HALO 2

Format: Xbox. Publisher: Microsoft. Price: £39.99. Family friendly? No.

WHEN this game hit the shelves last month, it took more money in three days than any CD album or Hollywood movie on the entire planet. Microsoft must be congratulating itself on a job well done for snapping up Halo's developer, a company called Bungie, for what amounted to corporate small change a couple of years ago.

Halo 2 is probably the most eagerly awaited game ever to hit the Xbox.

The original is a cast iron classic. A science fiction first person shoot 'em up, it is the kind of brilliant game every new games console needs if it is to succeed. Millions of gamers bought an Xbox just so they could play Halo.

The inevitable translation from Xbox to PC only served to build anticipation for the sequel. And now it is here, are all those people going to be disappointed? Are they heck.

Halo 2 is like Halo, only more so. Everything that made the first game so good (the beautiful visuals, the well balanced gameplay, the corny but compelling story and the intelligence displayed by everything on screen) has been re-examined and re-engineered to be even better than it was before.

The only slight disappointment is that Halo 2 doesn't move the genre on in a quantum leap the way its predecessor did. It's fantastic but not revolutionary.

There are new vehicles to try out, new weapons to wield (including two at the same time) and, of course, new enemies to fight.

The already impressive visuals of the first game now look even better (some of the lighting effects are just amazing) and there's no appreciable slowdown, even with half-a-dozen baddies swarming towards you at the same time.

Anyone who has mastered the first game will feel right at home in Halo 2. Sure, there's a lot more going on at the same time now (more enemies and more in-coming fire) but those strategies you honed in the original will serve you just as well here.

Remember, though, that Bungie has tinkered with some of the original weapons so they may react differently this time. Get re-acquainted with them fast, or death will be the depressing outcome.

Remember your comrades in the first game and how "human" they felt? Halo 2 sets new standards in artificial intelligence that will probably stand until the inevitable second sequel arrives in a few years time (on Xbox 2 perhaps?)

And that's about the only serious criticism that can be levelled at this game. That, as part of a triology, it ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger, as if Bungie felt it needed to hold something back for Halo 3. Just like The Empire Strikes Back felt unsatisfying because so many story arcs were left unresolved, so it is with Halo 2.

Not that this will stop gamers from enjoying this sequel - and such reservations fly out of the window when you fire up your Xbox and go online for a spot of multi-player action - for many weeks to come.

If you own an Xbox (and if not, why not?) then this just has to be the one game you unwrap this Christmas.

THE GETAWAY: BLACK MONDAY

Publisher: Sony. Format: PS2. Price: £39.99. Family friendly? Teens only.

THE Getaway was supposed to be the "killer app" that sold the PS2 just as Halo did the Xbox. But, unlike Halo, development problems meant it couldn't make the launch line-up and when it finally arrived, much of its thunder had been stolen by the Grand Theft Auto series.

Now The Getaway gets a sequel and, yet again, it's arrived a bit too late.

Littered with four letter words from the start, it's obvious Black Monday is trying desperately hard to adopt some of the cool that made the GTA games such a refreshing experience.

Sadly for the Black Monday team, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas hit the shelves a couple of weeks before it and cleaned up.

So what are we left with? The same kind of driving/shooting/action-adventure hybrid we had the first time really.

The streets of London have been very accurately modelled and there are more pedestrians in the sequel. These help to make the chase sequences entertaining and more of a challenge but the inability to stop a cut-scene from running soon becomes infuriating.

Likewise the on-foot combat is made harder than it need be by a camera that seems to have a mind of its own and clumsy controls that make swift movement difficult. After half an hour, the wayward camera began to make me feel sick.

Fans of Brit cop shows from the 1970s will still enjoy Black Monday (it plays a bit like a poor attempt at an updated Sweeney) and the production values are generally high. Maybe this is one game that would have benefited from more time in development.

As it is, I don't think we'll be seeing a Getaway 3.

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