Lifeboat

It's not usually a selling point to label something as a sinking ship, but in Lifeboat's case, such a statement is nothing more than literal description of what's in the box.

Before you panic, Celine Dion's warbling tonsils need not apply for this particular marine adventure - Fuel Games's Lifeboat is no Titanic, but it does focus on saving folk from a ship sinking into the eternal depths.

It's all viewed from above, and you control the ship using the accelerometer. Tipping causes panicking passengers to be tossed to one side, the idea being to steer them into lifeboats waiting handily alongside.

Controlling just where the passengers end up, however, is often as much down to luck as it is your tipping. The hordes of terrified travellers bounce about the deck like skittles. Each lifeboat shoots off after 20 seconds or less and is only able to take a set number of passengers at a time.

With the lifeboats significantly smaller than the sides of the ship they adorn, steering each spiralling shipmate into the craft is often more miss than hit. It really is like trying to force a camel through the eye of a needle, the sheer mass of bodies flapping around on deck outnumbering the space available on the lifeboats.

As a result, scores end up in the sea, a quick tap on their bodies hauling them back on deck, hopefully before the sharks or crocodiles pick them off. With time ticking down and a target to meet, you rarely have the luxury of picking up those treading water.

The initially sluggish controls ensure your focus remains firmly fixed on tipping it every which way. In early rounds, just when you manage to tip the ship one way, it's time to fling it back the other, the delay on each move meaning half your carriage ends up gasping for air in the water.

The controls can be upgraded through the course of the campaign, the money you earn from saving passengers in each round available to spend on upgrades that improve everything from the ship's handling to the time you have before it's pulled under.

Even with these upgrades, the lumbering ship makes each game more of an ordeal than a heroic gesture. It's a system that seems flawed, charging you with playing more in order to unlock the kind of controls the game should have started with in the first place.

Lifeboat feels like more than a short bite than a full meal. It's unfortunate that it lacks the accuracy to really mean much, but it's too arduous to really qualify as a bit of slapdash fun.

While it possesses the setting and style to tap into that casual gaming market, it doesn't have the controls to stop this turning into one title no-one will miss too much when it ends up sinking into the deep blue sea.