DUNGEON SIEGE Format: PC CD Rom. Publisher: Microsoft. Price: £39.99

JUST BECAUSE Microsoft has a pretty important games console out at the moment (now reduced to just £199 - what are you waiting for?), it hasn't forsaken the PC games player. Five years ago, Microsoft games are usually objects of derision. Apart from the mighty Flight Simulator it seemed as though the company knew next to nothing about what made a good title. To Microsoft's credit, it listened to the criticism and did what it does best - if it couldn't come up with superlative titles in-house, it just had to buy the companies that could.

That's why Halo, the incredible first person shoot 'em up, ended up as an X Box exclusive and the reason why Dungeon Siege is a PC title. The pedigree behind Dungeon Siege is impeccable. Gas Powered Games is the group of talented coders which came up with Total Annihilation - still one of my all-time favourite real time strategy (RTS) games nearly five years later.

Still, Dungeon Siege is no RTS. It's a role-playing epic viewed from an isometric perspective, a genre that's already well represented on the PC (Baldur's Gate, Diabolo II etc) and something of a moribund genre at present.

The storyline is the usual "evil empire" stuff...mighty civilisation collapses from within, riddled with corruption, and the good guys escape to set up their own utopian paradise. Everything is fine and dandy for a few centuries until those baddies turn up again and threaten to turn the whole thing to ashes.

One neat feature is the ability to customise your character according to your own whim - make him proficient in one style of fighting or magic and the further you progress, the more powerful he becomes. What's more you don't have to go it alone this time. You can take on a solitary quest or command a band of up to eight fellow freedom fighters. Choose well and you'll have covering fire from archers or the mystical power of spell casters to fall back on when things get hairy.

And while older RPGs were played out from a fixed camera perspective, the viewpoint in Dungeon Siege can be twisted around and zoomed as required. It's easy to accomplish this task and helpful in some of the more dense screens. And when a monster turns up, you can pause the action to equip your party for the battle ahead.

Impressively, having built up your character into something of Rambo-esque proportions you can save his attributes and transfer him into an online multiplayer game to demonstrate your skill across cyberspace.

Graphically, it's a fine example of what the PC can conjuror up these days. The spell effects, in particular, are done with a cinematic flourish that really pushes your GeForce hardware.

Sure, it's all a bit derivative - veterans of Diabolo in particular will have an acute sense of deja vu - but then so was Total Annihilation. And what TA did to the strategy genre - taking old ideas and reworking them to a new level - so Dungeon Siege does for the humble isometric role playing game.

Heavy Metal Geomatrix Format: Dreamcast GD-ROM. Publisher: Big Ben Interactive. Price: £29.99

ANOTHER week and another new title appears for Sega's Dreamcast, a console that just won't go quietly. Capcom has been one of Sega's staunchest supporters. Even triple A titles like Resident Evil: Code Veronica appeared on the DC before finally making the trip onto more populist machines.

Heavy Metal Geomatrix is based on a series of graphical novels that enjoy something of a cult following among comic book fans. It's a bit like the plot for Waterworld. At some point in the future, the polar ice caps have melted making places like Mount Everest desirable beachfront property.

Society has disintegrated (doesn't it always?) and warring clans have occupied the remaining plots of dry land. So you select a character and go forth to do battle. The fighters look great but the environments you wander around in are Spartan to say the least. Games like Dead or Alive 3 reviewed last week have taken this aspect of beat 'em ups to new heights and anything less is, well, a bit of a let down.

Any publisher willing to support a format with as much untapped promise as the Dreamcast should be applauded. So full marks to Big Ben Interactive (the UK publisher) for doing what Sega so spectacularly failed to do: and making a fist of marketing Dreamcast correctly. It's just a shame that the DC's roster of truly great software has already been published.

Published: 03/05/2002