Holy Vengeance, it's a better Batman

THE year 2001 will go down as a good one for superheroes on games consoles. Now, as Christmas fast approaches, the Bat signal once again shines over a PlayStation.

Batman on PSOne was pretty poor. It felt like a rotten port of Carmaggedon with the Dark Knight grafted on as an after-thought.

Batman Vengeance on the PS2 takes the successful Spiderman game as its starting point and it's far better as a result.

Based on the successful cartoon series, Batman Vengeance starts with the winged one trying to rescue a kidnapped child from the clutches of the evil Joker. That straightforward recovery job serves as the stopping off point for a far darker tale involving some of Gotham's more dastardly denizens, among them Poison Ivy and Two Faces.

For the most part, you play from a third person perspective, switching to first person for exploration and tricky moments.

To break things up a bit, you also get the chance to play around with Batman's personal transportation, specifically the Batmobile and the Batplane.

The flying level, in particular, is an impressive demonstration of the PS2's ability to throw around a huge amount of polygons and still keep things moving at a smooth lick. It's also rather tricky. Unforgiving collision detection means that, unless you are inch perfect every time, it's level over and start again.

In fact, the control system takes a bit of getting used to. For the first couple of hours frustrating instant death lurks around every corner (or, more likely, from every roof). Spiderman felt pretty much the same until you'd got the controls licked.

Once you're acclimatised though, Batman Vengeance becomes a real blast. It's another decent stab at super heroism, with an intriguing plot and cutting-edge cartoon-style visuals.

007: Agent Under Fire. Publisher: Electronic Arts. Format: PS2 DVD RoM. Price: £39.99.

ANOTHER hero who hasn't fared particularly well on the Playstation is James Bond.

Electronic Arts has taken three stabs at trying to find a formula to beat the seminal Goldeneye. Depressingly, the series has grown progressively worse, not better. Now, at long last, it seems EA has finally hit the bull's eye.

007: Agent Under Fire apes the complex but engaging gameplay style that made Goldeneye such a classic. It neatly avoids the "on rails" criticisms levelled at its predecessors by presenting gamers with more than one way to complete each mission, either Solid Snake-style sneaking or Goldeneye-type shooting. This makes for some decent replayability too.

It looks good too. Characters lips move in time to the dialogue, they smirk, shout and scream convincingly enough. Bond himself is a pastiche of all the actors who have played him to date (no doubt avoiding a hefty payout to Pierce Brosnan's bank account for the use of his likeness).

As with Goldeneye, you start off infiltrating an enemy base but there's much more to this title than first person perspective action. Move through the plot and you'll be asked to accomplish drive 'n' shoot, stealth missions, time trials and rock hard boss levels. Like I said, it's big.

You can also play with up to three pals (just like the N64 game) through a wide variety of maps.

My only concern is the seriously complex control issues which make selecting and using a weapon (Bond makes full use of Q-branch's armoury) too much of a chore. Goldeneye had this problem beaten five years ago so it's a shame EA is still trying. At least you can experiment with different set-ups to see which one is the best compromise.

Otherwise, this is Bond's best outing on a shiny disc to date.

18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker. Publisher: Acclaim. Format: PS2 DVD. Price: £39.99.

SEGA is polishing up its back catalogue for other formats with indecent haste. The latest Dreamcast/arcade title to make the jump to a rival format is 18-Wheeler American Pro Trucker. On the PS2 it looks a bit sharper and the visuals run a bit smoother. Otherwise it's the same as the DC version, fun but a bit too shallow to be consider a true Sega classic.

Pick from four truckers, get your motor running and race against the clock. Make it to a checkpoint, smashing rivals out of the way and avoiding drivers wishing to do the same to you, for a time bonus.

It's good simple fun and the perfect post-Christmas antidote.

GIZMO OF THE WEEK

Does the state of our roads leave you fuming? Inventor Paul Moller believes he has the perfect answer.

His company has invested more than £76m on researching a flying car and he reckons it will be on the market within four years.

Currently, the car is capable of hovering more than 12ft above the ground - essential if you are to avoid nasty confrontations with 4x4s - and can do more than 30mph on it.

Amazingly, Moller already has an order book of more than 100 prospective buyers.

CHEAT OF THE WEEK

Tomorrow Never Dies wasn't James Bond's finest hour on the PlayStation but thousands of copies were sold. To obtain all weapons, pause the game, then press sel; sel; circle; circle; L1; L1; R1;R1.