STARSHIPS UNLIMITED. Format: PC, CD ROM. Publisher: Price: £29.99: THIS game had an interesting history.

It started life as a freeware project distributed via the Net and has since been reworked into a fully professional retail release.

It's an unusual mixture of Civilisation and Age of Empires set in one of those galaxies far, far away etc.

The gameplay runs in real time on a huge map; your job is to seek out the bad guys in the universe and take them on. You don't have a huge armada of space ships at your disposal, just a handful of battle cruisers but it's no less thrilling for narrowing the action down to a smaller number.

As you explore, you will unearth "magic items" on apparently barren planets that help your efforts to upgrade your fleet. Eventually, your ships can be completely reconfigured as you see fit.

Occasionally, Starships Unlimited betrays it's random -inspired roots, some of the screens are a bit drab and the action sometimes seems a bit too far apart for players looking to have a short blast rather than a full-on campaign.

The upshot is that the game will run on relatively lowly hardware (a PII 350 should be fine) and anyone prepared to invest a bit of time and patience will find a good game hiding behind the unassuming exterior.

STARSKY & HUTCH. Formats: PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC. Publisher: Empire Interactive. Price: varies:

IT seems such a perfect idea for a game. Two cops, stylish seventies locales, car chases and oodles of cool.

At first, you'll probably be disappointed. A quick glance at the screen grabs reveal a disappointing driving game.

Slap Starsky & Hutch in your console, however, and the game soon dispels that myth. It's probably got more in common with titles like Driver or Gran Theft Auto than Gran Turismo. Although catching the criminals is important, its even more crucial that you do it in style. So you have to slide your Ford Torino around corners and jump seemingly impossible chasms if you are to be a success.

The two-player mode is refreshingly different, too. Each player is one half of the crime busting duo - so one of you drives while the other leans out the window and shoots at the baddies.

And if it all looks a bit rough around the edges, well, I guess that only adds to the retro feel.

EYETOY. Publisher: SCEE. Format: PS2. Price: £39.99:

ATTEMPTS at adding another layer of interactivity to video games have been hit and miss affairs.

Does anyone remember the Game Boy Camera? The eyeball on a cart came with a handful of incredibly simple games that allowed you to take a picture of your face then paste it into the on-screen action. It was fun for a while but the limited resolution meant the novelty soon wore off.

Then there were the Dance, Dance mats that attempted to translate your Travolta-esque gyrations into some semblance of a game.

Perfect for making yourself look stupid after a skinful but not everyone's idea of a video gaming challenge.

Until now, the idea of actually "starring" in a video game has been a flight of fantasy. However, the geniuses at Sony have come up with a gadget that puts you directly into the action.

Developed here in Britain, it's called the EyeToy and it could very well revolutionise the way we play our games in future.

The EyeToy is really nothing more than a cheap- looking web cam that plugs into the front port of the PS2. What's special is the way the software interprets what it sees and places you into the video game.

The software bundled with the camera is simple stuff in PS2 terms. However, by allowing you to interact directly with what you can see on screen, it lifts the straightforward game play onto a whole new level.

The two-player challenges are particularly fun, provided, that is, you don't mind looking like a fool. Take Wishi Washi, for example.

It's a game where two players compete against each other to clean virtual windows. To do this, you stand in front of the camera and wave your hands about in the air.

It looks daft but seems perfectly natural when you're wrapped up in the game world.

To add value, Sony also bundles an application that enables the EyeToy to act like a more conventional camera. You can record a (very) short message on it and down a few seconds' worth to a memory card.

This looks like fun but the results are so poor, and the ability to do anything more than swap cards so limited, that you're unlikely to use it regularly.

According to Sony, the early adopters of EyeToy are likely to be mothers looking for innovative ways of keeping their children amused - a far cry from the usual thirty-somethings gadgets are usually aimed at.

The novelty value alone should ensure EyeToy is a success but more important is the fact that it almost certainly points to the future of video games.