SpyToy review

Vwoooosh! SpyToy is, like, the future. It's all blue and clinical-looking, and you wave your arms about in a way that feels like it might actually be the future of, um, menu screens. You know, like Tom Cruise from Minority Report. Or that lady from the Dixons ad.

SpyToy's a collection of games that are vaguely like things a space-policeman might do - matching identikits, enhancing bits of map to track down crims, um, twirling cubes around to break codes, that sort of thing.

Trouble is, as with many EyeToy games, the games seem like they've been designed around the limitations of the technology, rather than the other way round. Control still isn't quite precise enough for anything really fiddly, so there's no scope for really involving hands-free puzzling.

As for the 'spying' applications, they're simply updated versions of the security camera already seen in EyeToy Play 2.

Sure, there's fun to be had leaving rude 'alarm' messages or taking secret photos of what people get up to in your room (the camera's motion-activated and takes up to 250 snaps), but the novelty wears off fast.

Let's face it - we all liked watching Tom pootle about with video screens, but it wasn't the only thing he did in Minority Report. Now, if we could have a baseball-style mini-game involving sick-sticks...

SpyToy is out for PS2 now