JetFighter IV: Fortress America

It's not often we dislike a game within ten seconds of playing it, but JetFighter IV is a definite contender. The game kicks off by informing you that America is the only Super Power in the world and the bastion of the United Nations. OK, so that's not too far from the truth, but you don't want to be told that by some trailer-park trash game title.

But those dastardly Commies, Pinkos and other enemies of Uncle Sam are trying to topple its position, and after playing this game I'm tempted to join them.

To say that this game is Christmas poo is an insult to Mr Hanky. The game doesn't try to pitch itself as a real flight sim, which is just as well as you can pull turns at 12G and still keep your head on your shoulders. The manual does say: "You don't need any knowledge about flight simulation," although we suspect that this rule also applied to whoever wrote the manual; their description of most of the air-to-air combat manoeuvres is just plain wrong.

The graphics look like they've been dragged kicking and screaming from 1997. Firing the machine guns looks more like you've got Luke Skywalker's light sabre stuck on your canopy; the landscape has obvious joins and if that wasn't bad enough the two halves are different colours, as if the games artist was either blind in one eye, or Laurence Uewellyn-Bowen.

They've even managed to make the engines sound more like a Hoover on the blink. If you're a teenage American Republican with a penchant for hand guns, the Stars and Stripes on your bedroom wall and the IQ of a rubber plant then you might like JetFighter IV. But if you like flying computergenerated aeroplanes, you might not.