LMA Manager 2001, published by Codemasters for PlayStation

Ever wondered what it would be like to be a football manager? Then this is about as close as you'll want to get without actually wearing a camel coat.

What immediately strikes you about the game is the vast amount of information and control available at your fingertips. There are graphs, tables and statistics on everything from the players to the construction of the stadium, all constantly updated to help you choose your tactics. You are even provided with a "lap-top" to help organise yourself and receive emails from your staff or other clubs.

There are all the English and Scottish teams here for you to try your management skills on, with a full European transfer market available to throw your millions at.

You can choose to be as involved as you like, deciding either to take control of every aspect of running a club or preferring instead to employ assistants, scouts, physios, or coaches to help you out.

The game also lets you take up the gauntlet of 14 challenges such as trying to win promotion, or avoiding relegation in six weeks, so not to tie you down to a long season if you don't have time.

After each match is played, an interactive TV channel provides you with all the other teams' results and even lets you watch close up highlights of the game's incidents and goals - whilst Messrs Gubba and Hansen comment your team's terrible defending.

Overall, this is an excellent management game for the platform, its realism and the wealth of information present means it will have you hooked for weeks.

Graphics - 3/5

Sound - 3/5

Gameplay - 4/5

Gamespan - 5/5

Overall - 4/5

RICHARD GOWLAND

Giant Killers, published by AAA Games for Dreamcast

When Giant Killers first came out for the PC, I was one of the first to praise the fact that it resembled a slimmed-down version of management king Championship Manager. This is its first outing on the Dreamcast, and the interface remains largely the same. You can scour the transfer market quite extensively, and match action is provided in the form of text descriptions. However, the same flaws that troubled the PC version are to be found here. During a match, it is almost impossible to tell how your players are performing. Unlike Championship Manager, there's no handy dandy list of marks out of ten during the game - you can only check that at the end of the match, and it doesn't seem to matter if a particular player has been regularly mentioned or hardly at all.

Also, the actual effect of your transfer dealings and management style is hard to perceive. Certainly, you'd expect Scarborough, once you added a couple of strikers worth £1.5m apiece and the wingers to get the ball to them, to thrive in the Conference, but alas they seemed to perform just as well with their ordinary strikeforce.

Overall, the game runs just a little too much on rails. There is much to commend it in trying to create a simpler version of the Championship Manager game, which has evolved to the point where it is too daunting for the beginner, but despite its name, this title isn't going to bring down that particular giant.

Graphics 1/5

Sound 3/5

Gameplay 3/5

Gamespan 4/5

Overall 3/5

STEPHEN HUNT

ISS Pro Evolution 2, published by Konami for PlayStation

IF the FIFA series is the Manchester United of football games, remorselessly successful, then ISS is the Leeds United - energetic, exciting, brimming with verve and ideas and yet doomed to play second fiddle in the sales figures.

ISS is routinely better in most departments than FIFA, offering better control and more realistic gameplay, but has previously suffered because the player and team names were never the correct ones. Instead of Beckham, you'd have Bekkam or something similar, with all the names skewed just enough to avoid a lawsuit. Well, ISS now has the correct player names for the major nations - though if you're a Northern Ireland fan like me, you'll still have a Queen labouring up front instead of Jimmy Quinn. The same goes for Welsh fans.

The club leagues which are available may have the right player names for the respective teams, but the teams themselves masquerade under the generic titles of Manchester, London, etc.

However, the core of the ISS experience is the gameplay, and that's as smart and smooth as ever. It's still possible to find certain routines which you can use to guarantee a goal, but that becomes a much more difficult proposition as you step up the difficulty levels which, unlike the FIFA games, are worked out properly. Hard really means hard.

If there is one pointed criticism of the game, it's the fact that your goalkeeper catches a ball with all the skill of an English cricketer - one in six is thought of as a good result.

As ever, you can also play with a gang of mates, with players able to join the same side and work together as well as being able to go head to head to see who is the king of the sofa.

So is it better than FIFA? Undoubtedly. Will it sell more? Now, that's a different matter entirely...

Graphics 3/5

Sound 2/5

Gameplay 5/5

Gamespan 5/5

Overall 4/5

STEPHEN HUNT