Ah, if music be the food of love, we're a two-ton hickey-covered heifer with every STD under the sun and a fridge full of pies. We're in love, and we're stuffed.

MTV Music Generator 3 is, even for tone-deaf lumps like us, a genie's bottle of music. You near as damn it just have to rub the joypad and you're producing sounds you can tap your feet to. If you're unfamiliar with music, the premise is easy. Don't be put off by the apparently bewildering menu systems - in its most simple terms, MG3 is like a jigsaw of samples that can be assembled in just about any pattern you like. You string them together and create tunes - easy.

The fact that it still remains easy after its various incarnations and added extras throughout the years is testament to the easily navigable menu systems. It's pretty much foolproof. Unfortunately, that doesn't extend to the actual ability to make music. Such is the wealth of samples, riffs, drums, vocals and baselines on offer, you'll be making musical mudpies long before you get together anything worthy of feeding through your speakers.

That isn't a criticism, though. When there are so many samples, a little experimentation is forgivable, even if you do end up making something that sounds like a fart resonating through a roadcone. Built-in tracks also allow you to rip samples, then add them directly to your own song. Snoop Dogg, Sean Paul, Outkast, The Ones and Carl Cox are just a handful of artists to have lent a track ready for enthusiastic shredding and mutilating. Actually trimming down the sample is too fiddly though, with a clean loop of sound being the exception to the rule - for the majority of the time you're left with snippets of overspill and extra fragments of a sample that sound stuttered and wonky when looped. A bit of practice and you'll be okay, but a microsecond of extra sound in a sample can ruin a loop.

There's no limit to the number of samples you can rip either. Simply burn a CD or song of your choice to the Xbox hard drive, then access it in-game, and go hell for leather. By the time we were finished with Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive it sounded as though she was undergoing a tracheotomy operation. In fact, there are so many options that MG3

Basically, if you want to do it, MTV Music Generator 3 is the genie in a bottle that lets you do it. We wouldn't be surprised to see future DJs hailing this software as their entry point into the big time. It's endlessly inventive, and an essential bit of kit for anyone with aspirations of headlining at Ministry.

1. Endlessly appealing
2. Simple menus
3. Tons of samples

1. Tricky to take samples
2. No Live support
3. Can take ages to create a good tune!

Power
The hard drive offers limitless possibilities. It sucks up the power then spits it out in a melody.

Style
The menu system is designed within an inch of its life; samples are seriously contemporary.

Immersion
You'll play it for hours without realising and walk away with three minutes of musical perfection.

Lifespan
You can upload your own samples. As long as there's music, this will require playing.

Summary
Very playable and technically very friendly. You'll wonder where the hours went once you've compiled your tracks.