POOL PARADISE; Publisher: Ignition Entertainment Formats: PS2, Game Cube and PC, Price: varies. Out now. IF you ever happen to meet Archer Maclean, don't challenge him to a game of pool over a few beers.

Maclean's name will be familiar to older gamers. He is the genius coder who gave us the Jimmy White series of snooker simulations.

In fact, Archer has seemingly made it his mission to dedicate his professional life to the creation of the perfect pool/snooker game. You could say he's become a bit obsessed with it but if you're a believer in the old adage 'practice makes perfect' then Archer should be the man when it comes to this type of game. And he is.

The latest Maclean attempt at the perfect pool sim is called Pool Paradise and it marks the fourth time Archer has teamed up with Jimmy White.

Things have moved on a bit since the days when a humble PC would struggle to draw the green felt on a table and some coloured balls.

In Pool Paradise, you inhabit a realistic game world where players spend their days challenging each other on a fully animated South Pacific island. The sun rises in the morning and sets at night. You can hear the waves crashing on the beach and the palm trees sway in the gentle breeze. It's all very impressive.

You arrive on this paradise isle skint and the only way to make cash is to play pool. Luckily for you, there are 30 other contestants all with the same idea, so you are never short of a few bob or an opponent.

Money can be spent on upgrades or to unlock the numerous sub-games. My favourite was the cannon ball coconut shy but there's something for all tastes.

Players who don't take the sport too seriously will head for the stunt hut, which features some very bizarre mini-games indeed (Ever seen a triangular pool table? Well get this game).

Or why not stop by the arcade, where you will find a perfect recreation of Archer's first commercial video game, Dropzone (and, shock horror, it's not about pool or snooker!)

As you'd expect, Archer has thrown in just about every variation on the sport of pool known to man - and quite a few that I'd swear he's made up himself. Eight ball or nine ball, UK or US rules, 14:1, something called bowlliards and switchball - they're all here.

Since they appeared on the Amiga way back in the 1980s, Archer Maclean's games have sold more than two million copies world-wide. If you already own a Jimmy White title then you will have a fair idea of what to expect from Pool Paradise.

Assuming you enjoy the sport, then there's plenty of challenge to be found in Archer's latest.

NOKIA N-GAGE; Price: see offers at your mobile phone store. Out shortly. LET'S face it, the first Nokia N-Gage was a disaster.

Not from a hardware point of view - just one look at something like Tomb Raider playing on the N-Gage is enough to demonstrate the system's potential - but from a hand-held console point of view, there was just too much wrong with it.

The button layout was confusing, the set felt clumsy in the hand and, worst of all, gamers had to dismantle the chassis every time they fancied a change. Stupid? You bet. No wonder prices plummeted faster than a grand piano off the top of Canary Wharf.

But Nokia is nothing if not persistent and the revised N-Gage recently shown off to the games press has all the hallmarks of a well thought-out piece of kit. Nokia has obviously listened hard to those early adopters and wasted no time implementing their suggestions.

So now you no longer have to remove the battery just to swap games -there's a slot like every other hand-held - the buttons have been refined and the D-pad is more sensitive. In short, the new N-Gage feels more like an advanced Game Boy Advance than a smartphone with a nice line in show-off software.

But Nokia needs to move quickly if it is to press home the N-Gage's new-found superiority. Both Sony and Nintendo should have new hand-helds out by the end of the year.

SAVAGE: THE BATTLE FOR NEWERTH: Publisher: Digital Jesters, Format: PC, Price: £29.99. Out now.

A STRANGE combination of Command & Conquer-style real time strategy with more familiar (and tedious) Unreal-style first person shooter, Savage attempts to take both genres to the next level.

When you are in command mode, the game uses the traditional RTS top down view so you can research and deploy your troops in the usual way. When the action starts, though, you assume the first person perspective for some serious "hands on" action.

You start out with just basic soldiers but research and industry (you mine gems) soon sorts your arsenal out. You'll have to move fast, though, as the computer-operated baddies are just as productive.

In a short while, your armies have progressed beyond slings and arrows to missiles and lasers. It's all very satisfying to watch as well as play (the game world is gloriously modelled and some of the effects look terrific). If Savage has a problem, it's in the fine details. As an RTS it suffers from a lack of scope and your fellow soldiers can be infuriatingly dense in the heat of an FPS battle.

As a genre, this blend of strategy and action appears to be on the up at the moment. Perhaps games publishers have finally grown wise to the limitations placed upon their programming teams by the repetitive first person shooter? Let's hope so.