Gene Troopers has a distinctly Eastern European feel about it. We can't quite put our finger on the problem, but for your standard first-person monsters-in-space shooter, there's something decidedly wonky. Maybe it's the atrocious voice-acting (aliens sound like Papa Lazarou gargling), or the strangely designed characters and levels, but there's something just beyond our plane of sight that makes the whole experience of playing Gene Troopers a little uncomfortable. Ah yes, that's it - it's a bit crap.

There are some valiant attempts being made though, namely with your character slowly evolving over the course of the game to learn skills such as night vision, regeneration, and the 'Death Grasp', but still the game doesn't feel right. NPCs move strangely, and they're stupid too, often babbling away to themselves in a corner or holding up a mission by reeling off reams of strange space-language.

Level design is weak and frustrating to navigate (the whole of the first level must be played in night vision, which is really annoying). Weapons are weightless and bizarrely ineffective, and there's a synthy, screeching sci-fi soundtrack to accompany everything - you know, just in case you forget where you are (in space).

Gene Troopers isn't particularly bad, it's just got an oddly nightmarish blandness to it, and voice actors who seem to have learned English by watching re-runs of Blake's 7. When you find comfort in such bog-standard game traits such as the handy Grip Gloves, which can haul crates into the air (chalk up a tick for the physics at least), it shows how alien the rest of Gene Troopers actually is. The gaming equivalent of weird 1950s Polish cartoons. And we all know how much fun they are.

A baffling, awkward shooter that's strangely disengaging to play and painful to look at. Neither memorable nor fun.