Office Avenger

It's always interesting to see how different people deal with stress.

I personally like to slip into a nice warm bath, popping on a bit of Dido while I fill the water with rose petals and surround myself with scented candles.

Others, it would appear, like nothing more than to engage in a mass brawl, returning to their offices to smack down their colleagues before transforming into werewolves and finishing them off with their primed nashers.

Each to his own, of course, but if Office Avenger is anything to go by I'd suggest the bath then early bed method has a mite more to offer.

Office Avenger's main problem isn't that it randomly tasks you with flooring hundreds of co-workers, or even that the premise behind your mass murder is never actually explained, but rather that the process of doing so is entirely banal.

Upon entering each floor, your one and only task is to hammer the '9' key when in range of any NPCs, moving around the 2D environment punching each and every on screen rival until they fall to the ground.

As soon as you've slaughtered the entire population, then it's back in the elevator and off up to the next floor.

Neither the scenery nor routine alters much, though the number and variety of adversaries on offer does ensure that each new level is a sterner task than the last.

It's only when said workers start to spice up their attacks – delivery men wheeling in stacks of paper a particular hazard – that your own strategy has to change.

Even then, your tactics only needs to be adjusted a smidge: backing off a second before relaunching into an attack tends to floor even the sternest of opponents.

While, in terms of your survival this is no bad thing, it doesn't lead to the most enthralling of encounters. The gameplay even fails to improve when the game's trump card – the ability to temporarily turn into a werewolf – is played.

Indeed, all unleashing the beast does is make managing the masses around you even easier: there are no special moves to employ, or any real bonuses to speak of.

As a result, Office Avenger is a button-basher at its most dire.

Hammering away at the key delivers little reward, and with the reasoning behind your assault scant at best, it's Office Avenger itself that needs ripping apart, rather than the sorry suits populating its floors.