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You know, a funny thing happens to me when I play a game that has no music and only spot effects for sound. I start to hum. And, what's more, I've realised that the tune I start to hum is often linked in some way to the game itself. Whilst I was suffering Code Zero, I was humming Empty Room by Sanna Nielsen...

The rather promising backstory to Code Zero is that you play the "fixer" of an all-powerful conglomerate. You're the one they call when something goes wrong, and something has gone very wrong at the company's main nuclear power plant. In fact, things have gone so wrong that all those who were working in it have been killed or hospitalised, and the power plant is in danger of imploding. Your mission is "Code Zero", meaning jet in, shut the plant down and escape.

Alas, traversing empty room after empty room does not a great game make. The barren backdrops, coupled with the fact that your hired mercenary plods around with seemingly little enthusiasm for the task at hand, hardly insprires much confidence. The game itself also seems devoid of the mission spoken of in the inlay - instead you seem to have to hunt out key-cards and then use these to open doors. An elevator connects four floors of pain. Your mission actually seems to consist of relentlessly trudging up and down empty corridors, firstly collecting a key-card, and then tediously trying every door you've seen on your travels in the vague hope that it will open it.

There are some roaming nasties in some locations (A grand total of one per room!) but their lumbering attack patterns are easily avoided by climbing out of their reach on the far-too-conveniently-placed ladders. Not only can you not tell which key opens which door, you can't jump either, meaning even skirting around those nasties takes much longer than feels comfortable. The acid rain and electrical showers that must be ducked under are also very easy to avoid because you just need to wait for the opportune time to walk past them.

Though few and far between, there are one or two nice touches - the skyscrapers peeping through the windows you walk past, for example, and the climbing animation as you hoist yourself around on the ladders. But they can't even begin to raise this one out of the category of almost interminably dull.

Does it get better as you get further in? Well, I have to be honest and say possibly. Personally, I was too bored to even try and found myself just walking into the nasties in the vain hope of injecting a little excitement into this interminable snoozefest. It didn't, but at least my suicide put me quickly out of my misery.

In totality, a "game" that doesn't work on any level, devoid of imagination with the only incentive to progress being to collect more key-cards and open more doors. Whoopee. With that being the case, why Cronosoft felt Code Zero to be worthy of a physical release is just beyond me. Like Sanna, I must move on...