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Everyone bop on down to the Groovy Garden, where the vegetables are in charge and aren't taking any bull from any humans. Yes, those old nasties, The Vegan Rights Militia, are out to give any veggie-eating humans all the trouble they can. Using their specially advanced telekinetic powers, the VRM bunch of hand picked root crop can fly in the air and swoop down most perilously waving their poisonous roots at any who may pass.

All you want to do is plant and tender your fir trees, since you're such a pleasant chap; not pleasant enough to be above killing the odd few mutant veggies though, and to protect your beloved saplings this is just what you need to do. Armed only with a deadly Agent Orange dispenser, death needs to be dealt out to any of the potatoes, carrots and onions that fly down from the sky.

The pump can move up and down, and even left and right. The fire button shoots the defoliant up the screen, blamming any vegetables into nothingness. If the muties cross your pump gun, your pump power, shown on a bar graph, depreciates somewhat. If you have no pump power, then the game is over.

A fern is planted every time the fern counter reaches zero - mega fir trees these, since they grow to full height in a matter of nanoseconds. Once four of these ferns have got to adulthood, then it's off to the next garden and so on, ad infinitum.

When planting your seed in Groovy Garden there are numerous factors to consider, one of them is your faith in the great god Thrower. The faithometer constantly keeps track of this oh-so-important factor, and if it gets to zero then the veggies are deemed to have won. Faith is dependant on how many crazed veg men have kamikazed their way into the soil, the more mutant matter in the ground the lower your faith. Luckily, Old Joe the faith healing green finger merchant is at hand, in his shed at the side of the screen, Joe's getting on now, and a lot of his time is spent sleeping. But, every now and then he gets up. You can tell when he's up and about because he turns on his light. Only then can Joe get out and restore the faith in the land.

Groovy Garden is a joke, and not a very funny one at that. Even at two quid it's expensive for what it offers. It's appalling in every way, especially in play - it's the most unplayable game I've had the displeasure of meeting. Given a choice between playing this and listening to Barry Leitch's rendition of the Chicken Song - well, it's a tough choice, but I'd go for the Chicken Song every time.

Groovy Garden is totally abysmal. Who are Central Solutions and what have they got against the software buying public? It must be something truly terrible to try and get them to purchase this binary rubbish. All we could really do was laugh, but then we didn't have to shell £1.99 out for it. Don't be fooled by the cheap price and the slick packaging, because this isn't worth anyone's time at all. Ridiculously hard, totally unplayable and hideous, and that's being very kind indeed.

Presentation 29%
Crude instructions and demo mode, but little else to speak of.

Graphics 19%
'Composty' sprites and even worse backdrops.

Sound 8%
A couple of ineffective FX.

Hookability 10%
Far too unplayable and frustrating to be addictive.

Lastability 8%
There's hardly any.

Value For Money 15%
Two quid for a 'blank' tape is rather excessive.

Overall 9%
Ugh.