Frantix really isn’t very good at all. Come on – when you walk into a games shop and see quality titles like Mercury and Lumines sat next to the PSP hardware, even a reduced price tag shouldn’t be enough to lure you onto the spike-pit-covered-in-leaves that is Frantix. When a game’s main selling point on the front of the badly designed box is that it stars a character from the 2002 winner of the Best Animated Short Film award, you really do have to worry.

To all intents and purposes, Frantix is a middling shareware game that lacks the production values of a PSP title – even a budget one. The aim of each of the 150 plus levels is simply to grab enough gems to reach the end gate while avoiding a range of silly traps and weak enemies that often fail to adhere to their own rules. There are some fairly sneaky elements thrown into the mix – all manner of teleporters, switches and locked doors often block your path – but unlike those in in Mercury, these never conspire to earn your respect. Instead, they just serve to frustrate and annoy within minutes.

It’s not even like you’re given any real incentive to make it through the levels. You might unlock more annoying levels or another identical character, but we highly doubt anyone out there has the staying power to get to the end of Frantix, let alone bother with all those silly collectables.