FotoQuest Bikini

Once the seas start to boil thanks to all those greenhouse gasses produced by the billions of old and neglected Nokia handsets floating about the world, at least we might be able to see some exotic fish migrate to Britain's coast before they're all poached in nature's own saucepan. Just imagine it - what better way to go than to be eaten by a tiger shark off Brighton beach. So much more stylish than waiting for the apocalypse like all the other 'proles.

Despite being a scuba-diving game of sorts, FotoQuest Bikini eschews fish folk altogether, in favour of bikini-clad ladies. They swim about the place - no doubt in search of a shark for that oh-so-stylish pre-apocalypse death scene - and it's your job to get a few snaps of them, as a low rent aquatic paparazzo.

You view the ocean scene side-on and scroll through the coral-filled environment with the '2', '4', '6' and '8' keys, essentially controlling the camera's viewfinder. There are nine unlockable environments, and each one requires you to complete a certain task before progressing. You can also return to each one after initially completing it for more challenges.

These could be anything from snapping a particular girl to attaining achieving a certain score. There are a number of different types of girl scattered throughout each level, differentiated by skin and hair colour as well as the style of their skimpy garments. There are even topless ones later on, although they cover their modesty, keeping the game within its PG-13 remit. Each type behaves in her own way, too. Some will quickly swim away as soon as you get near her, where others hang around in packs, almost keen to be caught on camera. As you might imagine, generally the harder they are to snap, the more points they're worth. However, the biggest scores are achieved with combo shots, where you fit more than one girl into your shot.

Trying to get these is where the game gets interesting, as chasing a single girl round the fishpond like some creepy lecherous uncle hardly requires much skill. If you position your viewfinder nearby a school of the flipper-less mermaids and wait, they won't be put off by your movement, giving you more chance of catching a number of them on-screen at once. You can't just wait indefinitely, though, as you also have your limited oxygen timer to think of. However, if you get past a 1000-point score barrier, your time is extended

Considering that the game, like most other Bikini-series titles, isn't particularly adult, you might be wondering why use bikini models at all, when unadulterated sea life is interesting enough. Well, FotoQuest Bikini is actually a new version of the original FotoQuest Fishing game that did precisely that. If anything, the underwater natives make the more interesting subjects for this sort of photographic challenge.

Bikini clad ladies are fine, but there's only so much that can be done to differentiate between them. Always a series conscious of the boundaries of taste, there are no chunky lasses or anorexic, skeletal chicks here. The visual samey-ness is also compounded by the fact that the environments are all pretty similar too - level after level of pleasant but benign and familiar aquatic scenery.

FotoQuest Bikini does at least help itself by keeping levels relatively short and by recording a tally of all the different girls you've found so far, but towards the end of the game it becomes clear that you're progressing mostly for the sake of progression itself, rather than in pursuit of any new gameplay discoveries.