What is it about cartoon-based video games? Just because they look like a throwaway colouring book, doesn't mean they have to play in such a pulpy, disposable manner.

Cel Damage shares a worrying amount in common with Mad Dash Racing besides the wonderful, glossy visuals: it's just too fast-paced and random for its own good.

On-screen chaos and carnage is all well and good, but it shouldn't come at the expense of control, precision and enjoyment.

This game plays way too quickly, and handles so loosely that there's no finesse or feeling of reward for your efforts.

When you win one of the simple checkpoint rallies (to and fro between two markers) it's through luck rather than your own skill.

When you lose, you just feel cheated, and no amount of skyward fist-shaking will ever make things better.

Your character, selected from a range of colourful goons (based on the Nickelodeon cartoon of the same name), handles like a nervy tadpole, darting left and right with the slightest pressure on the analogue stick. Before you know it, you've been lapped by the other blokes, splattered with a giant hammer and have swiftly lost any chance of playing anything but patchy catch-up for the rest of the round.

Maybe it's more suited to the reactions of a five-year-old coffee addict, dosed up to the eyeballs on a powerful E-number cocktail of Skittles and Sunny D. We're not being old farts - Cel Damage is too out-of-control for its own good.

If you spend your afternoons catching flies with chopsticks, or dodging hailstones for a laugh, you'll have the ninja response times to decipher the on-screen wreckage. Otherwise, it's a fairly futile and unrewarding experience.

As with Mad Dash, this could have been so much more: It's great to look at, with its slick, colourful visuals and quality animation. Visible effort has gone into making a beautiful, cel-shaded cartoon universe.

But with no room for strategy or even a tiny amount of skill, though, your controller will soon begin to get cold.

Power
It runs smoothly and impressively, regardless of the (always large) amount of on-screen action.

Style
Up there on the podium with Jet Set Radio Future. Clean and crisp with vivid colours.

Immersion
You'll want to try it, but it's just too difficult to ever really enjoy.

Lifespan
Twelve arenas and three modes of play. It's not much, but you have got the multiplayer option.

Summary
A dreamy looking game, but hectic gameplay and over-responsive controls make for a frustrating experience.

1. Excellent graphics
2. Entertaining (comedy violence with lots of ACME-style power-ups

1. Too twitchy to be playable
2. Frustratingly random handling