Back To Gaya

You Don't Understand what I went through playing this game for yog. My stomach is strong; I love zombie films. I stare at roadkill. But I have a gut-wrenching weak spot; European children's animation. The dubbed voices. The brainless, naive dialogue: "Let's be a team and do this for Grandpa!" All scrawked in a queasy mismatched lip-sync. It makes me wimper like a child. Back To Gaya is based on the eponymous European film. It was retitled Boo, Zino And The Snurks in Britain as soon as someone said the original name out loud. It's that very European kind of animation, but 3D. It features Zino, the sporty Gayan hero, and his nerdish best friend inventor, Boo. After playing for five seconds, you'll realise why David Beckham is rarely seen out and about with Rick Moranis.

It's just no fun for anyone. Your training mission - look for parts of your hot rod which are strewn around your back yard. Then you play a racing game with controls where anything more than a butterfly-tickling application of the steering wheel crashes your car. Then something bad happens, you're shrunk and it's a prolonged series of very simple searching puzzles, made more difficult by the occasional smallness of the objects. Some running, some looking around, lots of keys to look for, it's like you've played it already.

OK. It's a game for children, and I can imagine children getting pleasure out of it. They might not baulk at the dialogue or characters. Some very young children might even translate the game's progress into a form of thrilling success. They're stupid like that, kids.