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Viz - the magazine that's not as funny as it used to be! Viz - you'll never read a bigger pile of s***e! Viz - the computer game? Oh dear.

Yes, here we are in Vizland and it's a one-way ticket to Amusement City (except there's no transport, so to speak). It's the game of the comic of the double entendre and our sides are waiting to be split. So, let's load it up and see what's going on...

It's the day of the grand Fulchester fun run and there are three athletes in the race. In lane one, we have Johnny Fartparts, a little lad with a big commotion in his trousers. Lane two has Buster Gonad with his unfeasibly large testicles, and in lane three is none other than Biffa Bacon, a charming boy with a habit of unprovoked violent. Other Viz stars make an appearance during the game and Roger Mellie commentates.

There are five horizontally scrolling levels to race through. The first is the park where trees, logs and flying bricks have to be dodged. To make things worse, the Parkie will bash you with his stick if you walk on the grass and Bertie Blunt's (his parrot's a nasty piece of work) feathered friend drops lethal messages from the sky. To complete a level, you have to finish the race in first place - it's easier said than done.

To help you, each character can collect tokens to use along the way. Each token gives one unit of superpower plus a less impressive special power. There are two types of bonus game per character for collecting the tokens, all packed with amusing animation.

If it weren't for the antics of the Viz characters this game would be a complete flop. The racing is extremely annoying - you fall over for the slightest reason and spend precious seconds picking yourself up again. It's not as if the collision detection is accurate. There are certain areas of the level into which you cannot go, even though they may be open spaces! You soon learn by your mistakes, though.

No matter how hard I tried, there was no way I could get past the first level. I could be running as fast as possible from start to finish - when another character would just shoot past and win the race! The utterings of Roger Mellie soon begin to get on your nerves, too, as he uses the same patter for each race.

Viz: The Computer Game is a big let-down. The licence could have been used to create an excellent game rather than one like this.

Graphically, Viz is pretty good, with most of the comic book characters at least recognisable. Apart from the ultimately monotonous swearing, the thing that put me off the game was the computer-controlled opponents. However fast you run (even with your superpower), they're always ahead of you. And if you ever catch up with them and try to overtake, the buggers shove you into the nearest obstacle. It's all very frustrating and removes nearly all the entertainment value from the game.

Overall 43%
The packaging says 'You'll never play a bigger load of crap!' Correct.