Top 10 advertorial games we wouldn't play even if you paid us

We sometimes wish big corporations and games didn't mix. It's like crossing the streams or custard with gravy. You only have to look at the dire Pepsiman on PSone or the three titles Burger King released on Xbox to realise that.

But with gaming - and portable gaming - established as mainstream entertainment, the opportunities for big companies getting in on our act are now so lucrative as to be as certain a thing as nodding mullets at a Linkin Park concert.

So while we're hoping the world's biggest corporations won't be attracted by the sound of banjos and parade celebrations and thus jump onto the bandwagon, assuming that they will, these are the games that should never, ever make it off the corporate design clipboard.

Ten advertorial games we'd never play

Palette Man Tagline: Gotta mix 'em all Based around the full range of paints and varnish finishes, this game would be created to promote the diversity of colour. Imagine Crush Roller (aka Make Trax) but with new shades of cream emulsion being rammed down your throat every 15 seconds. A daft old English sheepdog would bark you through the tutorial, also acting as a mascot to further imprint the brand into your subconscious. The ultimate goal would be to unlock every colour palette and shade, including that notoriously illusive Green Parrot 2.
Peak Oil Tagline: It won't run out You're dropped into a semi-fictional world where oil is the new wonder commodity and it's your job to find it, purify it and take the human race into the 20th century while conserving future stocks and backing oppressive middle eastern dictatorships. Think Railroad Tycoon but with rigs and pumps. Drilling would be a simple matter of touching the DS screen with your stylus to establish a spouting well of black gold. The petrochemical company behind the game would also be keen to ram home certain eco-friendly messages and there absolutely, definitely wouldn't be any mini-games involving fighting Greenpeace activists from mid-ocean oil platforms.
Medi-Eval Tagline: Free drugs all round We've already had Trauma Centre so it wouldn't be inconceivable to imagine a drug testing game involving double blind tests, urine samples and general chemical experimentation. It would have a Sim Hospital-feel though the focus would be on keeping the guinea pigs, erm, we mean subjects, happy with pool competitions, free cable TV and a tasty diet. Naturally, the drugs tested wouldn't have any negative side-effects, which - if actually true - would result in a flaccid and unchallenging experience. The odd accident will see you dropped into Warioware-style amputation and anti-inflammation mini-games, however.
Search for a ZStar Tagline: Any face will do You play an A&R guy (thinly based on any number of the perma tanned coked-up execs) with the responsibility of boosting your company's global fortunes by finding several new, exciting acts. These always end up as a choice between four hunky tenors, a female scouse rapper and a trio of singing gerbils. This game would work especially well on mobile handsets where you could swap song lyrics and user-created videos via Bluetooth while charging £20 for an off-beat ringtone and badly blurred wallpaper.
Waiting for Game-dot Tagline: Angst in your pants The modern corporation needs to be the master of left-field advertising so we'd expect someone to come up with something a little strange - how about an Escher-inspired puzzle game in which you construct 3D space out of a series of black and white tiles while contemplating the nature of mortality? Singing lines from Beckett's Waiting for Godot into the DS mic, while wearing a performance art outfit, will be required to complete every level, while unlocking all the smiley skull icons gets you a token for a free session at the Tate Modern exhibition of prehistoric cave painting (sponsored by a major insurance company, of course - it's all subliminal).
Bid Wright's Auction Site Tagline: Everyone's a winner Online auction sites are one of the internet's greatest success stories but their cultural cache has declined in the wake of cooler websites such as MySpace and YouTube. To boost their profile a simulation/civilisation-style game involving buying and selling goods may not sound like a bad idea. The company would get it totally wrong however by constantly increasing the cost of listing items causing second hand copies of the game to flood the market, ironically selling on internet auction sites for an average of £1.68 (free P&P).
Fair Trade Baristas Tagline: Grind and grin It's already been parodied in Private Eye but we're willing to bet there's mileage in a resurrection of the old classic Root Beer Tapper but with capaccino, latte and frappuccino variants. Would-be baristas would need to make perfect coffees to order, remembering to froth the milk to the correct temperature and charge an alarming sit-in rate for any food stuffs. You'd also have to deal with a social responsibility message that allows you to unlock cute photos of smiling coffee harvesters whenever you pull off the perfect iced caramel macchiato.
Fagman Tagline: Light up your life The increasingly restrictive nature of the health nazis means it's likely that during the next 20 years we'll be locked up or hunted down by packs of flawlessly-skinned aryans for even thinking about lighting up a pack of Lucky Strikes. Somehow, somewhere in the steepes between the Caspian Sea and Chinese border however there will be a shack in which we'll be able to draw down deep and play this game of clichéd themes ranging from behind the bikeshed sessions to chopping up political favours in smoke-filled backrooms while having beautiful femme fatales blowing the acrid stuff into our reddening eyes.
*ankers Tagline: Don't read the small print Get them while they're young. This title would set out to ensnare young customers into the world of corporate finance with all the sinister zeal of the child snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It would have to do with the staid world of compound interest while offering a miser's version of LocoRoco so getting pre-teens to roll glittering coins around mazes for lottery-style bonuses. And not forgetting the cross-selling opportunities: completion would get you a free t-shirt plus a unique password to an online account containing £5, albeit hidden away in the small print would be a interest rate of 56 per cent for overdrafts.
Super Duper Market Tagline: BOGOF Any game released by a supermarket would be the equivalent of a £2 chicken: cheap, tasteless and produced by a 100 developers in a battery farm on the outskirts of Wiltshire. A supermarket sweep-style game would be too obvious even for them; we reckon they'd probably bring back an old soap actress in a series of mini-games, perhaps loudly berating the public for having more than the allotted items in the ten items or less queue or for not taking advantage of the three-for-two offers widely available in store. Every copy would, of course, come in a large selection of mixed material packaging, and there'd also be an organic version which would cost five times as much and contain extra bugs.