Shadow Man, PC CD-Rom, £34.99
Mike LeRoi was a failed English literature student driving a taxi in Chicago. One day his passenger was killed, leaving $20,000 on the back seat. Mike took the money, of course, but soon those responsible for his passenger's death were on his tail.
In desperation, he sought the services of a voodoo priest to protect him and was drawn into the voodoo world. Eventually, a voodoo priestess implanted the Mask of Shadows in his chest, turning him into . . . you guessed . . . Shadow Man. To avenge his sins and free himself from the priestess's spell, Shadow Man must stop the zombie world of the Deadside from crossing into the living. The Gabriel Knight series was one of the few games to deal with voodoo and the occult. Shadow Man isn't very similar but it's not far off a mix between that and Tomb Raider.
The player controls our hero, fallible Mike in the land of the living and the infallible Shadow Man over in the Deadside. Mike, for instance, can't stay under water too long without replenishing his air supply, while Shadow Man has no such worries.
Shadow Man excels graphically and is sprinkled with dazzling effects. The eerie atmosphere is helped by a better-than-most storyline and the enemies are suitably creepy. At times, however, the puzzles in the game seem cursory. This and poor character animation are all that prevent Shadow Man from getting an A+ rating.
[Recommended: Pentium II 300/64MB/Win95x/3D card]
Point Blank 2, Sony PlayStation, £34.99
Few games so simple are as much fun as Point Blank - or indeed this sequel. The game is just aim and fire, and anyone can pick it up and play instantly. The manual is not necessary, but what is necessary is the light-gun peripheral. Aiming on screen with a standard controller is just too slow.
The impressive thing about Point Blank 2 is that while all it requires is firing at targets on screen, it persuades you to do this in any number of ways. Some modes offer infinite ammo to fire at will, while others give just one bullet and not much time.
In one case there's a stopwatch countdown and just one bullet. The challenge is to shoot to effect at the last possible second. In another, you're on top of a speeding train. Targets appear to the left and right, and you can change tracks (possibly to a route with more targets) if you shoot the right switch. Or there's a mathematical question to be answered by shooting the right targets.
Graphics and sound in Point Blank 2 are far from cutting edge, but they aren't really the point. It's a test of accuracy, reflexes and, sometimes, basic arithmetic. For those with two light guns, two-player mode is a real blast.
A newer version of the Quake III test program can be downloaded from www.idsoftware.com. The 33MB download has three levels instead of two and Id software emphasises that this is not a demo.