Well, it had to happen, didn’t it? The greatest videogame title since Beyond The Beyond and Wideload couldn’t live up to the justifiably high expectations it brought about. All those DVD commentaries spent extolling its virtues, all those assurances that good political videogames could be more that just county fair-style outings where you’re invited to dunk Bush. On the internet. All destroyed in the first few seconds of gameplay. You know, this could be the world’s first review typed by the pressure of flowing tears on a keyboard. Sniff.

The more alert might have heard Hail To The Chimp described as a collection of minigames playable ideally with three pedigree chums around a single television set. While the latter half of that sentence is true, its opening stretches the boundaries of truth so far as to suggest different mazes in Pac Man: CE constitute new modes. This is very much a collection of one minigame, with variation either slight or simply provided by moving from one background to the next.

Rulesets for each bout vary from collecting goggle-eyed clams while trying to avoid a moving cloud of controversy, collecting them while painting advertisement signs in your colours, and collecting them in order from one to ten. Basically, for Hail To The Chimp, the word ‘variety’ means those little packets with different cereals in.

There’s an element of strategy involved, especially when playing with living humans, as players can team up to form attacks where one throws the other and so on, teaming up on whoever’s way out in front. It’s certainly positive to see each species combination offering something different, but in the end balance proves a problem, and it’s all a bit indistinct as far as controls go to offer much in the way of entertainment.

It comes to something when a game’s satire is more engaging than its gameplay, but that’s sadly what Wideload have achieved. Mock advertisements for air on news channel/front-end GRR offer some astute commentary, particularly on a US pharmaceutical market more concerned with not getting sued than doing people any good but, well, when that’s the closing positive point, we think you know where this review is heading…