Wh@t To Play

METAL GEAR SOLID (Konami, for PlayStation, up to $50) Name an action movie cliche and you'll find it in this spy thriller. Military cover-ups, egomaniacal villains, purty explosions: You'll see 'em all as you guide Solid Snake, a brooding government operative, across sweeping 3-D vistas to destroy Metal Gear, an experimental nuclear weapon. This stuff may be kind of cheesy in a Jerry Bruckheimer flick, but it fits in brilliantly with this game, mostly because you're the hero who must save the world and the girl. So this is what it feels like to be Will Smith. A

WIPEOUT 64/F-ZERO X (Midway/Nintendo both for Nintendo 64, both $59.95) Futuristic hovercraft races on serpentine tracks are -- yawn -- par for the course with these two similar games. While F-Zero gives you the chance to bump force fields with a greater number of opponents (30 can be on screen at once: a glimpse of rush hour in the year 2020, maybe?), give Wipeout the edge for adding competition-crippling weaponry such as heat-seeking missiles. After playing either, you'll feel like taking a serene break -- say, a Sunday drive on the autobahn. F-Zero: B- Wipeout: B

GRIM FANDANGO (LucasArts, for PC, $39.95) First, Brad Pitt puts a pretty face on Death in Meet Joe Black. Now this tongue-in-cheek film noir animated adventure paints the land of the dead in a funky blend of Aztec architecture and art deco. You're Manny, a zoot-suited skeleton whose job as Dept. of Death travel agent is to guide new arrivals to their final resting place -- until you unearth a scheme hatched by crime boss Hector LeMans. Fandango suffers from the obligatory PC puzzles (talk to X, find Y, open Z) but it's so clever and bizarre, you'll still think it's to die for. B+

CRASH BANDICOOT: WARPED (Sony, for PlayStation, up to $49.95) PlayStation's orange-furred ambassador returns for a third tour of duty, this time visiting medieval Europe, ancient Egypt, and Atlantis. Your goal remains the same: to thwart Dr. Cortex by stomping on his animal lackeys and collecting gems and crystals. As always, it's plenty of fun, but despite new ways to explore the terrain (Crash rides a mini-sub! Now he's in a biplane!), there aren't enough innovations in this dependable, not-warped-enough Crash cow. B