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Have you seen the Chewits ad? You know, the one with an angry green monster who's running amok in a cardboard version of London? Just when he's about to sink his fangs into a famous landmark, he suddenly spies a Chewit, pops it into his cavernous cake-hole and finds his ravenous appetite suddenly satieted. Well, Beam Software, in conjunction with Gremlin Graphics, has decided to base a game around this whacky ad, and have managed to persuade Chewits to endorse it.

Rather than tackle the subject head-on and cast the player as a Chewit, those devious Beam people have decided on an alternative approach and have put the player firmly into the size 237 boots of the Godzilla-like monster!

The mission of mayhem begins at the sea shore. Soldiers immediately start walking from both sides of the screen, and shoot at the monster, knocking a chunk off his energy bar with every hit. However, these weak and puny humans are no match for the monster, who can leap on them, splattering them into horrible smears on the road. If he's feeling peckish, he can bend down, pick them up and eat them. Yum! And this frolicsome exercise adds a bit of energy to the bar! Innocent bystanders in the form of briefcase-carrying city nerds and pram-pushing women also run around in terror, and are similarly blatted or noshed.

Soon reinforcements arrive, with tanks, jeeps and helicopters firing missiles and ruining the monster's fun - but he leaps and snaps at the choppers with this great choppers, and jumps on the vehicles in a display of wanton destruction. The monster can also spit fire.

Buildings are encountered frequently, and can be bashed with the monster's tail, or climbed and thumped, Rampage-style. If he's feeling particularly tough he can climb to the rooftops of a particularly high building and roar derision at the piffling humans below.

With the end of the first level is reached, the action switches to Nintendo village (ahem, you're going to change that aren't you Gremlin?), which offers more of the same gratutious violence, only with more things to play with. The third level, the army base, has even more soldiers and vehicles. However, at the end is a big brown monster who fights with fireballs, feet and claws.

As you might have already gathered, Muncher is a game with a sense of humour. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, and many a smile was in evidence as I bashed, smashed and chomped my way through the enemy forces. If you are a high-score fiend, the game throws down quite a challenge, and should keep large-scale vandals happy for some time.

The graphics and sound are both fine, and even though the novelty will eventually wear off, there's plenty of fun in store.