Jodie Marsh Xmas Photo Shoot

Putting something horrible about Jodie Marsh into print seems to be one of the rights of passage in journalism these days.

Striving ever more to be at the very cutting edge of modern journalism, we are going to embrace our contrary side and forego baiting the British media's ex-favourite witch (for now), and allow her to get on with clinging desperately from the tips of her plastic fingernails to the last vestiges of her tattered career in peace.

Actually, that sort of came off a bit negative towards the end but in fairness, Jodie Marsh Xmas Photo Shoot is full of negatives. By negatives we mean film, as in the stuff that cameras used to use before digital came along.

The game itself, which consists of a single mode, is a straightforward shooting gallery affair. But before any of our more hateful readers get too excited, instead of using guns, you have a camera, and instead of shooting Jodie Marsh, you shoot the pesky film negatives that have bizarrely started flying around the studio of their own volition.

Aiming your camera's reticule with the '2', '4', '6' and '8' buttons (or the stick on Sony Ericsson handsets), you are given 32 shots per level, which are unleashed by pressing the '5' key. Clear the requisite amount of flying films with shots to spare and you progress to the next level. Run out of frames and it's game over.

While the pink rolls of film carve their predictable paths through the air, a cheeky Santa hat-wearing Jodie Marsh does her best to distract you by appearing in the background at the beginning of each level, wearing one of a variety of skimpy(ish) outfits. Managing to be only just sexier than a real-life Santa stinking of reindeer, with milk breath and globules of half chewed cookie and carrot speckling his beard, Jodie's pictures are about the best thing this game has to offer.

Oops, there we have gone and done it… the gloves are off, there's no going back now. The thing is, it really is hard to resist deriding this awful game. And we use the word game in the loosest possible sense.

First (although some may consider it a mercy), the images of Jodie Marsh have been chopped and squashed into the bottom quarter of the screen, the same part of the screen your in-game camera occupies making her barely visible throughout.

Then there's the actual shooting itself. For the first two minutes, it feels passable enough but it soon becomes clear that keeping the aiming reticule still and hitting the snap button whenever a piece of film chances into the line of fire will take you up to about the sixth level of difficulty as quickly as actively pursuing the targets.

The difficulty level does require slightly more conscientious play after you have progressed past level five or six, but seeing as the game has shown all it has to offer gameplay wise by the time the second of a limited number of pics decorates the play area, the desire to progress might leave you throwing a Jodie Marshesque 'what's my motivation' strop.

On the plus side, the front-end presentation is good, and the single game option to turn off the repetitive music and sound effects is welcome. Amongst today's ever better mobile titles however, Jodie's Xmas Photo Shoot simply has no place and struggles to be anything more than a last ditch attempt by Ms Marsh to prize a few more drips of cash out of her seemingly dwindling profile.

Avoid like a bad tempered, axe-wielding, fire-breathing, flying undead monkey bent on eating your soul. (Really, it's that bad.)