Claw

From the makers of Blood comes... a cutesy platform game involving household pets. Not your common or garden, foul-smelling, furnituredestroying parasites though, but swashbuckling vagabonds of the high seas. Pirates. But somehow pirates in the form of cats and dogs.

Unashamedly old-school, Clow has no pretensions whatsoever and is simply a full-on side-on platform game. It kicks off with a cartoonquality introduction though, in which feline felon Captain Nathaniel J Claw is brought to justice by some law dogs. Banged up in the slammer and facing a swift beheading, he finds a piece of an old map left by a previous tenant. Intent on completing the map in order to discover the whereabouts of the amulet of nine lives - why do they bother? - he makes good his escape and transforms into a 2D character in a computer game.

From here on in it's pretty much a case of as you were. There is definitely a social stigma attached to platform games, and there is very little dignity to be had in playing them. But with the curtains closed, Claw immediately reminds you what made them the phenomenon they once were, its simple but effective style soon inducing a Pavlovian cycle of frustration and elation interspersed (naturally) with foul and abusive language.

Jumping, climbing, shooting, fighting and throwing stuff is largely what it boils down to, with some nice touches such as dynamite and exploding barrels. The 14 levels provide a fairly hefty challenge, and they are interspersed with some watchable cut scenes that relay the unlikely story. Best of all, you get to kill dogs.