Darkened Skye

It's Not easy to get excited about a game created as a sort of promotion for Skittles (owned by Mars), especially when you realise it was released in the States over a year and a half ago. For its UK outing, the sinister sweet endorsement is reduced to a small gameplay element (you collect Skittles to power spells), leaving us with an ugly, dated and rather flat action/adventure.

It's funny that Skittles should also have sponsored the greatest TV show on Earth: they produced those annoying ads for the Sky showings of the mighty Buffy. Funny because the main character here is supposed to be a feisty, kick-arse girl and there are some pathetic attempts at knowing, self-referential humour (for example, "We can't do this puzzle till later. I know because I read the script. I mean, I had a sacred vision"). At the same time it tries to sell a story about magic coming from rainbows and wizards actually called Merlin.

But we're used to cliched fantasy settings and witless jokes. What really grates is the annoying gameplay - which has you jumping a lot and swinging a stick a lot - and a quirky 3D engine with a fish-lens feel that isn't quite disorienting enough to make you forget the cardboard plainness of the graphics. There are also some insultingly simple puzzles, and yet I still found myself lost and wishing it was all over. Twenty quid can buy you a lot of Mars bars...