The title Martian Gothic is suggestive of a cross between Batman and Alien and the plot for this PC-based game certainly lives up to the billing.

Centred on Mars base Vita 1 in the year 2019, the game offers a compelling story, well reinforced by tasty atmospheric graphics.

The mission is a whodunnit in space, with the aim of finding out how the station's previous residents met an untimely demise.

It is a role-playing game with a difference. The player takes on the role of not one but three different people who have been dispatched to solve the mystery.

You need to be seriously schizophrenic to juggle the key characters as the plot also dictates our trinity of sleuths must never meet face-to-face while in the station.

This leaves you as their guide and mentor, constantly switching between each persona, trying to keep them alive and at the same time work out how to use their individual skills to best effect.

The shame for Martian Gothic is such an interesting and original plot is let down by weak play functions.

Our intrepid trio must battle an army of undead.

The manual shows the way to counter these attacks to press the arrow keys repeatedly to throw corpse from your back.

This soon becomes finger aching and keyboard damagingly boring.

Another badly thoughtout factor is the Save Game feature.

By its design you are forced to re-enact whole sections of the story after each save.