WET

Rubi does learn new moves as the story unfolds. Points are awarded for chaining kills and performing stunts, and these can be spent on extra manoeuvres in the Unlock Shop. Few of these are very exciting, though. They tend to be things like the ability to shoot while swinging round poles or riding zip lines - stuff which it feels like Rubi ought to be able to do anyway.

She's certainly a big fan of pole-swinging and zipline-riding, not to mention ledge-hanging, wall-running, gap-jumping and all the rest. There's a fair bit of exploration in WET, though nowhere near as much as in Mirror's Edge or the Tomb Raider titles. Once again, there's not much in the way of challenge here as it's almost always obvious where you're supposed to go next. When it's not, there's WET's version of Runner Vision to fall back on.

Rubi is ridiculously agile, capable of leaping over gaps larger than anything Lara would even attempt. She's better than Ms Croft at guessing that you wanted to grab that ledge, actually, not plummet to a crunchy doom, and she's less fiddly to control than Mrs Mirror's Edge. But the exploration sections are linear, predictable and feel shoehorned into the game; it's as if they're just interval entertainment designed to keep you occupied while the next batch of pipe-wielding goons finish their make-up.

You won't find any sleek white skyscrapers or crumbling temples in Rubi's world. Environments are urban, dirty and in a state of disrepair. They're painted with a pallette of grubby greens and sludgy browns, and they're ugly more often than they are pretty. Highlights include San Francisco's Chinatown during the New Year parade and the Boneyard, our heroine's home turf. It's full of rusting metal, wooden platforms and metal poles, and provides the setting for Boneyard Challenges. These involve racing through a series of checkpoints, firing at targets along the way to increase the time on the clock. It's classic, old-school time trial gaming, and good fun in that regard.

You can also expect retro flashbacks during the skydiving sequence. Here, Rubi must avoid the debris of an exploding plane while she tumbles through the stratosphere and struggles to grab a parachute. This is extremely tricky and involves playing through the level again and again, and again, and again and again and again until you've learned the path of the debris and mastered the precision required to avoid it. It's very frustrating, just like gaming used to be.

Another set piece designed to break up the monotony of crushing skulls sees Rubi involved in a high-speed motorway chase. She leaps between speeding cars and careering lorries, blasting away at enemies as she goes. It's exciting to watch, but not so much to play as it's really a sequence of quick-time events. All you have to do is press the odd button in between watching the spectacular stunts, which is as challenging as it sounds.