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I know it's a long time now, but talk about a cocked-up Christmas! There were bucket-loads of games that were supposed to come out last December that never saw the light of day.

It could have been some accident of course - they could have dropped off the back of Santa's sleigh over Norway or something - but here in the YS shed Intelligence Unit we ten to back the "programmers getting it a bit wrong and holding everything up" scenario.

Or at least we would in the case of just about every game except Dick Tracy, because this is the kind of paltry effort that makes you wonder why they ever bothered to put finger to key in the first place.

What a blimming wasted opportunity! I though we were really going to be in for something special here. The brilliantly simple colour scheme of the movie would have gone down a treat on the Spec, and a whole host of brilliant cartoon characters should have made for a really fun and bouncy punch-'n'-shoot-'em-up. But no dice. So far as I can see, the programmers would have been more inspired by a damp sponge.

First, the gameplay - it's just doesn't grip you. You start off looking for your kidnapped chick armed only with your fists, but if you bash enough baddies up you get to pick up a revolver (and later a machine gun). Kill one bully, and another will immediately spring out of the pavement to take its place - they're more boringly punctual than Swiss trains, these blokes. You've got an 8-way firing 'technique' so you can pop the baddies who are firing at you from windows and, er, that's as far as I got before I started worrying about my brain going comatose. In fact, if you time it right you can walk through about 10 screens at one go without shooting or dying once. (So it's a bit of a shame the scenery's totally crap too.)

Which brings us to the graphics. And there goes all hope of a natty little colour scheme. Quite a few of the screens are in black and white, and all they are are primitive street scenes, the insides of warehouses, things like that. They're dull as crap, and they're badly done. And as for the movement of the actual characters, well, they make the Woodentops look like ballet dancers.

There isn't any sound.

And it multiloads in in the middle of levels.

Caramba!

Hem hem. Now, I know crap licences are nothing new, but when you see something like this you get this sort of sicko feeling in your stomach because you know someone somewhere is going to buy this on the strength of its name and the box and what have you. And it isn't even worth £2.99. (Honestly.)

I'm angry because Dick Tracy was an innovative movie with such a lot to offer the computer game, and I hate seeing people do a really, really shoddy job on something. The Speccy's been seing some great games recently and this just brings everything down a notch or two. You're not a stupid bunch of prats, are you? You know what a good game looks like, don't you? Nuff said. Avoid.

Very bad punch-'n'-shoot-'em-up - dreadful waste of a good licence. (Sob!)