Hands on with the redacted version of Kick-Ass

In over ten years, I've had to play a lot of bad games.

I wonder whether the original version of Kick-Ass - since pulled from the App Store because it been labelled "a beta version missing art" - would have ranked as the worst commercially released game I've ever played.

In terms of an overall score I was fluctuating between 1 or 2/10.

But this conclusion is now no longer up for discussion: always assuming that the real version, to be released this week apparently, is a substantial improvement.

There are reasons to be hopeful.

The original version was clearly technically substandard with the visibility of the Kick-Ass playable character flickering off and on during some parts of the game, and the animations of all three playable characters being incredibly wooden and stilted.

The control system - left virtual pad for movement, right for rotation and automatic firing - was horrible, with your character's orientation especially jumpy.

There also seemed to be very little connection between the inter-level graphic novel story line and what was occurring within the levels themselves, while the lack of blood, gore and evidence of the film's characteristic graphic language was surprising.

Presumably these issues will be easily fixed.

What will be much more crucial however is how the gameplay changes.

For one thing, the game's entire 12 levels could be completed within 30 minutes.

There was also very little sophistication in terms of what you had to do. Because your guns fired automatically - Kick-Ass has his Gatling gun-powered jetpack, Hit-Girl her dual pistols and Big Daddy a shotgun - most levels were merely about moving around, pointing yourself at the various waves of goons attacking you.

Slight variation was provided by the big melee button, which you tapped to kill all enemies in close proximity.

And on occasions, you had to rescue civilians by remaining in the green circle in which they were trapped for five seconds. In other levels, you just had to stay alive for a certain length of time.

The shop system, which awarded you points for things such as health packs and better guns, plus an upgrade system for base health and the number of available melee attacks, was completely irrelevant.

That's a substantial list of concerns.

So, while it seems unlikely Kick-Ass will be resurrected into anything approaching an iPhone classic, there should be enough obvious areas of improvement that it could regain some status and perhaps commercial success as a reasonable film tie-in game.

Of course, I'll be revisiting it when the new version is released.