Ski Racing 2005: Featuring Hermann Maier

It's Not often that a skiing game comes in for review and so, as a journo, I get to slide out the old cliched lines about the graphics being 'snow good' and the skiers moving like they're 'piste'. Sadly, this isn't the case in Ski Racing 2005 because the graphics are fairly decent: mountains look suitably mountainous, the skiers slip across snow convincingly enough and the whole thing zips along with a sense of speed you could say was fairly credible.

However, the problem with Ski Racing is obvious in the title: it's about racing on skis, against the clock, down a hill, so variety is not the game's strong point.

Yes, the game features such locales as Vai D'lsere and Beaver Creek (stop sniggering), as well as all the big names from the sport. But when it comes down to it, a mountain is a mountain and one white powdery incline is much the same as any other, save for the positioning of various flags through which you must navigate.

If you own a chalet in Innsbruck cover your ears now, but dare I say that events such as Slalom, Super-G and Downhill all seem the same. What makes matters worse is that you only have to touch a flag to be disqualified, which is harsh. Some sort of career mode would have been welcome too, as would some decent multiplayer functionality, but for a simple game where the aim is to slide down a mountain in the fastest possible time, Ski Racing 2005 does the job. Stick in a snowboard and some Prodigy tunes and it would have been a whole lot better though.