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With a Christmassy game for Christmassy time, this review must be written in Christmassy rhyme!

Has recently been a lot in the news.
It's a crazy old tale full of rhymes that are barmy,
Just like this game that's been made by Konami.

In this Pac-Man style game you get to play The Grinch,
Or his faithful old dog, and the ideas to pinch.

All the Whos' Christmas pressies,
spread round in a maze,
It's a pretty cool part of the Christmas Grinch craze.

Every Who down in Whoville is still here, of course,
And your job is to steal stuff without being caught.
If the Whos catch you when you've blown your own cover,
Your heart will grow large and the game will be over.

You can snipe around levels and jump, run and crawl
But just shooting the Whos is the most fun of all.
With bright Christmassy graphics and perky game tunes,
The Grinch would be fun for Christmas afternoon.

Don't think that it's just made for kids though, you see,
The levels get difficult, believe you me.
With hundreds of Whos and their mischievious dogs,
Just waiting to catch you and kill you with hugs.

With levels all filled with fun Christmassy show
Such as parcels and candy canes, stockings and snow,
With Christmas trees, lots of nice stuff for the course,
It's a shame to get Grincy and point out the flaws.

But you'll find when you play the game late in December,
The passwords are few, and they're hard to remember.
Alas, there's no options (game type or sound),
No link options, nothing! Just round after round...

...of gift-grabbing Grinchness,
which though it's a laugh,
won't keep you amused for a year and a half.
You can only choose from some twenty-four missions,
but still, there's some small mini-games in addition.

In fact, it's a Christmas game, nowt more, nowt less,
And it's fun just to play it while sat in the mess
of Chrimbo afternoon, in amidst Christmas wrapping
while the old folks sit back, full of turkey, and napping.

When the spirit of Christmas descends to this land,
and you look at this Game Boy game there in your hand,
you'll have fun in the true Christian sense, running around
stealing small children's toys and then pushing them down.

Right, we reckon that's enough verse. The lines were beginning to sound pretty rubbish. Not content with stealing all the Who's Christmases back in 1957, The Grinch (possibly the most famous US Christmas story) is back with a vengeance, with the huge Jim Carey movie packing theatres stateside. It's going to be just as big a success here too!

The folks behind the movie had a tricky job creating the surreal fantasy world of Dr Seuss. To date, the most popular version of The Grinch was a 1966 TV cartoon narrated by Boris Karloff.

Still, with the writers of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? given the task of stretching the story out by 300%, and director Ron Howard at the helm, the big screen version of America's favourite Christmas story was never going to be a flop.

Especially when you consider that The Grinch himself is played by funnyman Jim Carey under an avalanche of make-up (the actor endured hours of painstaking make-up each day in order to transform himself into the curmudgeonly Grinch. His full body green costume was made up of latex, plastic and Yak hair).

It's not long now until you can find out for yourself how the movie adaptation works... it opens in the UK on 1 December.

I can see me having loads of fun on Christmas day with this great game. There's nothing complicated or tricky about how to play - it's basically Pac-Man, with The Grinch being the main character instead of a yellow ball thingy, and a bunch of new ideas like multiple screens and mini-games, but it's still really addictive and thoroughly recommended.

Just don't take it with you to the cinema when you go to see the movie!

Graphics 80%
Lots of bright colours.

Sound 80%
Cool Christmassy tunes!

Playability 60%
It's a very hard game...

Lastability 80%
...but top fun all the same!

Overall 90%
For Xmassy fun, The Grinch is the one!