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What did I do wrong this month? First Barbarian II, then Death Bringer, another round of meathead slashing antics set in a fantasy world with a stupid name. The Unique Selling Point of this one is the amazing parallax scrolling - each of the 36 lines of the background scrolls individually, making for the closest thing to a real-life effect yet seen. It's very impressive indeed, but it would seem it didn't have much memory space for gameplay, because Death Bringer is so thin in that department it makes Barbarian II look like, I don't know, Sim Earth.

In most of these horizontally-scrolling beat-'em-ups, gameplay is a simple matter of walking for a bit, coming up against a bad guy, fighting to the death with him, walking on a bit more, etc. Death Bringer boldly does away with the 'fighting' bit, allowing you to quite happily walk right through any of the enemies who block your way, meaning that you only have to kill the occasional one in order to keep your sword (which lusts for blood and will kill you if it isn't 'fed' regularly) happy. Now and again there are big end-of-level type baddies to kill or simplistic dodging sequences, but otherwise that's yer lot. Doesn't sound like a lot of entertainment for a full-price game, does it? And it isn't. It looks nice - and well worth experimenting further with - but let's have a game next time, eh, Empire?

Stunning parallax, nice touches of humour and some lovely in-game graphics generally, but absurdly shallow gameplay makes Death Bringer a waste of the fifteen minutes you'll spend actually playing it.