Some time ago, I was taking my daily walk and I saw a boy hitting something with a hammer or axe. I wasn't exactly sure what he was doing but I didn't care - I felt compelled to have a go too, just because he was smashing stuff. Is my desire to simply smash things aimlessly what gaming has made me become? Well, if it has then this new action RPG from Sting (not the rock musician) should quench my lust. However, it still takes more than repetitively hitting things to excite me, so can Baroque suffice with these extra requirements? Despite appearances of greatness, it just can't make the grade.

The first glimmer of grandeur coming from Baroque is the intriguing story, being all about a cataclysmic event that completely reshapes the land every day, and a kind of plague of the mind called Baroque. Granted, this possibly excellent story is not very original but it was enough to get me pretty excited. However, my enthusiasm soon dwindled when began to play; the story is mostly invisible and really has no impact on the proceedings, which is a real shame. This missed opportunity is even more aggravating than most, because the character you control has no memory, which seems like an obvious introduction for some narrational trickery. Instead of any intellectually pleasing mind-games though, you are simply given a worryingly slab-like gun (with very limited ammo), ordered into the randomly generated Neuro Tower dungeons and told to kill the very weird Meta-Beings that include flying fishes, wheel-like things and small insects with purple blood.

The amount and colour of blood is simply not the most important factor in a game (or so the Editor tells me) and games in this genre often skimp on stories, so Baroque could still save itself with some quality gameplay. A good action RPG sees you hitting enemies that drop items and give you experience to upgrade your character, becoming stronger each time you play. Deviating slightly from this standard procedure, Baroque places items randomly on the ground throughout the dungeons instead of in the grubby mitts of enemies. With items just lying around it's difficult to maintain believability - running through a metallic basement fighting off demons with your sword, only to stumble upon an apple, lying on the otherwise empty floor, is quite disconcerting. Despite being a bit odd, the advantage of finding items on the floor and not in enemies' pockets is that you simply have to run over the item to pick it up, which keeps the pace of the game fast.

Using those items is significantly more taxing though; to equip an item you have to press a button on the Wiimote to bring up your inventory, scroll down to the item you want - it is difficult to tell the difference between the items occasionally, as only their names are given, not a small identifying picture as is common nowadays - and then go though another menu to decide what to do with that item. This endless fiddling with menus is tiresome and if you haven't fallen asleep by the end of this process then you have the rather awkward combat controls and annoying camera to contend with.

These less than intuitive controls could be due to the unique shape of the Wiimote and Baroque being a port of a PS2 game, requiring the use of every single button on the Wiimote and Nunchuk, forcing you to juggle your hand around during the action. In fact, even the total number of physical buttons isn't enough; the motion-sensing ability of the Wiimote is used as an extra on and off button for the special attack - a bit disappointing, as it could be used for so much more. Lack of depth to the control system is a minor letdown but the camera is truly irksome; it hovers behind your character but doesn't adequately follow him around as he twists and turns through the rather rectangular dungeons, making it literally impossible to see what you are attacking at times. Being able to see if you are hitting things quicker than they are hitting you is crucial because if you are not doing enough damage then you will die - quickly. Even when standing still you are not safe, leaking health points like a hole-ridden wheelbarrow.

Experiencing fatal accidents is a regular pastime in games but Baroque punishes you heavily for your lack of vitality - and quite unfairly too. Falling to your knees with no health left, you are whisked right back to the start of the game, all the enemies you killed are resurrected, all the experience you gained is removed, your hero's level is reset to 1 - making him fairly weak - and most of your items are taken away. Any of the progress you have made is lost, even if you were near the bottom level of the dungeon tower! Being forced to essentially restart the game from scratch every time you keel over is frustrating and, just to add insult to injury, there is no way to purchase items to prepare for heading back into the dungeons - getting back to where you were before death ensues will not be any easier as your hero will be substantially less powerful than before he was slain!

As well as the difficulty being set very high, the visuals are also far from easy on the eye. They aren't terrible, but the lack of detail put into characters and environments to achieve the heavily stylised look with composite angels sporting multiple talking heads and blue-haired, bright-eyed boys wielding hugely oversized swords leaves the game looking washed out. Washed out or not, the graphics are 3D and this definitely benefits this dungeon-crawling game, but relying on characters, enemies and backdrops that aren't very detailed is a risky business, especially considering the eye-bendingly gorgeous visuals of Gears of War 2, Too Human and similar modern games. Even cutting-edge games on the Wii - miles behind the Xbox 360 and PS3 in terms of graphical grunt - like Super Smash Bros. Brawl manage to look fantastic, so there is just no excuse for the drab graphics of Baroque.

Despite the bland graphics, the cut scenes are quite good, featuring reasonable animation and decent voice acting. While the animation in the action sections of the game is only average, the voice acting is pretty good - angels sound appropriately godlike, a twisted humanoid that's considering suicide is given high-pitched wails to sound scarily insane, and the sinister Baroquemonger is particularly gloomy. Sadly though, even the highest quality speech does become repetitive after a while, especially given that you bump into the same characters again and again each time you die and return to the start. Partly redeeming the similarity of what is spoken is the snazzy rock music that spews out of the console from the beginning of the game, at the perfect volume for the action while never drowning out the occasional more subtle noises such as your character's footsteps on metal grates.

The sound is one noteworthy element of Baroque and its capability to produce random dungeons in the Neuro Tower is another welcome feature. These random levels, where you never know what the next room will contain, boost the replayability; there is nothing better than exploring an uncharted and hostile area that no one has ever been to but you! However, there is a problem with this major selling point and it makes itself known when compared to Diablo II, which also features random dungeons. In Diablo II, all dungeons look real - caves really do look like caves, prisons are convincing in their design and so on. In Baroque, all levels are fairly uninteresting rectangular rooms or straight corridors, mixed up and cobbled together like LEGO - a minor dent in a not often seen feature.

In a similar way to playing with LEGO, Baroque also has a decent lifespan, which is helped by the semi-random levels, the hard difficulty and the game basically being restarted from the beginning every time you die. With that said, extreme difficulty doesn't really count as a longevity-enhancing device, leaving only the randomness to keep your long-term interest. Taking away the ever-changing levels for the time being, you are left with nothing of any lasting value; there is no multiplayer or Internet tomfoolery, there are no different modes of play and there is no proper hero customisation, other than the different equipment you might find in a dungeon. With none of these lifespan-aiding attributes you'll be pleased to know that the single player game is quite long, featuring a high number of dungeon levels, many later stages adding new and increasingly strange enemies.

Addition of more and more enemies is an elegant way to sum up Baroque - it is mainly combat, combat, and more combat. Plenty of combat isn't all bad and there are some nice touches such as the good quality - if slightly repetitive - audio, the random levels and the clever visual style used for the graphics - but for every good element there is a drawback or missed opportunity, leading to a pretty dismal game overall. If only the graphics were prettier, some better character customisation was included and the punishment for death had been significantly reduced, then Baroque could have been sitting smugly near the top of the Wii game chart, instead of floundering about in the lower regions.

Reviewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).