Kenny vs Spenny

Call us sensible but there are certain things that stop being funny once you've left your teens. Frankly, convincing someone they have AIDS or that their mother's dead as part of an elaborate practical joke isn't our idea of a bundle of laughs these days. Similarly, in most civilised countries, dressing up a passed-out drunk as a clown and then urinating on them is also generally considered to be somewhat beyond the pale.

Amazingly though, Kenny vs Spenny, a Canadian reality TV show in which these two so-called best friends try to out do each other when it comes to most/least competitions and the subsequent humiliations, features exactly such stunts, and worse. And what's even more incredible is the show was nominated as the best Canadian comedy in 2005 and 2006 (for the Canadian TV Gemini Awards), and has received a Rose d'Or nomination for 'Best International Comedy Series'. Apparently there's no accounting for taste these days. Well done, Jackass and Dirty Sanchez.

At any rate, such dynamite comedic material (snort) was apparently simply crying out to be realised in Java form and so it is that we have the dubious pleasure of Kenny vs Spenny, the mobile game.

As you might expect, it's a simple collection of mini-games which betray little of the show's extreme content. Gone are competitions such as 'Who can produce the most semen?' or 'Who can lift the most weight using their genitals?' In their place come three much more censor-friendly mini-games - Rat Race, Biggest Balls and Octopus.

Rat Race involves steering a rat clear of obstacles and into power-ups on a straight track by pressing the '4' and '6' buttons to move your rodent left and right i.e. it's a racing mini-game.

The Biggest Balls competition is essentially a timed button press event where you need to hit the sweet spot by pressing '5' at exactly the right moment, which sees your character karate chop a pile of blocks i.e. it's a rhythm action mini-game.

In fact, Octopus is the only mini-game that bears any real similarity to the TV show and has you moving your character, who wears an octopus as a hat, left and right (by pressing the '4' and '6' keys) to survive the cascading smilies that fall from the sky for as long as possible. i.e. it's like Breakout.

Looking on the bright side, such activity is reasonably entertaining in a patronising cable TV sort of way, but brush past the presentation layer and there are some grating flaws.

First of all, the difficulty curve is inconsistent. On your initial play in Multi Challenge (where you compete in each event in sequence), the first two events are very easy while winning the third is like trying to get through your day-to-day life while tethered to a goat (which incidentally is one of the TV show's more hilarious scenarios) i.e. it's difficult.

There is, however, a Single Challenge mode which helps in honing those all important octopus-wearing skills, but even after some solid practice, there remains real disparity between Octopus and the first two mini-games.

The other big issue is that there just isn't enough game on offer. Playing through the three mini-games doesn't take long and there are no unlockables either, making Kenny vs Spenny something of a one-visit novelty. The two player mode pretends to add some extras but really, this game is too lacking in variety to hold interest in either mode.

But more importantly perhaps, the game also fails to be funny, although we have a feeling the problem isn't that the subject material got lost in translation, but rather the subject matter itself.

What you're left with is an unimaginative licensed game that lacks enough fun to keep you playing for more than about 15 minutes. Not totally dreadful then but hardly the most sensible use of your hard earnt.