COLIN MCRAE RALLY 4.0. Publisher: Codemasters. Format: PS2. Price: £39.99: COULD this be the end of the road for the Colin McRae series?

After a decade of competition in the world rally championship the Scot finds himself without a drive next year.

A bizarre change in the sport's rules led to McRae losing his seat with the Citroen squad after an indifferent 2004 season.

To be truthful, McRae has struggled to recapture the magic that made him the fastest driver in the world during the late 1990s. A couple of poor years with the Ford Focus and a string of ho-hum results for the French have seen his stock plummet with team bosses.

Ironically, McRae's fortunes on the PS 2 have never been better.

The latest game to bear his name, the originally-titled Colin McRae Rally 4.0, is a superb piece of software that belongs in the same elite class as Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing.

Gamers familiar with the earlier games will find the single player experience relatively straightforward. The terrific handling balance that made its predecessors such a hoot has been refined and tweaked but, essentially, it's still the same.

At least you can ramp up the difficulty and damage levels to lend the series more of a challenge.

Nor do you have to drive as Colin all the time; this game gives players the opportunity to get behind the wheel and go head-to-head with the super Scot.

The car line-up is also wider than ever (the two-wheel drive cars are a hairy ride indeed) and the tracks have been re-modeled.

If there was a criticism of CM 3.0 it had to be the graphics. By its own admission Codemasters took a deal of time coming to grips with the PS2 architecture. That left the last McRae outing looking a bit rough 'n' ready, especially compared to Sony's official rally title.

Luckily, the gameplay more than made up for these deficiencies and this time around there's no such worry. Version four looks terrific.

So it looks better, plays better and runs smoother than ever before. All in all I have to say that Colin McRae 4.0 is rally rather good. (ouch!)

ROUTE PLANNER GREAT BRITAIN & EUROPE 2004. Publisher: Map & Guide. Format: PC (Win 98 upwards). Price: £34.99

DON'T you just hate it when you get lost? It's possible to lose your bearings even if you have a map book. Driving and navigating is impossible without the assistance of a willing passenger.

Some cars come with global satellite navigation but these systems cost hundreds of pounds and, in my experience, not all of them can be trusted.

So what can the keen traveller do? One of the easiest and most cost-effective fixes has to be route planning software for the PC.

Load a programme like Route Planner GB & Europe onto a laptop and you have no excuse for getting lost ever again. For a penny less than £35 it's far more affordable than a GPS system.

The best known mapping programme is Microsoft's mighty Autoroute software but Route Planner boasts a few tricks all of its own that makes Map & Guide's offering a viable alternative.

You get a programme that covers Britain and all of Europe plus detailed maps of 3,000 British towns and cities, 1.6 million miles of road across 50 countries with 556,000 places of special interest.

Even better, the planning goes all the way down to house number level (there are 14 million in the UK). Route Planner 2004 is the only software that lets you plan a route from door-to-door from England to major European cities.

You can also specify stops along your route, highlight places of interest, work out the cost of your trip and choose different routes.

What's more you can take your directions with you by printing them out or downloading the info to a PDA. Autoroute only works with Microsoft's own Pocket PCs but this software also sends your directions to Palm powered devices.

Map & Guide also publishes dedicated software for your PDA. Top Cities Europe costs £12.50 for individual cities or £39.99 for the complete line up of all 16.

Xbox Live. Publisher: Microsoft. Format: Xbox. Price: £40.

ONLINE gaming is usually the preserve of PC owners who can afford the hardware required to play games over the Internet.

Xbox Live lets console owners with a broadband connection link up with players from across the world and play after an initial set up fee.

The kit comprises a set up disc, a telephone-style communicator with a built-in microphone, a control pad and three cracking game demos: Moto GP, Mech Assault and Whacked.

WIN AN XBOX

* You can win an Xbox and an Xbox Live kit plus copies of Brute Force and Midtown Madness 3 by answering an easy question: What is the name of the Xbox on-line gaming service? Send your answers to: Xbox comp, Burton's Byte, Priestgate, Darlington, DL1 1NF. Closing date: November 20, 2003.

Virus Watch

The latest 'blended threat' to hit computers is called Torvil.B.

The new worm virus, like its predecessors, spreads via multiple propagation methods including peer-to-peer networks, news groups, email and local networks.

Torvil.B creates emails with different subject lines, attachment names and message bodies, some masquerading as messages from Microsoft referring to patches or security fixes.

The infected message reads: "Hello, you should apply this fix which solves the newest Internet Explorer vulnerability described in MS05-023. It is important that you apply this fix now since we estimate the Buffer Overflow is at a critical level."

But when a recipient clicks on an attachment, Torvil.B copies itself onto the machine. The virus will also attempt to send itself to other users on IRC channels and to a list of newsgroups, try to gain access to the local area network and copy itself to the shared folders of peer-to-peer networks.

* For more information, updates and downloads, visit www.f-secure.co