Stylus to the fore in Point Blank DS

Few fairground experiences are more enjoyable than trying to work out how much the rifle range owner has bent his gun barrels. It reminds me of the bonkers German WWII machine gun that could shoot round corners. Useful if you could find the left-handed corner that matched the way the barrel was bent but probably not the sort of weapon that inspired much confidence in your buddies fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with you.

Which prolonged military diversion brings us onto Point Blank - the original comic lightgun game - where you could use your pink pistol to not shoot nice things like rubber ducks while hitting nasty things like bombs with lit fuses.

Three versions of the game have been released so far, and the new DS game will take the best bits from all of them, plus some extra sharp shooting missions. The result will be 40 different stages, spread over four difficulty levels, that will have you feverishly wielding your stylus like a machine gunner.

Still pointing a lightgun and hitting a spot with a stylus are two very different activities so we remain to be convinced just how Point Blank DS will manage to be anything more than a glorified version of Wack-A-Mole. Hopefully, the clever use of time outs and the game's characteristic wacky humour will come to the rescue.

Currently strutting its stuff on the shooting range, Point Blank DS' next target will be getting a bullseye for its winter release date.