When I was a small child, there was nothing I'd like better than to play with some Plasticine, and by golly what fun it was too. You'd get your mum or your dad to buy you some and you'd be really excited taking it home to unwrap it.
On unwrapping Plasticine, the first thing that hits you is the smell of the stuff - it's totally indescribable. After smelling it, it's time to make something, so for some ideas you'd look at the handy leaflet included in the pack and all the models would look absolutely brilliant.
A whole range of colourful and cheerful models begging to be made! After reading the leaflet, problems rear their ugly little heads.
For safety's sake, you decide to make something simple, like a snake. That can't be too hard, can it? A long green body, stick a couple of eyes on it, place a red forked tongue at the front and Bob's your Aunty. Easy really, so you decide to make something a little bit harder, like a colourful little parrot. A round blue head with a couple of white eyes on it - err oh dear I haven't got the white, hmm I'll have to use some yellow.
An orange beak, a blue body, yellow feet and some green wings. Whoops I used all my green for my snake, drat. Right take my snake apart, oh no the green's got loads of red bits in it now.
I'll have to pick all the red bits out, damn I haven't got a lot of green left. So I'm now left with a parrot with small wings and to be honest it looks deformed too. Boo hoo. So you try and tr y to make more models, but unfortunately you run out of loads of colours, so you try mixing colours to make new ones, and whichever combination you try to mix, it always ends up puce.
All you can make then is puce blobs, which to be perfectly honest are a bit useless, but hey you can't complain because here comes Putty, a pliable platform game from System 3, and it's guaranteed not to turn puce.
Originally it was called Silly Putty, but due to some problems they changed it to Putty. Right, it's time to start practicing for that Jackanory spot because it's story time.
In a galaxy far away there is a place called Putty Moon. Putty Moon is a small world that orbits around the planet Zid and is home to a race of squishy, pliable squelchy beings called Putties.
Life used to be so peaceful and still on Putty Moon - that was until the evil and downright cheesy Wizard Dazzledaze and his cat Dweezil turned up in their flying saucer and ruint it all. Dazzledaze and Dweezil captured all the peaceful Putties and brought them to earth, selling them as chewing gum and making tons of money which they spent on toys and sweets.
Hey, this story is a bit sad and depressing, what's going on? But wait - a single lone Putty had watched with tears in his/her/
Normally this bad ass Putty would get revenge against the evil wizard, but it had a bad dose of the sniffies at the time, and so stayed in bed.
Many months passed, and slowly but surely new arrivals had started, err arriving on the Putty Moon. These were naughty babies from Earth which had been kidnapped by Dazzledaze and Dweezil and were magically being transformed into horrid creatures of all shapes and sizes.
Suddenly there were more arrivals. This time it was a load of robots from the planet Zid who were exploring the Putty Moon. Dazzledaze spied the Bots through his telescope and fearing that they would do harm, froze them into blocks of ice.
Putty can help free its chums from the evil clutches of Dazzledaze and Dweezil if he can get help from the Bots. So Putty must smash the ice blocks and get the Bots back to their flying saucers, returning with them to the planet Zid.
Once on Zid, the Bots will build a skyscraper big enough to reach Putty Moon. Putty must help with the building by rescuing as many Bots as possible to help with the construction. Once it reaches the moon, Putty must do away with Dazzledaze and Dweezil and bring peace, love and happiness to the whole word, or something like that.
Putty might look like a straightforward platform game, but it isn't. It's wild and wacky and even a bit bizarre in places. The main reason why it's so different from 'normal' platform games is that the main character, Putty, is so controllable, and can do so many different things.
Putty can bounce, stretch, melt, absorb, slither, inflate, explode, mould, jab and even make coffee (eh?). Putty is so well animated that it really is quite brilliant to watch it slither and stretch all over the place.
The game has a very high humour content especially where the enemies are involved. There are guys who pick their noses and drop their bogeys on you, guys who blow bubbles in the bath if you know what I mean, sumo wrestlers, Frankenstein, a carrot, with serious Schwarzenegger influences who shouts "Uzi nine centimetre", a Scouse sausage and many more.
The idea behind the game is simple - collect the Bots by absorbing them and then take them to the exit. However, it's surprisingly difficult - but not too difficult that you lose interest. The Putty has to keep its pliability level topped up at all times - if it doesn't it starts losing lives and then it'll be game over.
As well as collecting food to keep its pliability up, Putty can also collect icons to help collect the Bots. There's a pocket watch which will give you extra time, a trashcan which will let Putty carry more than one Bot at once and Dweezil power which will give Putty invulnerability.
By far the funniest power up is Uncle Ted, which is a little guy who sits at an organ and plays a ridiculous tune which make the nasties dance uncontrollably for 30 seconds thus distracting them from their job.
Right that's enough background information. I bet you're wondering what the game is actually like. Well with hand on heart I can honestly say that Putty is absolutely brilliant - a platform game that is totally original in almost every way. The graphics are pretty wonderful - take a look at the screenshots. The sound is brill as well with loads and loads of samples.
Once you've learned the controls they become second nature, so no problems there. Plus Putty is quite possibly one of the funniest games ever - it certainly caused people to have a laugh and a giggle in our office.
Putty is a worthy winner of a Gamer Gold if ever I saw one. Big hand claps go to System 3 for this one, plus with a data disk already on the way it seems as though the whole gaming world is about to go Putty mad.