Download Games Roundup

We've got some complete polar opposites for you to revel in this week in download land. In the blue corner, we've got games like Kaptain Brawe and the re-issue of Crazy Taxi that want to drag you back to the way things were, and in the red corner, Dinner Date, a 'game' that takes us into the drunken subconscious of an insecure poet and his quest for a shag.

And the one trying to stop the others from hitting each other is Gaijin Games' latest, Bit.Trip Fate, a smorgasbord of retro-futurism if ever I saw it.

Dinner Date

• PC - $12.99

I'm not sure whether a game's ever inspired a flush of cold embarrassment before, but Stout Games' fascinating exploration of one man's inner turmoil certainly did.

Not because it felt like straying across the invisible boundary of personal privacy, you understand; I could eavesdrop on Julian Luxemburg's demented poetic witterings indefinitely. I just had the cold dread that Dinner Date was actually an entirely autobiographical rather than a fictional account of middle-class angst.

Either way, it's certainly an interesting narrative experiment, albeit one where the user's 'interaction' is restricted to which finger to move, and whether to dunk the bread or sip the wine while you sit and wait for the arrival of your date. His thoughts on her non-appearance continue to meander either way, as you proceed to get sozzled on three glasses of wine. Lightweight.

The most disappointing aspect of Dinner Date isn't the ludicrously brief 20 minute runtime, but the fact that Julian is so flimsy and dislikable. While his thoughts on poetry and his chances of a shag rattle around his head, you're left with one overriding conclusion: no bloody wonder you're alone.

6/10