Rock Idol

There are two types of people; those who've been hypnotised by reality TV, and those who still have a couple of functioning neurons rattling around inside their brains. Rock Idol - presumably named to appeal to the former - is unlikely to provide the kind of cruel music industry micro-management the title suggests, and therefore alienates itself very quickly from its target audience. For the latter types, this was never going to appeal anyway.

In many ways you're likely to begin the game with the reasonable preconception that it's a take on music-based reality TV, and while the developers can't entirely be held to account for our presumptions, it just goes to show how important the title of a game really is. But there's nothing contained within that demonstrates any inkling toward reality TV, other than a basic and unfathomable 'judging' round. It's you that'll be doing most of the brusque judging, however.

Rock Idol begins by creating your character, though the choices available hardly spell out 'rock star stereotype'. The cute, cartoony cherubs around which you're building a guitar thrashing musical anarchist makes the game look more like Pre-Teen Rock Child than Rock Idol, with the odd ragged top hat or striped pair of trousers thrown in at random to try and bring the game back in line with its premise.

Becoming a Rock Idol consists of not much more than a couple of dreadful mini-games and the occasional judging session. The first of these mini-games takes the form of typical rhythm-based dancing, with numbers floating up the screen that you need to hit, by pressing the corresponding buttons on your keypad, as they pass through the target area. Pretty standard stuff, and although this method has been proven to work quite superbly on the handheld platforms, in Rock Idol's case it fails to make any connection between the background music and the on-screen events.

Instead, random numbers simply drift up either side of the screen, detached from the short, tuneless, badly looped background music (which has momentum-sapping gaps as it sets off playing again and again) or the actual keypad mechanics. This is followed up by 'Get to the Gig' – a maze based mini-game in which you have to locate the stray members of your band and guide them to the stage in time for the show, a la Spinal Tap.

Running around are a crowd of motionless concert goers, and touching a band member makes them follow you for a limited amount of time. Unfortunately the intelligence of these band members suggests they've been experimenting with exotic fungi all morning, and often find themselves terminally stuck behind a crowd, tree or even the stage itself. An infuriating, soulless and utterly juvenile task with no rewards or incentives to keep playing.

Which pretty much summarises the rest of Rock Idol. A shop system and an inventory pad out the game menu, but going through the tawdry mini-games to be able to afford a new pair of trainers or a bunch of carrots (that's right - these rockers are so hardcore they eat carrots as, according to the game, it's important to have a 'balanced lifestyle'. Wasn't that the motto of Sid Vicious, too?) really isn't worth the thumb-ache.

It's not often that we struggle to find something of value in a modern game, but regrettably there's nothing left to say other than Rock Idol is categorically a failure.