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Ornithologists and campaigners on behalf of cruelty to geese beware! Nicky's magic goose is exploited mercilessly in Nicky 2, the follow up to Nicky Boom - and you have to encourage it. Your goose is pretty independent, like all good geese should be, and tends to wander off on its own. You have to find him and use him on your quest to rid the forest of monsters and all other sorts of evil and black magic - and also to get all your toys back that have been scattered around the forest.

Dodgy plots aside, Nicky 2's actually pretty good fun to play - the levels are absolutely massive - you can wander round for ages without even setting eyes on that goose of yours and when you do find him and clamber onto his back you could find him more of a hindrance than a help.

Conversely, there are places where you can't do without him - although it's more difficult to shoot vicious nasties and you can't explore the ground quite so well - have you ever tried sitting on a goose's back while going down a ladder or even going into a house?! When you are on him though you get to explore the attractive graduated sky and can get to places you wouldn't be able to reach on foot.

All you have to do is work your way through the six levels of the game over four different graphical worlds - the forest, the jungle, a volcano and a cloud-filled sky - collecting points and toys. At various places you also need to pick up keys so you can open doors, firecrackers so you can blow up rocks and wall up secret hiding places as well as ultra sound whistles to help kill all the nasties. This is all very well but you can't use half these objects when you're perched on the goose's back so there's lots of irritating getting on and off to do.

The ability to explore is one of the best aspects of the game, even considering the huge size of the levels there's more area to play in when you've blasted and bashed your way through the caves - they're made of really crap quality stone, you see - and when you've banged your head on the tops of the caves a few times and discovered new ladders which enable you to reach new parts of the level. The whole design is very attractive - the graphics are absolutely brilliant with huge monsters.

The massive spiders really are terror-inspiring and the weapon-wielding teddy bears and kangaroos give you a whole new perspective on the toys hiding in your cupboard. The only thing that really lets the gameplay down is the jerky scrolling - it's a tad on the difficult side to just jump from one ledge to another if the whole screen moves violently just as you're trying to carefully position the joystick.

All the levels present a challenge of their own - they're set over a series of different scenes and seem to get harder. You access the different levels by passwords that you're given once you've made it through the exit.

Nicky 2 presents you with a challenge - the massive horizontally and vertically-scrolling levels aren't easy to conquer, the nasties are very nasty indeed and it's incredible easy to die. The game looks good and plays pretty fast although some of the sound samples seem to have been ripped straight out of Lemmings. The only problem is that it doesn't really have anything to take it beyond standard platformers - there are platforms, there are nasties, it looks quite nice if you like that sort of thing and there's a goose in it that tends to get in the way. Originality and humour Nicky 2 lacks. It's good fun if you're obsessive about the genre or have never played one but it doesn't have that certain elusive something to make it stand out from the crowd.

1. Looks gorgeous, six huge levels will keep you going for a while.

1. Jerky scrolling, lacks humour.