Gift

Two classic gaming rules of relevance to take note of here: all French games are weird; and cute platform games on the PC are never more than slightly above average. Well, Gift sticks to the first one without a shadow of a doubt. From the bizarre enemies (a T-shirt-wearing dog with a giant black eye for a head?), to your main task of collecting seven dwarves for a beautiful princess, it positively reeks of garlic and armpit hair.

As for the second rule, yes, it complies with that too, rather too closely it must be said. Though in a flurry of ingenuity, the developers have come up with some original puzzles that make use of light and shadows - certain enemies can only be killed by shrouding them in darkness, for instance -paced thoughtfully throughout and they sit well among the de rigueur floating platforms and pickups. The camera does its job adequately and it controls fine enough. However, the attack move is absolutely atrocious with your weapon feeling ineffectively clumsy most of the time.

So it plays competently enough and it does bring something slightly fresh to the genre, but still, even though it's technically sound, like every single PC game of this kind before it, it just isn't on a par with the console specific pleasures of Mario 64 and its esteemed counterparts. Besides, the main character just isn't endearing enough to enjoy his company completely, and it doesn't have the same kind of freedom or enduring wonder of exploration as the aforementioned. And as for the so-called parodies, spoken about in the press release like they could sell the game on their own, they're about as funny as a DIY abortion. But that's probably more to do with it being French than anything else.