Asterix At The Olympic Games

THIS ISN'T a bad little game. If that sounds patronising, like I'm congratulating the developers for eating all their dindins, then I'm sorry. But this game is clearly pitched at a younger crowd, and it's not bad at all. The story's fun - someone's opened a door between all the different Asterix universes, resulting in photo-realistic characters mingling with cartoons and paper cut-outs. Visually, it's lovely, and even the script is often funny.

The core game isn't just Track & Field, either - there's an action adventure storyline threading the mini-games together. Which is lucky, because a good number of the minigames are moronic in their simplicity. The default controls are awful - tucking you away on the cursor keys and numeric pad, but here's perversity for you - even hunched over a corner of my keyboard, looking like a little old lady holding her handbag in front of her, I still enjoyed the PC controls more than the predictable shaky-swipes of the Wii version. Does this peg me as a fanboy? Not really, I'm just very lazy.

This is not a terribly thoughtful port (note to developers - the PC has a keyboard that you might say is custom bloody designed for typing in names) and there's not enough meat to the game to score it any higher. However, if you've got young kids who hate Romans, but aren't quite ready for gibs, Asterix will keep them off the meth for a while.