Sport of Kings

Platform: PC

This unique and realistic horse-breeding and racing simulation from QV Software takes you into the world of horse-racing.

There are three different game modes in which you can train thoroughbreds, ride champions, and finally bet on race outcomes.

As a stable-owner, you buy, sell, train and even breed horses. You can even create a bloodline of champions to establish your own racing empire.

You prepare your horses for future races, looking after their health and diet, studying their preferences and developing their potential.

Each horse has a unique personality, and this will influence which jockey you match with the horse.

As a jockey, you can take part in the most prestigious races – gallops, steeple-chase and trotting – on dozens of superb 3D racing tracks, based on real locations, some of them in Australia.

The game features excellent artificial intelligence and changing weather conditions to add to the challenge.

You can register your champions in Internet races and compete against other players.

F1 Career Challenge

Platform: PS2

Start off as a rookie Formula One driver and prove that you can compete with the best in the world’s fastest motor sport.

Once you have completed an initial license test, you are assigned to a team according to your level of ability. You then develop your skills, build up your reputation and climb the ranks over four successive seasons until you can compete with élite drivers in the world’s most glamorous car races.

Electronic Arts’ F1 Career Challenge features four complete seasons of racing action, with 14 teams, 44 different vehicles, 34 drivers, and 17 of the world’s most famous racing circuits from each Formula One season of 1999-2002.

You can test your abilities against those of real life F1 champions such as Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, Mika Hakkinen, and Michael Schumacher.

The game creates a thrilling experience of F1 racing, complete with the roar of the engines, detailed graphics (cars, drivers, race tracks, pit crews, helicopters and scenery), and spectacular damage effects.

Just like a real F1 driver, you get feedback via headset radios from your chief mechanic and team boss.

For the ultimate challenge, you and up to three other players can compete in multiplayer mode against the fastest F1 Challenge drivers in the world.

The Hulk

Platform: PC, Xbox

From Vivendi Universal Games comes this very addictive and fun game.

One year after the events that take place in the film, troubled scientist Bruce Banner and his enraged alter ego, the Hulk, are forced into battle against the terrifying forces of the Leader and his cohorts.

They have created a device called the Gamma Orb which absorbs the Hulk’s incredible power and can use it to unleash a relentless army of gamma creatures on the world.

The game features include:

• Two types of gameplay – using the powers of stealth and logic as Bruce Banner, or the incredible strength and fury of the Hulk.
• Thirty highly detailed levels, featuring environments both directly from the film and exclusive to the game.
• Fully destructible and interactive environments, in which virtually anything can be manipulated, picked up, destroyed or used as a weapon (eg. cars, oil drums and parts of buildings).
• Intense battles with gamma-enhanced super-villains, such as Flux, Rampage and Half Life.
• Twenty-five devastating modes of attack, including the Sonic Clap and Gamma Slam.

Fire Department

Platform: PC

Fire Department, from QV Software, is the first 3D RTS/management game to be set in the world of fire-fighting.

As captain of Fire Station 615, you control a very powerful fire crew and its various support vehicles, as well as paramedics and technical officers.

You are called out to fight fires at a railway accident, a petrol station, a forest fire, a bank and even a nuclear power plant…

You witness some spectacular explosions and tackle some fearsome blazes.

As the station captain, you train up your team, teaching it how to manage in emergencies and to cope with stress – and, of course, how to get through perilous missions successfully.

When you arrive at the scene of a fire, you have to take into account the spread of the fire, poisonous fumes, the number of people in danger and their location.

In the heat of the action you must keep a cool head, overcoming obstacles blocking your way and working out the best entry points to get to the source of the fire to extinguish it more quickly.

Medals are awarded according to the success of a mission (speed of response, pollution control, saving lives and objects of value).

This is a spectacular game, easy to pick up and play, but also realistic and mentally challenging.