Io

Maybe it's my age, but I seem to be facing up to one disappointment after another at the moment. Onion Bhaji flavour crisps, that ill-advised final season of Battlestar Galactica, Robihno's first year at Man City, Lady Gaga managing to make it to the top of the charts - I'm getting used to having my hopes regularly dashed to Star Wars, Episode I: Phantom Menace proportions.

Io is one such other disappointment: a title that promises to bring a blockbuster slant to the side-scrolling shooter but ends up playing like a broken, botched mess. It's a game that wants you to fail, dishing out bullets and bravado in the inky dark of a space station.

Aboard the Nautillus-114, you fire on the robotic sentries patrolling the hallways. Although it's essentially a side-scrolling shooter, it is possible to move into the foreground or background at certain junctions.

A tiny D-pad situated on the left side of the screen is tied to movement. The pad's small size makes it awkward to move, contrary to what you'd think about the ease of moving from side-to-side.

Every aspect of movement and navigation feels shoddy. Switching from walking to running to crawling, for example, is handled with an awkward button placed in the middle of the screen. The entire set-up results in your fingers criss-crossing your phone with alarming frequency, undermining any attempt you might make to deal with an onset of foes at once.

A problematic D-pad isn't the only issue. Firing your weapon is simple, your guns dropping their loads in whatever direction you place your finger, but placing your finger on the screen obscures the view. More than half the time you can't even see what an enemy is doing because your finger covers it up.

Indeed, visibility as a whole throws up one problem after another, the graphics stretched out across the screen between two flat black bands. The adventure is further fudged by an overt fondness on the designers' part for deep reds, browns and blacks, muddying its already dark make-up.

Between the game's oppressive colour palette and the eclipse of your fingertip, you end up blindly bumping your way through the game. Blundering into a wall or crate is often the only way you know when you're meant to jump over an obstacle or change direction.

It makes for poor game design, leaving you to trudge through levels haphazardly rather than with a sense of real purpose.

Even if you manage to get into some kind of rhythm, there's not much incentive to soldier on. Io is akin to an early beta test for an idea that needs far more time on the drawing board: half-finished, shockingly shoddy, and awkward from the outset.