What have Van Gogh, Adolf Hitler and Skweek in common? They were all painters with a personality problem. Van Gogh went about posting himself to girlfriends, Hitler was a house painter turned genocidal maniac and Skweek simply doesn't know when to quit.
After his first eponymous outing and the countless scrapes therein, you would have thought the fur-ball kid would have retired by now.
Now, thanks to Super Skweek, it seems he's been tempted out for one last pink paint extra
Fade to grey
Skweek can turn the grey tiles of each level pink again, just by running over them. Obviously, doing this for over a 100 levels would be as dull as watching pink paint dry; so each world is crammed with surprises.
Firstly there are hordes of monsters after Skweeking blood, each of which has ITS own personality and attack patterns in the best Pac Man tradition. Secondly there are stacks of special tiles that make life, well, short. Some explode under his little fluffy feet, others transport him around the land, then there's icy floors on which the poor little beggar can't turn or stop.
The worlds are mercifully packed with bonuses to help the Big S paint the world pink. Some uprate Skweek by giving him greater fire-
Finally, there are the coins left by dead monsters, which can be saved and spent in shops. These offer all the bonuses, at a price.
Rainbow islands
The worlds he has to pinkify are separated into five groups of 45 islands. Skweek can work through them sequentially, or in a random fashion, until all the levels have been painted the brightest shade of pink imaginable.
Skweek, however, is one of those games where the sum total is greater than the component parts. The game is based on a graphically cute creature and the strange world I which he operates and has a curiously natural logic.
It's packed with the kind of childish humour so often overlooked in favour of mega-
Super Skweek is an improvement over the original but not a great quantum leap. New touches - such as the two tier flooring - add a greater element of craziness, and that is what Skweek thrives upon. It's good, manic, charging fun, and as such is an ideal puzzle arcade.
Fans of the original should check it out immediately, as should anyone who likes their games to be frantic affairs with a strong element of silliness thrown in.