My Health Coach: Stop Smoking with Allen Carr

If you're reading this review, you're probably doing so because you're a smoker who quite fancies giving up. If you're not, and you're reading it because you think Stop Smoking with Allen Carr sounds like the best idea for a mobile game since SolaRola then I suggest you stop now. Because this is no game, despite it containing games of sorts. The mini-games it does have are less there to be enjoyed and more there for effect.

In fact, in most of them there's no way to fairly win or improve your scores because the whole point of them is that they're trying to demonstrate the futile no-win situation you're in if you're a smoker.

So you experience sliding down icy crevices with no way up, dancing at a party only to be yanked off the dance floor every half a minute by your craving for a fag and driving the 'nicotine monster' to the airport, a destination you'll only arrive at if you ignore his road directions and think for yourself.

Just like you're going to have to if you want to give up smoking, you see?

It's worth pointing out at this point that clearly you have to want to give up smoking for Stop Smoking with Allen Carr to work. It's no good having the attitude of Mark Twain ("If smoking is not allowed in heaven, I shall not go") or Kate Moss ("I won't be quitting the fags because it's who I am").

If you're ready to give up though, and it's the start of a new year so you might as well give it a go, the Easyway technique is tried, tested and proven.

The mobile application version is quite different from the books - basically there's far less reading involved - but the effect seems similar, with the mini-games based around the same message: there's really no argument for continuing to smoke. The protestations you might have that you enjoy it, it calms you down and it's a sociable activity are all counter-argued very effectively.

Also, by filling in a few personal details at the start of the game, it can personalise the text to you. So I've discovered I've smoked 21,900 cigarettes in my lifetime so far and spent enough money to have bought the moon.

By finding out your favourite food, the game shows how you truly are addicted to cigarettes as opposed to just enjoying them since most people don't carry doughnuts around with them at all times then start pleading with strangers to let them have a bite of theirs when they run out.

The application runs through a series of sections with you - the Introduction, The Nicotine Trap, Illusion Removal and The Last Cigarette. Each one is similarly structured with a little reading and some games to play. As mentioned, the games aren't particularly stand-out, but most end up demonstrating the point intending in a roundabout way and some aren't bad.

There's a Cooking Mama style game when you mix up a bit of tar and some fag butts to create disgusting end results that are possibly currently clogging up your arteries if you smoke, and there are a few memory games with an added dimension delivered by the nicotine monster who steps in to mix things up and confuse you - just like he confuses you with nicotine cravings.

There are few reasons to be disappointed with Stop Smoking with Allen Carr - it's a nicely presented application which gets Allen Carr's fag-wilting message across quickly and effectively.

My main criticism is that the menus are unnecessarily hard to navigate. It's never immediately clear what you've got highlighted and that ruins a couple of the games. It's clunkiness also made me tell my mentor I wanted to go back over the entire lengthy Illusion Removal section and play through the whole lot again.

You could argue that the books have a lot more depth and the mini-games don't hammer home the non-smoking message any better than reading it would. Still, provided your name isn't Kate Moss, in which case it sounds like it wouldn't do much good, it's worth a try.