Beowulf

Learning nothing from the many, many terrible movie tie-ins of recent times, Beowulf is yet another abominable silver-screen translation, desperately trying to cash in on Joe Public's awareness of its bigger CGI brother. All the necessary ingredients of rip-off franchise crap are here, from real-life celebrity voices to generic cliches to terrible padding of the movie storyline to make two hours stretch across one terrible game.

Beowulf is an unashamed clone of PS2 slash-'em-up God of War, taking everything from its excessive gore, having a legendary sea creature as the first boss, and worryingly high testosterone levels. It honestly is little more than a smattering of mediocre presentation and repetitive, droolpool-deep combat The "Thanes" that follow you are nothing more than Overlord-style minions that can kill things and move things - but wait; there's more. For some reason, some bright spark decided there could be -nay, must be - some kind of rhythmaction mini-game in which you encourage your men. This makes them work faster, which is fine... but it takes the form of a three-minute song about whores, pillaging and war that pretty much defies description. We'll give it a go, though: utter shit.

The chunky, blurry graphics are at first bearable, but quickly become a terrible mess of greying textures and pug-dog-faced men, mixed with the occasional graphical flourish that seems utterly out of place. There's a game in here somewhere, but it's so lazily developed, so utterly devoid of creativity and verve, that it's not even worth giving half a chance.