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Simon hands over his CF badge, and reviews this one as an independent citizen. That's right - it's time to run around and shoot people. Run around. Jump over things. Shoot people. Jump over things. Shoot people. Run around. At least it's in keeping with the film, them...

What we've got here, to be brutally honest, is a platform game. There are various levels relating to the different parts of the film, but each part of the film must have been set on a different set of platforms and involved lots of people running and jumping around whilst shooting people.

Anyway, you get to choose between playing Danny and Mel (I really can't remember what their character's names were), running around, jumping over things, mouthing off and shooting people...

So let's run around a bit, and see what happens. Reading the original review (Clur, the nice one, give it 79%), I can't help feeling pipped to the post. Normally, you see, you could sit and play a game and come up with just as many new things to say about it; I couldn't this time. It's not like I didn't have a copy or anything, just that the first paragraph pretty well sums the whole thing up in one - there's nothing else really to say. I'll try, though.

As platformers go, this one has good and bad points. Firstly, the ability to choose characters does add a little more depth to the whole affair (damn - she did that one), but the collision detection really is an overture of bad (she covered that too, though). Shoot people (I can't go wrong really, can I?).

Waauugh! It's a multi-load! What's worse, it's a multi-load from hell... Ice ages pass... Plateaus of ice rise and fall back into the earth... Don't these dots convey passages of time well?... When you say 'multi-load', you see, you normally mean "there'll be a short pause before you can carry on playing". What the word means in this sense is "come back in a week and we might have something for you". Get the message yet? Sloooow.

Have you ever noticed how these licence game never give a very accurate picture of the film characters? This is apparently all to do with licensing laws - if you look at Back To The Future (other formats only, sadly), you'll notice (or rather utterly fail to notice) Michael J. Fox. Why? Well, he's not in it - his face is almost totally covered - why?

Look, at the end of the day, this is just a platform game, and not a very original one at that. As an example of the genre, it's quite impressive (even though it's let down completely by the abysmal sprite handling), but if you own another platform game, there isn't much to keep you playing this one.

A certain amount of care obviously went into the design of this game, but not enough went into the conversion by a long way. If there was just a little bit to keep anyone in the least bit interested, the game would have been okay, but as it stands it's just a load of tedious tat.

It does strike you that there were quite a few bits of the film that would have broken the non-stop platforming 'fun' up a little. One of these would have to be the toilet scene. For all those who haven't seen the film, this bit involves a bomb wired up to the underside of the toilet seat that Danny Glover's sitting on. In the film, Mel Gibson yanks him off and they dive into the bath for cover whilst the bomb explodes and the room gets redecorated. Why can't we try this kind of move?

Joking apart, it really is about time major software houses realised that there's more to a film licence than people running and jumping around, shooting each other - a little originality or even thought would have done wonders for this title, as it would have turned it from a boring samey platformer into a boring samey platformer with the occasional fun different bit.

Practise waiting around a lot. Falling that, learn to mould artichokes out of lemon rind and then sell them at the local craft fair to unsuspecting Americans who are in the country for some Xmas shopping.

1. Shoot things.
2. Run around.
3. Ferret.
4. Winge.
5. Gurgle.