I love Little Britain. It's one of those comedies where it's hard not to. Even cringe-worthy sketches such as Bitty and Anne have me in hysterics, convulsing on the floor, but feeling a little dirty afterwards. The show seems perfect fodder for a game and almost a recipe for success that, once announced, I was looking forward to playing more than any other game, especially when I found that David Walliams and Matt Lucas would have personal involvement in the project. This wouldn't be the awful The Godfather without Al Pacino as Michael; this would be an authentic Lou and Andy under my control.

So what happened? Little Britain: The Computer Game is a mixture of mini-games that would satisfy as an afterthought for a bigger game, but as an actual game it's a huge wasted opportunity for the show and should've been far, far better. Even a Buzz party game hosted by the characters with questions and clips from the show would have been more entertaining than this, and also easier to create (if they ever do produce a game like that I want royalties, dagnammit!) It would be difficult to discuss this game experience as, like WarioWare, the quality seems to go up and down like a rollercoaster, except that there are no ups. None! Okay, that's not really a rollercoaster, more like a one way express elevator to hell!

First up we have Vicky Pollard, clad in a pink bikini (not a pretty sight) racing around a park picking up CDs and other items while avoiding obstacles that you'll need Jedi-like-reactions to actually complete. Once in the air you can perform a few stunts that would make Tony Hawk drop dead just so he can spin in his grave (and it would still be a more impressive stunt than these!) Playing involves a lot of button bashing and becomes one of the biggest problems of the game experience in general; in 2007 we shouldn't be playing each mini-game like Summer Games on the Master System. Speaking of which, we then come to Lou and Andy. This is a straight re-enactment of the infamous swimming pool sketch, which sees you controlling Andy in climbing the diving board and trying to perform as many elaborate (not very) dives as you can before the timer runs out. Again, this is just button mashing and it's at this point that you'll be thankful you bought that controller with the turbo fire button.

The other games are just as bad and not even worth a full write-up, such as the unplayable football game featuring Emily 'I'm a laydee!!' Howard and the whacking game involving Letty Bell bashing frogs, which would be entertaining if it wasn't for the brain damage inducing sound-bytes repeated ad infinitum. Next up we have Maggie copiously vomiting on anyone who offends her conservative sensibilities and after playing it I can't figure out firstly why anyone would want to play a game involving vomiting or secondly what the actual point of the game is, other than to make me very queasy. We have an odd take on Paperboy with Daffyd cycling through the village of Llanddewi Brefi picking up copies of Gay Times and running over other potential gays. Maybe if they'd made this a free roaming level with you collecting a certain number of objects it would've been okay, but it isn't and is as mundane as the rest. One saving grace of the disk (and I honestly can't say why) is a strange take on Pac-Man featuring Fat Fighter's Marjorie Dawes as she walks up the halls of the local Asda, munching up the biscuits and cakes while avoiding the other members of the Fat Fighters, which leads to a few sound samples that are more amusing than the rest on offer, though as with the other games within a few minutes you'll find that they spent as much time recording the variety on offer as they did on the game itself. This mini-game has at least had some thought put into it and because of this I played this a lot more than any of the others - but that's not saying much!

As you can tell from the above, the seven games (the box says eight but I'll come to that in a moment) are Little Britain versions of some of the greatest games in creation (although this is not the intention as some thought would've had to go into ripping off great games). The idea should be perfect; can you imagine a Splinter Cell version of Lou and Andy, with Andy sneaking around the house using stealth manoeuvres to get some crisps while avoiding Lou and making it back to his chair within a certain time limit? (It took me the time to write the first two paragraphs to come up with that idea - I only wish the creators had spent a bit longer!) There are so many that great games could have been done and so many characters missed out that could easily be created with a short brainstorm, like a Bubbles strip poker game, a Dennis Waterman karaoke game, or Anne destroying a garden or house in the style of Rampage. It's quite sad that as I take literally seconds to come up with these ideas, I have a friend reading over my shoulder nodding at how these games may have been more interesting than what is on offer. But then again, pretty much anything would be!

The graphics would have been okay five years ago, but the kind of machine that can play the likes of Gothic 3, Lord of the Rings and Half-Life 2 will probably refuse to open its CD tray on principle! The characters are easily identifiable but at times they look only half completed, with Emily Howard and Lou looking like they've just been painted with whitewash and then the designer has forgotten to add any textures. Each environment is fairly compact and so I'd have expected a lot more detail in backgrounds and possibly the kind of visual jokes that Pixar are noted for, but what we get is so basic that you can play the Vicky Pollard and Daffyd levels and be convinced that they've only actually designed three buildings for the whole thing and just changed the colours at random.

The voice work and music should be great and - sometimes it is - the use of Tom Baker's narration still brings a smile to my face, "Britain, Britain, Britain!... Land of technological achievement! We've had running water for over ten years, an underground tunnel that links us to Peru and we invented the cat!" However, the in-game work is used so often that it's like an embryonic version of the Ludovico technique attempting to convince you that Little Britain is a load of rubbish. After playing the Vicky Pollard level for ten minutes I couldn't bear to hear another "yeah but no but" speech ever again! I think what really grates at me is that these larger than life characters are for the most part soulless hateful entities and whereas I can take a three minute sketch of Maggie being racist or homophobic, playing as her for any length of time I began to realise just how horrible and wrong that character is. As funny as Andy's deception of Lou is in its short time span, after a few minutes it just becomes so cruel that you wish it would just stop! (Note: This is also a plea that a film is never made, as it'll also meet the same fate! Look at Mr Bean and The League of Gentlemen - it never works!)

Longevity is another weak factor, as you can comfortably complete the game within a day; there are no multiplayer games and so the 'party' element is lost, and although the inclusion of unlockable sketches lengthens it a little, most fans will already have the DVDs anyway. Maybe some exclusively filmed sketches, outtakes or interviews would've been better and I actually may have played longer for these. One odd aspect is that the game advertises 'eight games', one involving Mr Mann. The odd thing is not the game itself, but where it actually is, as there is no mention of it being an unlockable and there are no screenshots of this particular game, so I can only assume this was either developed but not completed or is a fiendish ploy by the creators to dupe us into playing for longer than necessary in the hope of opening this new game. Either way, nothing short of a large cash incentive could encourage that!

Little Britain: The Computer Game is the worst licensed game I've ever had the misfortune to play. For such a consistently funny show to be responsible for not just one very bad game but a collection of them, is absolutely shameful. There is very little to recommend and you'd have to be the most hardcore fan of the show to put up with this kind of terrible gaming experience. To paraphrase Vicky Pollard, "No, but no, but no, but no, but NO!"

Reviewed by David Simpson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).