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Me, I'm tired of people writing off French programmers as "weird". Of course they are - and since when was that such a bad thing in an industry fuelled on creative inspiration? We're just jealous, and Ubisoft's Ranx, on paper at least, has all the potential to rattle our cage even more.

It's based on an Italian comic strip called RenXerox, which maintains the popular conceit of a future-world riddled with drug abuse, overpopulation and murder, but paints it in repellently visceral colours. Red flesh, dead flesh - this stuff makes you puke.

The game's a beat-'em-up arcade adventure. You play Ranx, a pug-ugly android with a penchant for blue lipstick. The world's population is in the heroes of Fuschia, a disease which, rather unsurprisingly, splashes its victims with purple spots, so it's up to you to fly from Rome to New York to deliver the vaccine (and then back again to Italy to reclaim your big-boobied babe, Lubna).

Off you trot, striking up conversations with hotel porters and prostitutes and clobbering any baddies who block your way. All the jumping and ducking and kicking tends to sap your energy, so by all means batter away at the nearest lamp-post or fuse box for some hearty replenishment. (Kids - don't try this at home without adult supervision!) Fights also damage your robot circuitry so it's wise to kick away at boxes to uncover replacement body bits - plus grenades, shurikens etc etc.

The graphics are beautifully detailed - their crispness and colour make you want to lick the screen. And the characters actually jerk back and throw out their arms when they get hit and bleed when they die, which is a bit "progressive". The sound effects complement the visuals perfectly - dogs yap, chainsaws roar and people go "Ooarrrgh!!" rather a lot.

But it's not all "there". As an adventure Ranx fails to conjure up a credible environment to play in, and for a beat-'em-up the joystick controls are clumsy and hard to get to grips with.

For most people, the game's greatest appeal will be its vulgarity and violence - dogs shitting in the street, gay leathered bikers, expletives littering your conversation. Which is all very well, but since it's presented in such a comparatively cute and inoffensive way I wonder why they bothered.

Ranx should have been the first serious sex-and-violence game on the ST (and nasty with it). When will someone challenge the conventional wisdom that games off-handedly labelled "immature" aren't worth the bother of approaching with any kind of adult mentality or innovation?

As it is, it's reasonable fun, but a terrible waste of an opportunity. I dunno - the French, eh? Weird.