Roland Garros 97

Roland Garros is known for marking the point in the year when the BBC think you should start being interested in tennis - they always show a bit of it as part of their build-up to Sodding Wimbledon Fortnight Nobody cares who wins it, because (a) it takes place on mud so it's not proper tennis, and (b) it's French. And now there's a game based around it, with all the usual options: singles or doubles; clay, artificial turf or proper grass; three levels of difficulty; male and female players to select etc.

If you win the first three tournaments, you can play on cement; win that and you graduate to the 'Futuredome' bonus court where there are power-ups: a grenade which explodes after five seconds, and a hologram 'two balls on court' effect. One's real, the other explodes when you smack it. And you thought tennis was a nice quiet game.

There are two problems, however. The first is the court perspective. This is good - everyone was very happy when it was invented, but you can have too much of it. There are three camera views but the fixed view is awkwardly low, making it difficult to judge the ball - especially if you're down the far end. The other views have a perspective exaggerated to such an extent that the far end of the court is less than half the width of the near end. Judging the ball's flight takes some getting used to, and it might be worth the effort if the game played well, but when you find your player failing to hit a shot when you tell it to, you start to feel that you couldn't care less. Especially when you could be playing Pete Sampras instead.