The future really is a glum old place, isn't it? In a hundred years' time, according too Ubisoft's crystal ball, we'll all have metamorphosed into riotous death junkies, stoned out of our boxes watching "sportsmen" smash the gooey grey matter out of each other. Eeuurgh! Join the queue for that NHS vasectomy! Or, while you're waiting, get in training with Skate Wars, a blend of "ice soccer" sim and beat-'em-up.

The action's played out on a hybrid ice hockey pitch, the aim being to wallop the ball into your opponents' net as many times as possible.

Oh, and wallop yourself into the opponents as well of course, in order to (a) regain possession of the ball or (b) send them skating off into some horrible pointy death obstacle-type thingy.

On Level One these consist of a couple of spiky metal cactus wossnames and electrical disks which fry you up, but as you progress through Beginner to Challenge levels so the perils of the pitch mount up. Sadists will love this one. There are huge holes, big bubbles which suck you up and spin your blood and bones around, spooky bouncing eyeballs and, ooh gosh, loads more.

I think I'm going to chuck...

There's even some rather nifty moguls to dodge and skid over. Add all that to the variety of fighting moves (though there are only a few of those), and you've got a slice-'n-dice playground to satisfy the most ferocious of tomorrow's terrace barbarians.

Each team comprises four players. You take control of either a permanent goalie or three strikers, only one of whom is allowed on the pitch at any given time (when the first one dies the second takes his place, and so on).

You win a match by either the number of goals scored or opponents killed - or in two-player mode by being the last survivor on the pitch.

The design's pretty simple, and a little blurry at the edges. The one nice touch - the damp, decayed walls - are a blatant rip-off of the graphic style of Enki Bilal, the brilliant French comics artist. The jingle's suitably irritating and the sound effects "swish" along. So nothing special whatsoever.

Simple ideas are often the best - but not this time. Skate Wars is pitched at just about the right level of difficulty, with smooth-ish horizontal scrolling and nice skating effects, but it's in urgent need of some spicing it up. A post-nuclear Ice Age backdrop of bloody huge landscapes perhaps? Decayed oil platforms and mutant seals popping out of holes? Something, anything, to build on what's already there. Skate Wars might be fun for a while, but it won't have you glugging the Gold Blend.