Evil is brown. And a little bit grey. Mainly brown, though. That’s what we can learn from Todd McFarlane’s Evil Prophecy. There is nothing else to be taken from the game, except perhaps that Konami Hawaii work out of a shack on the beach, drinking Tequila Sunrise, surfing and generally doing chuff-all to do with proper development work.

The plot is thus: a bunch of evil creatures are running amok (in and around excruciatingly brown scenery), and it’s up to a motley crew of monster hunters to…yadda yadda yadda. Bland as a lard butty. And that’s just the storyline. Actually playing the game is like wading through faeces: it stinks. It’s thoroughly unpleasant and is nothing more than a waste product. Taking the wild and probably inaccurate stance that some people will actually care about the title enough to want to know more, here goes: you control a group of four monster hunters, faced with the task of wasting famous supernatural fiends such as the Werewolf and Dracula, re-imagined as per Mr. Todd’s ‘Monsters’ toyline, in order to save the world. This is done via the milieu of the 3D roaming beat 'em up. As cash-ins go, it’s not a bad idea, and the presentation at the front end is the strongest point of the game – audio is Gothic and moody, and the FMV intro is animated in a style that will be familiar to anyone who has watched the animated Spawn TV series, or seen Pearl Jam’s Do the Evolution video. In other words it's vintage Todd - full of heavy inking, sharp lines and a general air of menace. That’s the good part. The rest is about as enjoyable as a full frontal lobotomy.

Once in the game, you get to smack stuff around the head, repeatedly. After five minute’s play, you will want to smack yourself around the head, repeatedly. This is because moves are badly timed, lack any kind of focus or aim, and are repetitive and unimaginative to the point where you want to cry. Real tears. Weeping turns to rage when you realise that, despite the game having only a couple of directions you need to look in at any one point, the camera is as wayward as a child with A.D.D. after sniffing five bag’s worth of Sherbet Dips. It responds to commands like a syphilitic, drunken sailor and is about as co-operative and attractive. Worse still is the way you change between your combatants, in order to use their ‘different’ (in reality, tediously similar and predictable) moves. Swapping characters should be a fun addition but, in actuality, it’s like suddenly being afflicted with Alzheimer’s. The sense of confusion and displacement caused by the retarded camera will have you behaving as befuddled as a ninety year-old invalid, fouling his jim-jams because he can’t find his slippers. “Am I that bloke with the funny hat?”, “Which way am I facing?”, “I haven’t got a son, what are you doing in my house??!” etc.

So, three strikes, you’re out. The camera is awful, the graphics are bland and make Sega’s Zombie Revenge look leading edge, and the gameplay is about as much fun as an enema. Funnily enough, the results of an enema and this game share a striking resemblance.

The maddening thing is, the game has some good ideas: the concept of team-based fighting using unique abilities (which TMEP extends to having each character only able to use specific weapons found en route) is a good one, but is damaged by the implementation to an unhealthy degree. Up to four players can co-operate in smiting the undead armies, but inflicting this game upon your mates will only result in your own death at their hands: it’s even more simplistic and unsatisfying when you have no need to juggle your squad around, and the lack of imagination in the game is exposed like a decaying corpse.

Similarly, the bosses in TMEP (the ‘Monsters’ from the toyline – the heroes are Konami’s own designs) were rich material, rendered here in such pathetic polygonal brushstrokes as to remove all incentive and excitement from the encounters. Although Todd himself can often be criticised for his towering ego and willingness to whore out his characters at the drop of a baseball cap, he is blameless in this regard – all the design and presentational woes are purely the fault of Konami’s sloppy disregard for such things as inventiveness and flair.

Despite the inclusion of a Gauntlet-style Dungeon mode, time trial option and a hero vs. hero sub game, TMEP is an eerily bad investment and a waste of time and money. Not only do games such as Dynamite Deka and the even more ancient Captain Commando roundly trounce this apology for a beat 'em up, even Target: Renegade on the Spectrum gives it a run for its money. Risible. All that is left to be said is: go out and buy a copy today! No, seriously: don’t. It’s frigging awful.