Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim is a film about giant robots punching monsters in the face.

Pacific Rim the game is a game about giant robots punching monsters in the face.

They're both ridiculous, they're both dumb, and they're both exactly the sort of popcorn-munching nonsense you expect in the summer months.

Pacific Rim the game is your standard Infinity Blade clone, with stompy Jaegers replacing the sword-wielding knight and the drooling abominations of Chair's swipey-slashy classic replaced by slightly different drooling abominations.

The effect is uninspiring but pleasant enough - a brain drain of a game that scratches a primal, violent itch but fails to stimulate any more complex areas of the brain.

The game lifts the Infinity Blade formula piece by piece, adding little. Tapping on the left and right of the screen dodges. while tapping in the middle performs a block. Slashing in the opposite direction of your opponent's blow performs a parry.

When your giant foe pauses for breath it's up to you to swipe on the screen, raining down combos until the beast's health bar is diminished. You've got special attacks, which unlock after you've dealt and dodged enough damage, and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers at your disposal as well.

It makes for a blunt affair. Combat last less than two minutes, and they finish with one of a handful of execution moves that leave everything to the imagination. There's no pomp or grandeur in the fisticuffs - just two sluggers battering away until one of them falls over.

There are bugs and breaks, too. Once a fight I was engaged with just stopped, leaving both the monstrous creature and the massive robot bobbing away unable to strike a blow. I had to dodge for half a minute to build up my special move and shock the scrap back to life.

Inevitably, you can upgrade your Jaeger with new weapons and thicker armour. My personal favourites are the chain fists, which whir menacingly at the start of each bout. These upgrades are basically aesthetic, though, changing your stats but keeping the endless bludgeoning the same.

Pacific Rim is brutish, then, but it fails to build on that clunking violence. And after an hour or two, like a sozzled prize-fighter with his gut hanging over his trunks and his eyes blackened and swollen shut, your patience will flop to the canvas and expire.