If there's one genre the PSP does well, it’s the racing genre. No inherent control issues; no really bad graphical limitations; the system has the power to pull off a convincing sense of speed through decent enough environments. And it’s almost like the developers of Pocket Racers went out of their way to make sure their game suffered from all the problems mentioned above. This game is atrocious.

Since Codemasters has the lock on the Micro Machines license, Pocket Racers instead depends on an embarrassingly bad - as in, so embarrassingly bad it's actually fantastic - back-story to explain the situation. During a totally rockin' party, you and your friends are attacked by a dark stranger bent on stealing your souls. He does this by turning you all into tiny cars - yes, you read that correctly - which must then race each other through a series of mundane events if they ever hope to survive.

Wow. And you thought Katamari Damacy's plot setup was far-fetched.