Ghost Stories

Here's some short, sharp life lessons for you: always hold the door open for anyone behind you, remember your pleases and thankyous, and make sure you tip waiters and waitresses regularly.

That way, even if everyone else in the world hates you, there will always be people who – even for the briefest of moments – think you're pretty decent.

By the same token, games that are inherently rubbish should do everything they possibly can to sweeten the deal for their hapless customers.

Slick menu screens, simple controls, even one or two one liners in the script – none of these alone can polish a turd, but they can take the edge off its putrid smell.

It's worth making this point now just in case those behind Ghost Stories are getting ideas about putting together some sort of sequel.

The best result for all, of course, would be if Acmee buried Ghost Stories as quickly as possible and moved on to something worthy of their time, but if Ghost Stories 2 somehow manages to get beyond the drawing board, there are one or two things those at the helm should consider.

Namely, focus on building the game around a decent concept.

Ghost Stories centres around the mysterious death of your father during a visit to his country mansion, gameplay essentially split between tiring and uninspired conversations with NPCs that then trigger missions of exploration and combat.

If that sounds at all promising, it's not.

Ghost Stories is like a trip back in time. Combat – whether you're fighting with a fist, an axe, or a chainsaw – is reduced to simply hammering the '5' key before whatever ghost, ghoul, or – believe or not – small house pet that happens to have cornered you is bludgeoned to death.

In fact, everything about Ghost Stories feels routine and rather limp. The level design is flat and cumbersome, and the actual process of playing out the missions is especially drab.

But rather than just botching up the big things, Ghost Stories also takes a good stab at slaughtering the small details, too.

Simply scrolling through the reams of needless conversations is a chore, for instance, continuously tapping down on the D-pad the only way to crawl through the speech bubbles.

Level architecture, too, has a habit of getting in the way. Merely traversing around the house in the opening minutes – with little prompt or indeed any notion of a guide whatsoever, it should be noted – is awkward.

The whole thing just feels like a randomly thorough attempt to serve up a game that's absolutely no fun, testing your sheer will to keep on playing from the moment the title screen loads up.

It is, quite simply, a game that's dead from the word go. The sooner Ghost Stories passes over from its bothersome existence in this world to utter obscurity in the other, the better it'll be for those of us left living.