Homeworld, PC CD-Rom, £34.99
Strategy games like Command & Conquer and Age of Empires are amongst the most popular and absorbing games around. The basic concept of real-time strategy (RTS) gaming is to take charge of a "society" and manage its growth into a successful civilisation, by using the resources around it.
Homeworld is certainly in the RTS genre, but it boldly goes where no RTS had gone before - into space. The player's base is a mother ship, which builds all the units and spacecraft. Resource locaters harvest nearby asteroid fields and research ships are used to study advanced technologies.
With enough CPU under the bonnet it is very impressive to look at. Any craft that appears can be zoomed in on to the minutest detail. As this is done the soundscape changes, putting the noise of distant battles into the background allowing the hum of the ship's engine to be heard.
Its three-dimentional play area can be confusing at first because altitude must be taken into account. The playing area is not the "flat" surface of most RTS games.
Although Homeworld is impressive technically, it falls short on tactics. There is nowhere to hide so it is almost impossible to make sneak attacks, limiting the options. The player simply orchestrates battles, sending in as many craft as possible and watching them fight it out. This is enjoyable, but leaves the player feeling a bit detached.
Homeworld is to be praised as an extremely brave effort. It is by no means a bad game, but it isn't the great game that it could have been.
[Rec: PII/32MB/Win 9x/3D card]
Mission Impossible, Sony PlayStation, £34.99
Impossible it must have been. Three years after the release of the film, and having made its debut on the Nintendo 64, Mission Impossible finally makes it to the PlayStation.
Your mission - should you to decide to accept it - is to guide your team through 20 levels of highly entertaining and varied gameplay. Although similar in nature to Goldeneye on the N64 it never quite matches it for style or slickness of gameplay, and Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation is also a superior game.
To compare it unfavourably with two of the best recent games of this type may be a little unfair. It remains a more than worthy title to add to your library, particularly if creeping around unnoticed, sniping at enemies and generally making a nuisance of yourself appeals.
HAVING already got the rights to the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies, Electronic Arts (EA) has now signed an exclusive worldwide licensing deal with MGM Interactive to publish titles based on the James Bond character for the PC and next generation consoles. The impressive and groundbreaking Golden- eye game for the Nintendo 64 showed that some films can make a successful conversion to video game format. Until then, most, such as Men In Black and Independence Day, had been way below par.
3D card manufacturer 3dfx has announced its latest VSA-100 scalable graphics processor and Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 cards. The new flagship product, the Voodoo5 6000 AGP, has quad VSA-100 processors and 128 MB of graphics memory. It will be the first consumer graphics product to top the billion-pixels-per-second fill-rate barrier, and will have a price to match. When launched next March it is expected to cost about around $600 in the US.
The Voodoo4 4500 will have a single VSA-100 processor and 32 MB of graphics memory and will cost under $200. In Ireland, the cards are likely to cost the same amount, but in pounds rather than dollars.
games@irish-times.ie