We Dare

In terms of sophistication, complexity and technical achievement, the dancing games in We Dare are to Just Dance what Matt Cardle's autobiography is to Finnegan's Wake. It's therefore something of a shame that they make up about 75 per cent of what's on the disc.

You could always take an enjoyable break with one of the Brainy games, if your idea of enjoyable is playing a poor quality and mildly offensive rip-off of the original Buzz! title for PS2.

The Battle of the Sexes quiz is just as fresh and forward-thinking as it sounds. Men are given blue questions about Formula One and snooker, while women get pink questions about Jane Austen books and housework ("What is the most common component of dust?").

There are some other quizzes about movies and things, but these are no more entertaining unless you're the kind of person who is intellectually stimulated by being asked who the main character in Sex and the City is or what Twilight's about.

So what of the other games? The funny, sexy ones with the chin rubbing and the spanking and the stripping, as featured in the famous advert? Well, YOU WILL BE AMAZED TO HEAR NO I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT EITHER TRULY THIS IS AN HISTORIC DAY, they are rubbish.

The chin rubbing one is called The Big Apple. Two people hold a remote between their faces and try to simultaneously press the A and B buttons three times. I suppose it's got the potential to be sexy if the players really fancy each other and have been drinking pints of sherry for 17 hours. But generally it's weird, difficult and deeply unerotic, much like trying to have actual sex after drinking pints of sherry for 17 hours.

The spanking game is called Never Let Me Down. One player lies across the other's lap with the remote tucked in their waistband. The seated player is supposed to tilt their partner's body to direct his or her avatar through a series of floating rings. Because that's what's wrong with PilotWings, the control system makes far too much sense.

The seated player can spank their partner - or rather, hit the A button on the controller - to make the avatar do a spin in mid-air. This does not appear to affect the final score and is entirely optional. It's not even mentioned in the in-game instructions. And it's about as hilarious and sexually stimulating as you would expect hitting a small white plastic object wedged into the small of someone's back to be.

To play the stripping game, which is titled Who Dares Wins, you need a Wii balance board. Each player steps on the board and is secretly weighed. The game then tells you to remove some items of clothing (without specifying which ones) in a bid to make yourself lighter. You are then weighed again and the winner (i.e. whoever is now lightest) is revealed.

Yes, it has come to this. Following decades of technical innovation and creative exploration in the field of video games, we find the pinnacle of digital entertainment is stepping on a pair of glorified bathroom scales and taking your jumper off. Well done everyone.

So. We Dare does not live up to the promise of sexy adult funtime made by the advert or the box cover or the tagline ("Ce qui se passe dans le jeu reste dans le jeu!" If only). It's not hard to see what PEGI's problem was. But it is hard to see who this game was ever aimed at. The mini-games are far too simplistic, childish and repetitive to entertain grown-ups, even spectacularly smashed ones. And it's not suitable for kids, judging by the 12 rating and the "Accord parental souhaitable" sticker on the box.

As it turns out, the most risque elements of We Dare are the sexy facts which appear on the loading screens. Many of these are cliched ("Oysters are natural aphrodisiacs") while others are just odd ("Feminists are more likely than other women to be in a romantic relationship").

The game could have done without them. The time spent waiting to play a terrible mini-game doesn't pass any faster when you're being told that orgasms release endorphins, or that vibrators were invented in the 19th century as a cure for female hysteria.

None of the actual games seem sexual in tone or unsuitable for children, but I'm not so sure about those loading screens. I doubt I'd be overjoyed if my six year-old came running from a Wii gaming session to ask what an orgasm is ("No idea, ask your father" etc.).

So We Dare isn't an ideal children's party game. Nor is it funny, erotic or challenging enough to entertain adults. It's yet another poor quality collection of low-rent mini-games, most of which are badly executed rip-offs of ancient ideas. It's the least sexy and most pointless thing to come into existence since the Femidom.

Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky this game isn't on our shop shelves. We Dare isn't too sexy, just too... Exécrable.