Conkers Bad Fur Day
Nintendo £59.99 Rare/THQ ***
Heard the one about the N64 game that was so rude that Nintendo UK didn't dare publish? Well, Conkers Bad Fur Day is finally available, complete with an 18 certificate and a lot of swearing.

But anyone expecting a flurry of expletives needn't worry. "Fart" is about as bad as it gets. Much in the mould of Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie, Conkers is a 3D platformer.

However, unlike the aforementioned classics, Conkers is a distinctly adult take on the genre. Rated mature in the US, it would seem the censors missed out the prefix "im" - this is pure toilet humour.

Of course there's no denying the sheer novelty of biting a caveman's backside or bouncing off a sunflower's ample bosoms. And there is some genuinely humorous dialogue here, especially with the Scouse scarab beetles and camp machinery pieces. But the game itself is sadly disappointing, with flaws spoiling what would otherwise be an enjoyable platform romp.

The biggest problem is the camera - an essential component of any 3D game. One minute you're trying hard to position the angle, the next your view is blocked by a brick wall. No matter how well-scripted the set piece, it matters little when you can't see where you are going.

A difficulty level that starts at 10 and soon rises further compounds this frustration. However, there is also much to admire. The visuals are impressive, with Conker himself - all big eyes and big mouth - particularly well animated, while there are some cracking film pastiches.

The opening beach landing scene in Saving Private Ryan, complete with squirrel carnage, is followed by a cuddlier version of the slow-mo lobby shoot out in The Matrix. But while there are undoubtedly some great ideas here, the dreadful camera, slippery controls and high difficulty level count against it. It may not be "poo" but Conkers Bad Fur Day offers more style than substance. (GH)

London Thames Racer
PC CD-rom £19.99 Davilex/ Koch Distribution **
Ah, the dramatic London skyline, the wind in your hair, the sewage-rich water in your eyes... OK, so speedboat racing on the Thames doesn't quite have the thrill of Formula 1 at Silverstone, but it is a picturesque way of fulfilling your need for speed.

Let me qualify that. The boats look all right, and the water effects are rather fetching, especially at night. Sadly, the backgrounds are several leagues behind. Everyone in London, Venice and Amster dam (where you progress after the opening stages) seems to drive the same car, and the buildings are straight out of Mr Benn.

Still, the racing is exhilarating enough to take your mind off the scenery. You start with a choice of boats, each with its own peculiar handling characteristics, and you can unlock further models by winning stages. (Except for the stage where you win and a boat is taken away from you. Now there's an incentive.)

There are plenty of power-ups scattered over the course - torpedoes, homing missiles, turbo boosts and mines - although none seems to do more than briefly inconvenience the opposition. And while there are no shortcuts as such, there are a few alternative routes that offer different race strategies.

But while the bare bones of the game are solid enough, there's hardly any flesh on it at all. There's no race commentary, no sound effects beyond the odd splosh and boom, the final animation is about three seconds long and there's no intro movie. No vehicle modifications, no secret areas, no multiplayer, no petting, no bombing, no pets. You don't even appear to be able to input your name which is a shame since the results go up on such glorious scoreboards.

London Thames Racer is fun while it lasts. But the astonishing lack of depth, and the fact that there are only around 20 courses to complete, means it doesn't last very long. I finished it in two hours, and I'm crap at racing games. And I've never been in a speedboat in my life. And I was hung over. (AB)

C12: Final Resistance
Sony PlayStation £29.99 Sony **
Third-person viewpoints and dodgy cameras in videogames go together like first-person goggle displays and rasterised green hues. Chugging along at an impressively smooth frame rate for the pensionable hardware, C12 nevertheless has appalling problems with the camera.

It lags indolently behind your actions, and when you get into a confined space it swings around infuriatingly to show you the front of your character - an ugly grunt with a glowing red bionic eye who is no Lara Croft.

It's not like this is an insoluble challenge: both Metal Gear Solid and Sony's own Syphon Filter had far more intelligent camerawork.

C12, coincidentally, is heavily "inspired" by the action-stealth milieu of those games, while never attaining their fluidity of action or thematic focus.

Set on a tediously futuristic earth, it requires the player to assume the role of Lieutenant Vaughan, a cybernetically enhanced soldier, and, er, kill all the alien robots. Oh, I don't know. Can't we just negotiate with them for once? Don't they have feelings too?

Broken camera dynamics aside, C12 is technically - and occasionally aesthetically - impressive. Lighting and weapon effects are done with a respectable flair, the post-apocalyptic cities have a rad dled scorched-brick charm, and there are fun toys to play with such as chaingun turrets and the aliens' own ion cannon. But there's something fatally uninspired about the repetitive robot-killing and the bog-standard button-pushing "problems".

C12 seems to have been stitched cynically together from the corpses of other games in order to provide PSone with a massively overhyped Easter "blockbuster". But it just has no personality of its own. The game's attempts at scene-setting atmosphere, meanwhile, are torpedoed by the risible British-accented voice acting. The Terminator meets Dad's Army: nice. (SP)