Console yourself: PC REVIEW

Ignition (virgin) cd-rom

Another contender for best sounding game of the year is Ignition on the PC. If you haven't already guessed from the title, Ignition is a motor-racing game. As with most games in this genre, there are a number of vehicles from which to choose and a variety of tracks on which to race them. The seven different vehicles include a police car and a school bus and the courses range from a winding mountain road to a dirt track through a deserted gold mine. There are the usual obstacles and jumps to contend with and a turbo booster to help you out of sticky situations. There is also a split screen option which allows two players to play on the same computer and a network option for those who wish to play over the Internet.

I've never been a big fan of racing games which adopt a bird's eye view, but this works as well as any. With the screen resolution set to its highest level, the graphics are extremely good, but unless you have a very powerful PC this will cause terrible slowdown. Most players will have to play with the resolution at its lowest level and put up with blocky sprites and rather textureless landscapes. The one outstanding feature is the music, which can best be described as the Prodigy meets Jamiroquai. Ignition will while away a few hours, but will not set the world alight. Very much a case of try before you buy.

Ignition was reviewed on a 150MHz PC with 32Mg Ram and SVGA graphics