SnakoMania

Mashed potatoes and gravy. Bacardi and Coke. Sun, sea and sand. Some combinations just work.

Others don't.

Take, for example, SnakoMania. Melding the gobbling antics of two of gaming's most voracious characters in Pac Man and Snake probably sounded like a good idea at the time, much like Davina McCall and the 8pm weekday slot on BBC1.

Sadly it's not lived up to our expectations – the merger has resulted in a title that, while it has its good points, is ultimately one of the most unplayable games that we've ever had the misfortune of experiencing.

It starts off promisingly enough. You play as Snakee, a green snake that's trapped in a series of mazes that could have come straight out of the Pac Man games. You need to eat the gold coins (we suspect that they're actually chocolate) and occasional pieces of fruit that are scattered around the level in order to complete it and move onto the next one.

Except that as you eat the coins and fruit, you grow longer, making it harder to navigate around the narrow passageways of the maze; though you start out as a snake with only four segments, you'll rapidly grow to become a dozen or more segments long. And while you can go anywhere you want in the maze and there are few dead ends, you can't go through your own body.

As you weave your way through the mazes, it's incredibly easy to encounter your rear end blocking the way out of a passageway. And, as the passages are only wide enough to go down one way, you end up running into yourself. As a result you lose one of your three lives and must start again.

All of which probably sounds like a fair challenge. And you'll remain under that impression until you actually play it.

The problems arise in two areas. Firstly, there's just not enough room within the mazes to accommodate your elongated body. While it is theoretically possible to complete each level, we struggled enormously to do so – it took more than 20 attempts to work our way out of the first level alone.

This isn't simply a high level of difficulty, it reflects poor design. You'll head down a passage only to realise too late that your tail isn't going to clear the exit in time. It's hard to judge when it will, too, thanks to it lengthening as you eat more coins.

In Snake, which has populated Nokia handsets since the beginning of time, you had wide open arenas within which to operate. This extra space made it easier to play but without removing the inherent challenge of the game. In the confines of a Pac Man style maze that's much smaller than it originally seems, it's nigh-on impossible.

Secondly, SnakoMania's control system is appallingly unresponsive: While theoretically requiring you to merely press in the direction you want Snakee to move, it seems to have little influence at all. When you want to go left, only for the snake to move right upon hitting a wall, seemingly of its own accord, causing it to run into itself, you'll do one of three things:

1. Fume quietly

2. Curse profusely

3. Fling your handset aside in frustration

And there are 42 levels of this.

The upside that we mentioned earlier? There's a brilliant option in the menu screen that says 'exit'.