Choppy

There's nothing wrong with taking care of your appearance. I'm not talking about booking a spray tan or having a back, sack, and crack wax, but a general check in the mirror before you leave the house certainly does no harm.

Presentation is key, but making it the sole focus isn't wise. Style over substance doesn't get you very far in the end. While it wouldn't be fair to suggest that Choppy is guilty of such a crime, there's a feeling that its sum doesn't quite equal the parts.

This is a game that looks like it's popped straight out of Mario's world, but it's actually anything but a friendly platformer - cannon fire and explosions are the bedrock of this pink puffball's play.

Choppy, who is essentially a blob with a set of propellers for a hairstyle, takes to the skies to rescue his friends who have been imprisoned by fellow blob Lord Evil. The levels are populated by various machinery, tank-like creatures trundling along the ground, and flying missiles (complete with facial features) all geared to take you out.

Naturally, it's up to you to shoot them all down, firing off an almost constant barrage of bullets from beginning to end.

The levels themselves are bright and colourful beauties, spanning locations that include everything from underwater worlds to the dry, dry desert.

Unusually, Choppy is played in portrait mode, the handset held upright with the bottom of the screen devoted to control. Rather than letting you control Choppy directly by moving your finger around the actual map, you use a touch pad in the bottom left, moving your finger out from the centre to control speed, direction, and weapons fire.

The farther out from the middle you get, the faster Choppy moves. Merely touching the pad causes Choppy to fire his weapon, which is to say moving and shooting are one and the same.

That's not a problem, of course, given that there's no limitation placed on your ammunition. However, keeping a handle on both speed and direction with the pad is rather frustrating. Getting caught on a wall takes a life, meaning losing control even for a second can be fatal.

Evening up the odds are upgrades to weaponry and defence. Blocks situated in increasingly hard-to-reach areas increase your rate of fire and its span. There's also a shield that swings a spiked ball around your body, taking out anything that comes into contact with you along the way.

Despite its cute appeal, some gorgeous looking levels, and three levels of difficulty to tailor play to your skill, Choppy can't quite shake the feeling that it's caught between a rock and a hard place.

This is neither the hard and fast challenge shooter specialists will be after, and nor is it the easy welcome newcomers can take to. It doesn't spoil the experience, but it is a slight shame that a perfect light and bubbly setting isn't quite matched by the quality of the content that fills it.