Your eyes will sting after playing this game. Your brain will throb, and your focus will be smacked about too. It's an old-skool platformer dipped in a hallucinogen and feels at every turn as though men in white coats are out hunting it with butterfly nets.

Based on the forthcoming Mike Myers flick of the same name (which bombed on release in the US incidentally), you play Cat, the mischievous feline who gatecrashes a home on a rainy day in suburbia and brings bedlam with him. Nosy neighbour Alec Baldwin wants to put an end to the 'fun' and tries to steal the Cat's magic. A chase ensues, through various areas of the house, as Cat tries to track down Alec Baldwin and get his magic back. The boiler room is the fire level, the fridge is the ice level, the stereo is the musical level, and so on. It's like James Pond meets Pandemonium, two very old but quite well-respected titles for their time.

Some thought has been put into Cat In The Hat - it isn't just a straight film licence and cash - in, which, on first impressions, is what it looks like. With the use of your umbrella you trap enemies in bubbles, feed the bubbles into machines and convert them into super-bubbles capable of smashing metal barricades. It takes a bit of thinking to convert bubbles into super-bubbles, and involves a lot of pre-planning, backtracking, and thinking two steps ahead of yourself all the time. Some machines are blocked while others are out of reach, and it's up to you to traverse certain areas in order to unlock vital parts of a level.

Despite the inventive level design, the game is unintentionally sinister. Both Mike Myers and Alec Baldwin have been face-mapped, and look disjointed and broken when they walk. Baldwin scuttles about, his head lolling in every direction with a fixed expression plastered across his face. It's terrifying. You might just as well throw in the child-catcher and be done with it.

Level design isn't the only old-skool thing about Cat In The Hat, either. Graphically this is utterly last gen, an old moggy with no place on the Xbox. The controls are laboured, and let's face it, it's still a side-scrolling platformer. Some thought has been applied to the gaming process, but at its roots this game is so yesterday we're surprised it doesn't come on a cassette.

1. Very colourful
2. Faithful to the film
3. Mildly inventive

1. Oddly disturbing
2. It might induce a headache
3. Alec Baldwin looks like a freak

Power
The Xbox isn't even stretched, although the game makes the most of ts colour palette.

Style
It's madness. Captures Dr Seuss in all his lunacy. And it will hurt your eyes.

Immersion
Don't spend too long with it or you'll end up seeing spirals everywhere you look

Lifespan
Short. You could zoom from A to B in a day without any problem. And that's it.

Summary
A bizarre, creepy, old-skool platformer. Buy this and you have serious therapy issues that need addressing.