As I mentioned in my last review, I've been worried as of late about my credibility, handing out 10/10 scores like a girl scout hands out cookies. Having just come from Open Season, a short-lived but highly entertaining, polished and fun conversion of a film that I couldn't help but rate fairly highly, I've finally found just the game I need to truly convince you all that I'm not too easily pleased - because Biker Mice from Mars is atrocious!

I've never seen the cartoon upon which this game is based, but it's introduced just fine with some fairly high quality 3D cel-shaded animation - indeed, all the cut scenes look pretty good and are a patch above the rest of the game, in terms of voice acting and art, if not in terms of the script. I know this is only a kids' game, but the plot is so full of holes that mice are turning down pieces of swiss cheese to have a nibble on it! The story goes that the Martian Mice were attacked by the invading Catatonions and both sides need the Regenerator, a super powerful device that can be used as a deadly weapon or to terraform Mars and make it suitable for the Mice to properly colonise. Stoker, the one mouse capable of building a Regenerator, headed to Earth (alone!) to gather raw materials and subsequently vanished. So, the Mice then sent three warriors (who dress like bikers and ride motorbikes) to Earth to find him, despite the fact that the Catatonions sent an entire army! There's also some random slimy businessman named Rump, who has a Regenerator that's running low on power and needs Stoker to juice it up again.

As if the premise wasn't daft enough (am I the only one who's disturbed by tall, muscular, humanoid bodies with mouse heads on top?!) the game's plot is ridiculous and utterly predictable, with characters acting just as stupidly as they can in order to find an excuse for the next mission - for example, the three mice and Charley, the sassy mechanic who they've befriended, hang out in the Last Chance Garage, even though they could come under attack at any moment! Then how about the level where you head out to stop a bomb only to find it was a diversion. Ooh, didn't see that coming! While cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants and indeed most CGI movies these days manage to entertain adults as well as kids, Biker Mice is your generic kids' only nonsense that any kid who loves it now and revisits it as an adult will realise that their golden memories have just turned to muck.

Anyway, moving on from the premise, the gameplay is about as repetitive, mindless and generic as you could possibly ask for. The game is split into two types of stages - racing and beat 'em up. Well, I call it racing, but really this is just a 3D version of a basic shooter, kind of like Spy Hunter but not half as good (and of course Spy Hunter wasn't great either). You race along on the bike of one of the three Biker Mice (each of their bikes has varying amounts of vitality, handling and boost capacity but the differences are really unnoticeable) shooting anything that moves with a primary weapon that locks on targets ahead of you. The in-game graphics are amateurish - they do the job but instead of looking cartoon-style they just look low budget. Streets fly past as you drive through the city (and occasionally detour through a park) and there's a reasonable amount of detail to the buildings and roadside objects, but there's only one area in the whole game to drive around and the routes are set, so every single racing level plays exactly the same - you can often recognise a reuse of the same long section of road too! Occasionally you have to destroy a certain vehicle, chase a vehicle without destroying it or collect tetrohydracarbons for Stoker's Regenerator, but it's just the same every time - drive along, blast everything, collect coins and power-ups, try not to die… utter tedium.

Instead of blood coming out of the dozens of enemies you wipe out, which include foot soldiers with rocket launchers and machine guns, stationery turrets, cat bikers and armoured cars with lasers, coins spill out that allow you to buy upgrades - you can increase your bike's stats, learn new fighting moves, purchase three other primary weapons (you begin with a machine gun and work through gauss, laser and plasma guns), enhance your primary weapons with a higher rate of fire, more damage and less overheat, and purchase a secondary weapon or rear weapon to begin the level with. As you speed down the streets you can pick up secondary and rear weapons along the way, rear being the usual likes of mines, oil slick and smoke, and primary being rockets, homing rockets, laser, railgun and nuke (at least a bit of imagination went in here). There are other pickups too, like adrenaline (fill your bar and you can combine with your fellow Biker Mice to use the superbike for a few seconds), health and temporary mods like rapid fire, damage boost, infinite secondary ammo and an energy shield, but nothing can rescue these levels from total mediocrity.

However, if you thought the racing was bad, just wait until you get into the beat 'em up levels - it's generic multiple opponent combat that makes Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance look like Dead or Alive 4! There are only two attack buttons, there's only ONE combo until you purchase a few more, and even then it's almost impossible to get them to work anyway. There's one daft special attack that sometimes stuns your enemies, plus you can block, but that's your lot - no weapons, no throws, no jumping, no ducking… just mindless, soul-destroying button mashing. Again the graphics for this section look shoddy, with animation that never rises above competent and enemy design that's very limited (although they're stuck with the show's enemies I suppose). The sound effects in both areas are pretty poor too; nothing stands out and sometimes they're not even there, while explosions don't sound loud or meaty enough and weapons fire is lacking impact too. The music is a collection of maybe four tunes (two of which are very annoying) that just cycle round as you cycle round level after level of sameness, and it gets repetitive almost as fast as the gameplay - the only decent part of the sound is the voice acting, although the script is pretty bad and the story idiotic at best.

With nothing really going for Biker Mice from Mars, it's a mercy that the game's short fifteen levels could be over in as little as three hours. An admirable amount of upgrades to buy for all three mice and their bikes, along with five stars to collect on each level, can do nothing to extend the lifespan of this rank kids' TV tie-in that's back in the Nineties in terms of gameplay design and the sort of quality you expect from a licensed game. It's mindless, it's violent, with nothing but shooting and punching (no blood, but still violent), and repetitive in the extreme, making for a painfully boring waste of three hours of this reviewer's time. I dived on this grenade for you - don't let my sacrifice be in vain!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).