Dino Crisis 3

Xbox; Capcom; £39.99; www .capcom.com

By Richard Bell

THE year is 2548 and the colony ship Ozymandius is heading for Earth. No big deal, you might think — and that’s where you’d be wrong.

The Ozymandius has been missing for 300 years and has only now blinked up on deep-space radar.

So what's the big deal? Well, the colossal craft just happens to be choc-full of an array of mutated dinosaurs fed up with ships’ biscuits and on the lookout for some fresh meat, preferably human-flavoured.

You assume the role of Patrick or Sonya, members of intergalactic marine group SOAR (Special Operations And Reconnaissance), sent in to investigate and rescue any survivors aboard.

As Patrick and the agents begin to infiltrate the ship, they are greeted by an horrific scene of ravenous dinos inhabiting virtually all areas of the craft.

If that didn’t make their task daunting enough, the fact the Ozymandius changes shape throughout the course of the mission certainly does. You get a map, however, so don't sweat it.

And so begins a life and death struggle against these awesome creatures as you and your SOAR colleagues cautiously proceed with your task to uncover exactly what happened to the ship and stop it ever returning to Earth.

Whereas the first two chapters in the series teased your brain with cunning conundrums aplenty, sometimes at the expense of free-flowing gameplay, here you hardly have time to catch your breath.

Sure, there are more than a few puzzles to solve (open a door here, activate a computer there), but these rarely get in the way of what this game is all about — namely blasting dinosaurs.

Armed initially with a rather nifty gun that delivers either multiple shots or one big blast, depending on how long you hold down the X button, some new pieces of kit are soon appropriated.

Known collectively as WASPs, these high-performance security machines pack a sting, providing a strong offence and able to sense when ship security is being threatened.

The Tempest is the first WASP you encounter and it isn’t long before you are using it to swarm around and fire laser beams at a bunch of 300lb, pointy-toothed, eel-like dinos.

Other WASPS include the Juggernaut, which shields itself with an energy barrier, crawls along the ground and repeatedly hurls itself at enemies, and the Inferno that rises into the air and lets loose a huge explosion.

As well as slaying beasts, WASPs are invaluable when it comes to accessing new areas and restoring ship functions from Wasp-Lock security systems.

Nothing too technical is involved here — simply discharging a WASP-compatible gizmo near an appropriate device usually does the trick.

So, you’ve got some fancy weapons, but these alone won’t be enough to keep you alive. Your jetpack might just tip the balance though.

Used not only for flying, the self-replenishing unit also lets you dash out of harm's way. When you do need to fly, hitting the B button blasts you into the air, where a pull on the R trigger makes you hover and gives you lots of time to casually straffe the creatures below.

As well as making you feel good, defeating dinos earns you Tactical Credits which can be traded for new weapons and used to increase your performance parameters.

From the two-minute, movie-quality intro, you know that your eyes are in for an all-you-can-eat beast feast. Looking like they’ve just stepped off the set of Jurassic Park, the stars of the show look utterly amazing and are superbly animated.

As well as the eel things, more familiar faces like the T Rex are in there too, although even he has had a futuristic mutant makeover and now sports most of his insides on the outside.

With so much so right about this game it’s a pity the camera that relays the action lets it down just when you’d rather it didn’t.

It’s not that it happens all the time, but when you are under attack, move into a new section and the camera swoops round, your controls are inverted and a beast takes a bite, that’s when you let out a monster-style roar.

Learn to anticipate this incongruous misgiving, however, and you’ll almost forget it even exists.

VERDICT: By far the best of the trilogy, Dino Crisis 3 is an Xbox-only experience that masterfully showcases the console's power while giving even the most hardcore monster masher something to get their teeth into.

85%

PC or Mac Epson £89.99 www.epson.co.uk

By Derek Uchman

Epson’s latest take on the all-round printer is the solid, no-nonsense Stylus C84. Designed for the small office as well as the home, it’s an inkjet workhorse equally adept at printing on recycled paper as well as the posher, but dearer, plain stuff.

Epson has built the C84 with running costs in mind, and, in the notoriously expensive world of PC printers, it’s refreshing to see an inkjet that doesn’t swallow up bank notes in the same way as it does sheets of A4.

For much of this we have to thank the four ink cartridges — three colour and one black. Unlike many similarly-priced printers, if you run out of, say, magenta, you don’t have to chuck out the yellow and cyan and buy a new colour cartridge. When the magenta runs out, you simply replace it.

Where the C84 does disappoint a little is in photo printing. It’s only just up to the task, and those of you who print a lot of snaps may be better spending another tenner on the C84’s photo version.

Not only were photos less sharp than we would have liked, but they also came out darker. Still, the C84 is capable of a respectable 5760 dots per square inch (optimised) and it is quite speedy (Epson reckon it’ll spew out 22 black pages per minute or 12 in colour).

The C84 also uses Epson’s DURABrite inks which should produce water and smudge-proof prints as well being fade-resistant for up to 80 years (we’ll have to take Epson’s word on that).

But what impressed us most was the C84’s build quality. The strong case, smooth operations and, above all, its near silence when printing, made it seem a million miles away from marginally cheaper models.

VERDICT: The bargain running costs mean you can the use C84 freely without having to worry about ink levels plummeting. Prints a mean document, too.

95%

Australian MP Paul Gibson has called for the Xbox title Project Gotham Racing 2 to be banned. “This game sends the wrong message to young people,” he said. “It is actually glorifying speed and power.” It seems that, unlike the rest of us, Mr Gibson is yet another politician who is unable to detect the difference between fantasy and reality. Perhaps that’s why we have so many wars.

Major record labels, who have been waging war on peer-to-peer music-swapping networks, have been snooping on the services to find out which artists are proving the most popular. They want to find the most-downloaded songs so they can promote them in more traditional ways. A bit hypocritical, methinks. But what’s even barmier is that some of the services are threatening to take legal action to stop this as they believe it “violates intellectual property”. Ha!