Excalibur 2555 AD

Anything that's remotely successful is bound to inspire a smattering of imitators. Considering the number of C&C and Quake clones doing the rounds, it's surprising we haven't seen a Tomb Raider-a-like before now. Well here's one. It's called Excalibur, it's an adaptation of a successful PlayStation game, and you need a 3D accelerator card to get the most out of it.

At first glance, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching some kind of secret Tomb Raider level starring Lara Croft's sister. Not only does the lead character look strikingly similar to Core's megastar (save her hairdo, which is a blonde bob), there's also an incredibly familiar floating 'camera' which follows her around. The gameplay is quite similar too, with plenty of running hither and thither, collecting objects, solving puzzles and murdering people.

So it's similar, but is it as good? Er, no. Excalibur bears the same relation to Tomb Raider as No Way Sis do to Oasis. For starters, the animation isn't a patch on Tomb Raider. Nor are the puzzles. The controls are slightly unwieldy, especially during fight sequences, which tend to be about as fast-moving and exciting as your average Enya video. Instead of huge, hulking levels, Excolibur's various stages comprise a series of small rooms, joined together via high-tech sliding doors. There's no jump button, so it isn't a 3D platform game. In fact, save the female lead, Excalibur 2555AD doesn't really have much in common with Tomb Raider at all.

A pretty, yet curiously uninvolving title that's better suited to the PSX than the PC. I wish I had something nicer to say about it, since the programming team (who insist on thanking no-one save "the little 24 hour garage at the top of the road" and "the slightly smaller Chinese just down the road" in the README.TXT file) sound like an alright bunch of people to me. Maybe next time fellas.