Teen (13+)

Game Description: Try to save your village from a swarm of giant insects in Jade Cocoon: The Story of Tamamayu. Your goal is simple: you must travel through the forests surrounding your town and capture over 150 different monsters. When you capture a monster, you can either sell it for cash or train it to fight for you. If you want to combine the elements of particular monsters, breed them and create the ultimate weapon. Only you can save your village in Jade Cocoon: The Story of Tamamayu.

In terms of actual gameplay, JC isn't quite the sprawling trek that most RPGs represent. Instead, traveling is minimized through menus and plot devices that enable quick entry to particular areas. There is some exploration, but the main focus still resides on combating and capturing monsters (as Dale already mentioned, unoriginally dubbed Minions).

Game Description: GT Interactive's new game, Driver, puts gamers right into the middle of the action and squarely behind the wheel of the most wanted getaway car. Assuming the identity of an undercover cop named Tanner, players sell their services as drivers-for-hire to the highest bidder in order to infiltrate a powerful crime ring spanning four of the nation's largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. Driver delivers the clutch-your-seats, adrenaline-charged action of a Hollywood-style car chase, propelling players along a high-speed, all-out thrill ride. Driver's true-to-life modeling of automobile physics, ultra-realistic environments, cutting-edge graphics, and revolutionary replay mode allow users to experience an elaborate, realistic interactive driving experience.

Surprisingly, despite being in the capable hands of Reflections (the developers previously responsible for the Destruction Derby series), Driver comes up flatter than overnight Coca-Cola. Practically the only thing positive about Driver is the controls. To its credit, the cars handle great.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Language

With an unparalleled quality of graphics and realism, Driver was supposed to be a marquee release for the PlayStation and extend its life into the next millenium. Unfortunately, Driver fails miserably short of expectations. The graphics are pixelated and everything in the game is a low-resolution mess. In this regard it's a total disappointment from such an accomplished developer.

Game Description: Live the sage in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for your PC. You will participate in the dramatic events from the Star Wars Episode I story—and beyond. The action in The Phantom Menace will pick up where the movie begins—as two heroic Jedi Knights dock on the Trade Federation Battleship above the planet Naboo. The journey takes you to such locations as Naboo, Tatooine, and all the way to the Galactic capital world of Coruscant as you confront imposing threats to freedom in the midst of a galaxy in crisis.

I take exception to the comparison Chi made of The Phantom Menace to Super Mario 64 and the Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. Being a fan of both games, I can say that The Phantom Menace has little to show in terms of inspiration from either masterpiece. What I do see is that LucasArts wanted to capitalize on the trend of third-person perspective titles and the Star Wars prequel license at the same time.

My suspicions of confusion proved to be correct. Trying to figure out what the developers were going for is difficult and describing the results isn't easy either. The best I can say is imagine the jumping platform elements in Super Mario 64 mixed with the puzzles in Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time; all from a locked-down, overhead, three-quarters perspective.