During the life of my beloved Nintendo 64 one of the games I kept going back to repeatedly was Diddy Kong racing from Rare. Its mix of vehicles, fun characters and great track design made it only second to Mario Kart in terms of all round fun and if you plan to bring out a similar game, comparisons to older classics are bound to come up.

This can be good if the game is half decent but devastating if the game is rubbish.

Invariably just like every tennis game before Top Spin was compared to Virtua Tennis, every kart based or cartoon themed racer is going to get compared to Diddy Kong or Mario Kart. Now while Freaky Flyers (from now on FF) unfortunately can't compare to either of those two games it's not a total write off and features a number of redeeming features.

Full of well designed overly exaggerated cartoon characters, FF features good graphics and some pretty frantic gameplay. The levels are interactive and can be destroyed in a lot of places so if the guy in front of you is hard to shoot, try shooting some of the scenery in front of him to slow him down that way. The races themselves can be fun but would have been a lot more enjoyable if it wasn't for a couple of major issues with the game.

Firstly the sensation of speed is pretty ordinary and even when you are going flat out it just doesn't feel as fast as it should. The upside of this is that for younger gamers the game will be pretty easy to play but for older gamers it will just feel wrong and pretty unexciting. It's a shame really as the levels are quite interesting and to make things worse the control of the planes is sluggish and just plain awful.

Obviously FF is not a flight simulator but the terrible controls and boring weapons really suck the fun out it. Each of the 12 levels feature multiple goals that you can complete but most of the time I really couldn't be motivated enough to complete them and just concentrated on racing around and trying to win. If you're feeling adventurous though there are shortcuts to be found so exploration of the levels is recommended and extra characters are unlocked by completing the goals on each map.

After a while playing Freaky Flyers I was left with the impression that the aim of the development team was to create a more interesting group of cartoon characters than actually trying to make the game fun to play.

As you make your way through the Adventure Mode you unlock FMV of your characters story that looks very nice but I doubt if anyone would go back and finish the game with every character just to see all the movies. The characters are definitely the strong point in FF but it's just a real shame that there isn't much of a game wrapped around them, everything from annoying music to poor controls just leaves Freaky Flyers in the below average category.

It's always a gamble introducing a new franchise into the world of gaming and if it's to succeed it just has to be done alot better than this poor effort.