Well, some people do, and if you're the kind of person who likes this kind of thing, then this is the kind of thing you'll like. All the same, you should try before you buy, because it's really for diehard fans of the genre only. Erm... spook! I seem to have come over all 'idiolect cliche'. And - hey - if you don't know what 'idiolect' means, you'll have to look it up in the mythical and legendary AMIGA POWER Dictionary, 'cos it's not in the real one - we checked. Ho ho, etc. Insert your own 'Get on with it' joke here. What are you, stupid or something? (Nurse! - Ed) This game looks quite good, but not as good as Asteroids. Asteroids is good. What's that you say? You don't think so? I don't care. Me and my mates know a really good joke, but we're not telling you what the punchline is.

(We interrupt this waterfall of drivel to bring you the traditional 'useful game information apparently inserted into review as last-minute afterthought, for comical effect' interjection. Wiz'n'Liz is a fast-moving platform game remarkable for not having any enemies in it. The object of the game is simply to 'save' lots of cuddly wabbits (sic) by running into them, and incidentally collecting the letters of some unusual words along the way. Of course, this would be completely dull if there wasn't some kind of danger, and in Wiz'n'Liz it's the ever-decreasing time limit.

Time's too tight to mention in Wiz'n'Liz (or at least it is if you're playing on the hardest difficulty setting, of which more later), and the only way to stave off clockwork doom is to collect extra seconds from saved bunnies. Disturbingly, that's literally all there is to the body of the gameplay here, and that's the big problem with the game. On Stuart's first go, he trundled away quite happily on what turned out to be one of the highest difficulty combinations, and after about 15 minutes sat back in his chair and said, 'Right, that's the first boss out of the way - I think I've got the hang of this', only for his smug smile to be replaced just seconds later by a look of horror and a disbelieving cry of 'I've finished it?' as the end sequence flickered in front of his eyes. The very hardest settings do extend the game's length considerably, but it's still ridiculously easy to complete. Right, let's see if he's managed to pull himself together yet. - Stuart's Editorial Conscience)

But hey, that's enough about the game - let's talk about something I don't like for three-quarters of a page. Like Whoopi bloody Goldberg for a start, or that appalling, appalling Scottish prat who used to present Gimme 5 on Saturday mornings - don't you just hate it when (Snip! - Ed)

(Thought not. Looks like it's down to me to do the bit where we go 'Hey, but it's not all bad', before coming up with a short list of a game's redeeming features then slagging it off some more again. In Wiz'n'Liz's case, the saving grace is the two-player game. Taking place on a horizontally-split screen, one player takes on the mantle of Wiz, while the other one plays his female counterpart. Gameplay is pretty much the same, except you're battling against each other to win stages and worlds. While I'm not going to read the instructions to you, basically you have to collect letters while trying to stop the other player from doing the same, and there are various devious tactics you can employ which invariably result in you winning the game, but also getting punched quite hard in the face by your mate. It's great, and I don't care what anybody says.

And now that I come to think of it, there's another saving grace. The amount of hidden stuff in Wiz'n'Liz is just massive - there's hidden bonus sub-games, gameplay clues, wacky visual effects and pointless jokes, all of which are accessed by experimenting with the fruit you can grab in the ordinary levels and mixing them up in your cauldron. There are literally dozens of combinations and various ways of getting to everything, and it'll take you weeks to find it all. Well, that is, you'll have to wait a month until someone prints the spell codes on their tips pages and completely negates the entire point of the whole game. But anyway. It's odd, in that it makes the main game feel a bit like a kind of sub-plot that's only there as a means by which to access the hidden bits, but let's not examine that too closely, eh? Right, let's give him one last chance. - Stuart's Editorial Conscience)

And another thing - women drivers, right? (Where's that large housebrick? - Ed) I wouldn't say my wife's fat - I'm not married! (I know I left it around here somewhere. - Ed) I know what you think, you punks - you think I'm just padding this review out with a few crap gags at the end to cover up the fact that I've run out of things to say about the game, as usual. And you're right! Ha ha! (Aha, here it is. - Ed) I'm great and you're not! And I get paid for this too! (THWACK! - Ed)

Ow. (Bleeds.) This review was brought to you by an experimental prototype of the Eezi-Write Generic Auto-Reviewing Engine, a product of the Redundancy Inducement Corporation of Miyamoto, Japan.

(You're fired. - Ed)

Ta-da!

DOWNERS Quite the slimmest game idea I've seen in a long time, and laughably easy on anything but the very hardest settings.

THE BOTTOM LINE Tough call, this one. It's actually a lot of fun to play, but there's almost nothing to it. One-player mode is limited in the extreme (although finding all the hidden games and so on will take you a very long time), but two players is a laugh riot. It's sweet and loveable, but dislikeably expensive. God. Um...

78 PERCENT