Based on Disney and Pixar's no-hearted cash-in cartoons-n-cereal spin-off of the wonderful Toy Story series (I have to say Toy Story 2 is one of the best sequels), Buzz Lightyear of Star Command follows the show a bit too closely. Unfortunately, if you've ever seen the animated series, that means a farty graphic style, unfinished animation, and an absolutely humourless approach to what should have been dazzling entertainment. Of course, you can't go fully wrong when you've got Arc Lasers, Iceguns, explosive rockets, Nerf-ish Plasma Ball Guns, Jet Packs, Hoverboards, and all the rest of Star Command's stupifying arsenal of toys to play with.

The end result is gameplay that's awkwardly inaccurate for the most part, but since Buzz's weapons burst out in a multi-colored array of cluttered bedlam spread all across the screen, it doesn't matter much where Buzz shoots so long as he can see the target. With the bad 3D camera, that's more often a problem than it should be, but so it goes.

Ignore that Buzz's game is supposed to be a Toy Story game, and you may quite enjoy a night's rental. Particularly when Buzz is hauling his heat-shielded booty across lava plains at the speed of a scream aboard a rocket-powered Hoverboard, Buzz Lightyear is sloppy, goofy fun, like the pained joy you get laughing at somebody who bit their tongue. Sometimes it's ridiculously lame gameplay one scene has you chasing after an evil bandit, and if you take shortcuts in the stage you can actually pass him up and find yourself waiting for him to pass so you can re-begin the chase but when you're moving like quicksilver across a blurring field of colors, it hardly matters whether or not you have fun doing it. You're brain will be so confused by the rush that you'll just figure it's having a good time. And if you're too smart for your mind to be deceived by such simple pleasures, you can always pull off a flip or twist trick to remind your brain that it's not beyond infantile diversions.

Where Buzz lets down is in the big picture. Despite the good presentation, this is another Playstation game wrapped up in Dreamcast textures, and you can see it in the blocky architecture and crappy landscape. Even the promise of toon shading is a cardboard front the very first sequence of gameplay shows this to be a sham, as the camera swings around a pixilated figure who just happens to be outlined in dark black lines. Technically, it all seems like a fun idea left unfinished. Buzz himself is articulated about as well as his big-screen counterpart. However, his alien opponents have three cycles of animation apiece.

And maybe that points to the problem here. If this game were based on Toy Story, it might have a chance of having some vibrancy. But it's not. It's really based on a crummy Saturday cartoon series with ripped-off hack shells of the Toy Story characters marionetted through familiar scenes. Intercut throughout the action are clips of the herky-jerky cartoon series. None of the clips make sense. Few even have relevance. All are mirthless lulls in the action. They certainly don't combine to tell a story. And without the heart or soul of Toy Story, what you're left with is an empty space suit set adrift in the universe.

Lets hope to forget this game forever.