PlayStation

Spot Goes to Hollywood

Given the stupidly long development time, this looks to be one of Virgin's more costly mistakes. It could be good for young children too enamoured by the character to notice the game's many flaws. Not a great step forward though.

Let's just start by saying that Spot is a pretty cool little character. He doesn't talk much - at least in English - but he makes up for that with style. Spot is a fun game that's graphically impressive but has some problems with control. The screen movement is jerky and the three-quarter perspective is confusing when you're trying to locate a power-up in the air. You can make the control non-isometric which makes things little easier but overall, the control is far from perfect. There is a large variety of levels to see and the cinemas in between are pretty damn cool. I did the parodies in the game and the enemies are great-looking.

Spot Goes to Hollywood won't appeal to anyone but hard-core gaming junkies who value gameplay over graphics. Ultimately, it's not worth a purchase, though it's probably worth a rental.

That said, the game isn't much better than your average commercial. You pilot Spot through all sorts of standard platform levels, like the Pirate Level and the Horror Level. There's even a (big surprise) Mine Cart Level. The whole thing is presented from an isometric overhead point of view, which only serves to confuse things, as Spot rarely moves the way you want him to.