Reservoir Dogs (Xbox)

In a nutshell:
It may seem as if this has missed the boat on topical tie-ins but with so few games offering up a virtual game of cops ân’ robbers this is a surprisingly fresh take on the whole action genre.

The lowdown:
Trying to make a game out of a fourteen year old movie that consists primarily of men in suits standing around shouting at each other is not the most obvious of concepts, but as the most important crime movie of the last twenty years Reservoir Dogs proves to have great potential as a video game. As you can imagine most of the game involves sequences only hinted at in the movie as you actually take part in the diamond store heist, escape the police, abduct Marvin the luckless cop and stash the diamonds as Mr Pink. The game rates how you play on a moral scale, giving you full freedom to take hostages, torture and kill - or play the nice guy and try not to get anyone hurt.

Most exciting moment:
Just like the movie the game is filled with flashbacks and scenes that happen out of chronological order. Amidst the fairly generic driving missions the best bits by far are the third person combat sequences where, if you decide to play nasty, you can unleash a “bullet festival” special move when your adrenaline maxes out.

Since you ask:
Despite concerns over the game’s violence before its release, Eidos have pointed out that it’s actually possible (if quite difficult) to play through and win the entire game without killing anyone.

The bottom line:
A clever use of an unusual license, that’s more hits than misses.
HARRISON DENT