Psygnosis 3D Accelerated Five Pack

For the most part these games are fun the first couple of times you play them, then they start to get boring. The bundle gives you five: G-Police, a futuristic game where you fly around a city gunning down bad guys with a range of weapons; Wipeout XL, a futuristic racer very much in the F-Zero mould; Formula 1, a modern-day racer with some of the fastest cars there are; Shipwreckers, a pirate game of treasure-hunting and puzzle-solving where the trick is not getting killed; and Shadow Master, a first-person shooter about taking down an evil overlord. The only one with genuinely bad gameplay is Shadow Master, which never explains itself well and gets too confusing to enjoy after a while. The rest are good fun, it just does not last.

Across the board the control is average. You can use a joystick or the keyboard, and moving, shooting and the rest are all fairly easy. There is not much to say beyond that, it is so middle-of-the-road that there are no real problems to flag.

The graphics, on the other hand, are outstanding, because this whole pack is built to lean on the 3D accelerator chip. In every game the cars, ships and monsters look convincing and move smoothly, the gore in Shadow Master is decent, and the explosions across all five look genuinely realistic. If the goal was to show off what a 3D card can do, the bundle nails it. The sound is decent too, enjoyable and not the sort that grates after a while.

Overall the Five Pack is a good value if you have a 3D accelerated card and want a spread of genres to put it through its paces. Just know going in that the fun fades after a while, so treat it as a varied sampler rather than five games you will sink months into.