Well, you can see for yourself that Asterix is a cartoony platformer. So I won't mention that. Instead, I'll tell you some slightly less easy-to-glean-from- screenshots facts, like that for most of the game you can control either Asterix (the short skinny nerd with the appalling moustache) or Obelix (gross lardbutt in hideous dungarees). They have slightly different properties and capabilities (ie when they crouch down to avoid low-flying baddies, Obelix's colossal rear sticks up in the air so far he still gets hit), so you can theoretically pick the one most suited to each section, of which there are, ooh, bloody loads. The game is divided into six main worlds, y'see, but each one is positively stuffed with little short mini-levels, which is both one of the game's strengths and one of its weaknesses.

It's a good thing because you never get a chance to get bored traipsing through some dismal, sprawling, enormous level that all looks the same (like in, say, Bubsy), and because it makes the game seem bigger - if you're playing something with five or six great big levels, chances are at least the first couple are going to be really easy. Then you might play the third one, where things might be getting a bit trickier (if you're lucky) and bingo, you're halfway through the game already. Now, when most people play something, they're likely to stick with it in any one sitting until they've at least reached some kind of obvious stopping point (ie the end of a level) before going away and coming back to it later, so it only takes another one or two goes at this mythical five-or-six-level platformer and you'll have finished it, almost certainly within one or two days of buying it.

While Asterix might not be any bigger than this imaginary game in pure number- of-screens terms, though, breaking it up into lots of little bits means you can play more or less as much of it as you want at a time, which means it's likely to last you (in calendar days, anyway) a lot longer. However, Asterix's structure is also a drawback in one way - the mini-levels don't seem to follow any real logical progression (one minute you're in a Gaulish village, next minute you appear to be swimming around in the underwater ruins of the Colusseum, for reasons which the plot more or less completely fails to explain), and they're SO short that you just can't really get into the game's groove. In the end, it feels like exactly what it is - a collection of short sections of random platformers, rather than some kind of coherent game experience.

The levels set-up isn't the only way Asterix is different to most platform games, though. For one thing, it's a bit more puzzley than most, in as much as that you have to look for switches and stuff to open doors, and manipulate your power-ups with a good deal more care than usual. And secondly, it's actually fairly hard. If, like us, you're sick to the back teeth of forking out £40 and over for a game only to complete it in three hours, this'll seem like a dream come true. There isn't an especially high number of baddies scattered around or anything, but the ones there are are quite tough and quite awkwardly placed and quite hard to get rid of, and after the first few mini-levels the time limits on each section start to get stupidly tight (to the extent that you'll need three or four attempts at each bit just to work out where you're supposed to be going - one wrong turn, bout of exploration or bit of hanging around beating up a bad guy and you'll run out of time), and it all adds up to a slightly trickier, if somewhat slower-paced, experience than you're probably used to.

Of course, this isn't necessarily a good thing. In fact, the slow pace of Asterix is the thing that finally drove me away from it - your characters really do lumber around, and it quickly gets frustrating having to go all the way back to the start of a section (even though they ARE just small mini-sections, the difficulty means that it's a fair bit of work to play one half-a-dozen times) and trek through it all over again when you've SEEN it all before, DONE it all before, KNOW what's coming up next and for God's sake can't you just LET ME ONTO THE NEXT BIT NOW YOU SODDING - er, ahem. There's also some fantastically annoying and pointlessly nitpicky collision detection - for example, at one point in about the fifth mini-level, there's a small slab blocking a lift, which you have to blow up with a little grenade type of thing. However, if you hit it with the grenade just a pixel or two away from the centre, it doesn't blow up (despite having a big 'PAF!' explosion balloon right on top of it), which would be less annoying if it wasn't for the fact that your supply of grenades at this point is a less-than- impressive three. A couple of these so-called 'misses' and you've blown the whole stage, and it's time to start again. Again. Throw the fact that you only get three lives and three continues into the equation, and suddenly that increased difficulty I was so heavily lauding earlier on starts to look like a less welcome feature.

So anyway. Here we are, with Yet Another Licenced Cute Platform Game staring us in the face. It's not as bad as some (Chester Cheetah, BOB), it's not as good as some others (Cool Spot, Aladdin), it's just nothing very much of anything, really. If you're after a bog-standard platformer that's a bit tougher than the norm it's a pretty good buy, but that's about as excited as I can bring myself to get about it. Sorry.

END ZONE

GRAPHICS    8
SOUND    7
ADDICTIVENESS    6
PLAYABILITY    6

Good-looking and slightly different, but ultimately pretty dreary platformer.

OVERALL    74

STICKLEBRIX
Supplier of building materials to the Gaulish people since 1249. Blimey, that's nearly one o'clock.

SCALEXTRIX
Car gone wrong? Need a mechanic? You know who to call.

WEETABIX
Despite looking like a small but dangerous skinhead, Weetabix is actually the village grocer's cheery delivery boy.

TIXYLIX
Getafix the Druid's junior assistant, Tixylix is responsible for mixing the less-important prescriptions in the village pharmacy.

BARSIX
Er, a chocolate biscuit.

TURNINGTRIX
Top Gaulish 'hostess and entertainer', pretty Turningtrix is (That's enough fictitious Asterix characters. - Ed)

DAME HILDA BRACKET
Celebrated transvestite pianist. Can we say 'transvestite'? Or 'pianist', come to that? (No. - WH Smiths)

APOSTROPHE
Greek goddess of love. I think.

KARL MARX
Father of Communism, Karl didn't become well-known until he stopped using his little-heard middle name, Quotation. (Make him stop, someone. - Ed) Also wrote Das Kapital, which is of course a type of letter.

NORMAN WISDOM
Not actually named after a type of punctuation himself, but Norman makes our list for his famous catchphrase, 'Don't laugh at me, 'cos I'm, er, a full stop.' (Out. Now. - Ed)