Reviews

Croc 2

The cutesy crocodile (a reptile version of Mario) is back for another adventure in the Land of The Gobbos. This time the plucky little fellow is out to find his long-lost parents - but not before he's rescued the Gobbo kings from the evil Baron Dante. While the story line is still a tad tenuous, the gameplay is much more inventive and challenging: 40 levels populated by a host of zany cartoon characters contain puzzles, mini-games and hidden levels, accompanied by a snappy pop/guitar soundtrack. Flat graphics have been replaced with lively, bold rendering and, instead of a multiplayer option, there's something called Omniplay - enabling two players to share control of the game. Though Croc must perform some pretty hairy stunts, the swirling, free-roaming camera doesn't always line up. That said, it's still the best PC platform game since Rayman. Eight out of 10. Fox Interactive: 01932 450 000 (www.foxinteractive.com); 29.99

Motocross Madness 2

A sequel to 1998's phenomenally popular dirt bike bonanza but now the gameplay is more dynamic and bland sandscapes are replaced by lush vegetation stacked with hazardous obstacles. On your Honda, Yamaha, KTM or one of the fantasy models, you get to hurtle over freight trains, through trailer parks, up steep, snow-covered mountains dodging haystacks, pines and giant cacti.

All the old Baja, Stunt, Nationals and Supercross courses are still there, but the most hairy is the Pro-Circuit. You build your bike, win races to earn cash to upgrade repair and medical bills - the latter are particularly steep as you'll spend as much time crashing as racing. Despite the buttock-clenching collisions, the bikes sustain little damage - but that's made up for by bloodcurdling cries as rider and bike part company mid-air.

Eight out of 10. Microsoft: 0345 002 000 (www.microsoft.com); 34.99

It's Child's Play: Let's make T-shirts

Forget learning to sew at Mother's knee: nowadays, if kids want to personalise clothes Mum buys a packet of white T-shirts and some expensive photo transfer paper and the kids cut and paste from the library of 5,000 pictures. Creatively it's set up about right for younger kids (say, eight and up) and provides a good mix of help- yourself templates (T-shirt designs are divided into themes, they automatically print right-and left-sleeve motifs too) with a range of tools for adding text, speech bubbles, graphics from other Windows programs. The colour hue tool is great - you just drag the dot around the splodges of red, green and blue. Six out of 10. GSP: 01480 496575 (www.gsp.cc); 12.99

Chicken Run Fun Pack

Hmmm. Not much fun to be had here. For a start, none of the "talent" involved in the film puts in an appearance with any new material (indeed, suspiciously, in the video clips that feature Mel Gibson's Rocky, the heroic chicken maintains a total - and perhaps contractual - silence). Instead, Aardman's innovative and appealing characters are frogmarched through two tedious games: place the planks over holes and allow chickens to run to freedom, place trampoline under chickens so they can bounce to freedom. There are three screensavers, sounds, wallpapers, cursors, icons, a CD player, alarm clock and the aforementioned collection of movie clips. I'd rather eat one of Mrs Tweedy's pies. Three out of 10. Activision: 01895456789 (www.activision.com); 19.99 Rob Beattie

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