud is frighteningly full of aeroplanes and 'they' are actually pilots screaming their last words in poetic surprise. "Aargh, every cloud has a silver lining!" Crackle crackle. And they're never heard from again. Anyway, the point: Formula One (bear with us) is in such a pathetic state they're altering the tracks for the cars, even though the tracks were there first, and they're travelling to rubbish circuits just because ...
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29 Jul 2004

Catwoman

PS2 Review

We haven't seen the Catwoman movie but judging by the game - where "Buy a girl a saucer of milk?" is considered an amusing put-down - it's not going to be the deepest or most intellectually stimulating production to fart its way out of Hollywood. Also boding badly for the film is the game's explanation of the Catwoman backstory, where a two minute cut-scene half-asses something together about anti-ageing drugs, a factory accident and a cat all combining to somehow create this sexily-dressed ...
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5 Jul 2004

Richard Burns Rally

PS2 Review

If you play games to have fun, then you might want to think twice about shelling out forty notes for Richard Burns Rally. It's possibly the grimmest, most relentlessly cheerless game we've played in a good long while, and there's not a gun, eviscerated innocent bystander or gore-dripping hell spawn in sight. Not bad going for a game about cars, eh?It's all because this is the hardest, most punishing game we've played in, ooh, ages. Sure, rallying is all about grappling with physics and mother ...
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14 Jun 2004

Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain

PS2 Review

After getting a generous promotion, including a cushy office with a window and an en-suite washroom, Gabe Logan was living the high-life. In fact as he lay back, staring out his window at the world below, he wondered aloud "What could possibly spoil this?" Doh. Jinxing words, Mr Logan. Syphon Filter: Omega Strain, sees Gabe Logan and his PSone buddies, return for a 2004 update on PS2. As before, the Agency is in hot pursuit of the evil Mara Armarov who's escaped from jail and is now ...
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