Bionicle Heroes

If you have a nephew, cousin, brother or son aged between five and 12 years of age, and of a certain creative disposition, it's very likely that they have at least one Bionicle in their toy collection. These self-assembled half-robot warriors are part of the mighty Lego brand and, like all things plastic brick-based, they're immensely popular.

Bionicle Heroes represents the latest attempt to marry this successful brand to a decent gaming formula. And it doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see the potential in such a union. Super powered warrior robots? Hammy cod-mystical storyline? It should be a match made in heaven.

It's not. At least, not on the strength of this showing. Taking the form of a 2D action adventure, Bionicle Heroes fails on a fundamental level to capture the feeling of what it might be like to be a hyper powerful, mechanically enhanced superhero. In fact, it pretty much fails to evoke any kind of feeling other than boredom.

It starts with an opening screen choc-full of clunky exposition and unwieldy names. Some bad egg called Makuta has kidnapped a handful of Toa Inika and infected the very fabric of the Bionicle world, apparently. Your character, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is tasked with saving restoring the status quo.

Things hardly improve when you start the game proper. Control is of the one-handed variety, with the thumbstick used for directing the protagonist and, via a simple press, for firing your weapon or moving objects. The top-down viewpoint is functional, but the graphics really are very drab and indistinct. This proves detrimental when it comes to topography – you'll often find yourself bumping into elevated ground as you mistake it for a mere change in terrain.

Slightly more promising is the fact that you've been granted the ability to pinch the abilities of four Toa (the good guys), whose masks have been imbued with the elemental properties of water, fire, stone and air. These masks have also been left lying around the game's levels for you to search out, which is a little careless.

Now while this sounds empowering in concept, in reality it's nothing of the sort. Take the first ability you acquire – that of the mighty water-based Toa, Hahli. Your amazing aquatic ability? Paddling. Heroic stuff. And the list of uninspired design features goes on.

Throughout the game you have access to the fancy-sounding power of telekinesis. Unfortunately this amounts to nothing more than shunting small rocks around the game world – the developer's excuse for incorporating a number of tired block-pushing puzzles.

Bionicle Heroes does have its moments, usually when a combination of the four key powers is required to progress. Such occasions call for a measure of lateral thinking, and for these periods the game almost becomes enjoyable. Sadly, such moments are few in number, and all arrive towards the end of your quest.

Another positive is the generous saving facility, which crops up whenever you flip to a new screen. It can grate a little to constantly have the 'saving' message interrupt the action when you're simply trying to dash through an area, but it more than pays off when you're interrupted by real life and have to exit the game rapidly. Which, let's face it, is fairly often for a mobile phone user.

The problem is we were so taken with the save system because it minimized the pain of playing through the game. And that's Bionicle Heroes' major problem – it just isn't much fun. As it stands, we would have to recommend that gamers in search of either a worthwhile Bionicle game or a decent action-adventure title look elsewhere. Because this is neither.