Sony Air Force Delta Strike PlayStation 2 Games

The story this time concerns Tidus, a blond-haired star of a sport called Blitzball. While he is playing in a match, Tidus' city is attacked by an evil force called Sin, and everything is destroyed save Tidus and his guardian Auran. The adventure begins as they are somehow transported to another world. From here on, it's standard Final Fantasy gameplay: fight battles, manage experience points, learn new powers and recruit a motley crew of non-playing characters to join your quest.

The graphics, however, take things to a new level. They are amazing not only for their realism, but also for their imaginative art and design. The world these heroes inhabit is breathtakingly beautiful, flowing and full of inventive surprises. You haven't lived until you've surfed cables high in the air, or ridden a graceful airship through the clouds. There are stunning effects on display when you use magic in combat, summoning gigantic monsters, fire-columns and more to devastate your foes.

One new element is voice acting. The innovation yields predictably mixed results: it's wonderful to have spoken dialogue rather than subtitles, but as with most games translated from Japanese, the acting is mediocre and sometimes unintentionally hilarious. Still, the game's new graphics engine and solid gameplay are sure to please fans of the series waiting to see what Square has in store for them. While Final Fantasy X doesn't offer much innovation, it also doesn't disappoint. And fortunately, with Final Fantasy XI already in development, the title is still a misnomer. --Andrew S Bub

The game is broken up into a large number of small levels and distributed among a wide range of characters, with a diverse range of abilities and items. All of this generally works very well, although it's quite slow paced and in truth not nearly as scary as the games it'd like to count as its peers. The biggest problem with the game by far though is the absolutely appalling voiceovers, whose thick London accents and generally poor delivery have you wincing every time you hear them. Thankfully the gameplay is just enough to make you forget such aural horrors and keeps your mind fixed on the game's more intentional ones. --David Jenkins

Formula One 2002 contains two race modes, Arcade and Simulation. The Arcade mode is more a game of bumper cars than a serious racing game, though you do get full in-race commentary from the king o' the track Murray Walker; while he does lighten the mood on occasion--"He's off the track and into the kitty litter!"--his repetitive comments will soon have you reaching for the "commentator off" button. In Simulation mode things get more realistic, but it has to be said that the experience still has an arcade-y feel to it. Even on a semi-pro setting it's not difficult to keep up with the pack down the back straights of Monza and the steering is viciously sharp at times, giving a rather detached feeling rather than an immersive one.

That said, Formula One 2002 is more instantly playable than EA's F1 2002 (don't get confused by the titles, now) even though it lacks the fanatical level of tweaking EA include in their title. --Chris Russell