Home to some of the most alternative looking games, the Playstation Network offers a wide range of unusual and rather stunning titles to have graced the Playstation in the past few years. Titles such as Flower, .detuned and Noby Noby Boy have made a large impact in the way we choose to play and interpret games. Enter, Tecmo Koei's Fret Nice; a rather unusual looking platformer with a specific art style that really screams 'different' at you.

I downloaded the demo because it looked fairly interesting. The game can be played with either the guitar controller, or the normal controller. Now, as I don't own Guitar Hero or anything of the sort, I decided to play using the regular Playstation 3 Sixaxis controller. The title menu starts to play some rather upbeat, electronic music that really gets into your head and becomes insanely addictive. In fact, the entire soundtrack (of the demo) must be applauded; it worked magnificently well with the gameplay and the entire art style that was on offer. Read on to see what I thought of the demo.

Before you begin playing the level, you get to select your character. Your options include a man and a woman who look like they've stepped out of some seventies fairytale in which they've been subjected to many drugs, gingerbread and speaking lions with thorns in their paws. The characters are customisable, so you can choose which haircut, clothes, glasses (and so on) to give them. The range of options isn't that vast, but for a demo I highly doubted they would be. The choice of characters doesn't actually affect the game itself, but it does include multiplayer, as do many platformers.

The main objective is to proceed from point A to point B, which will last roughly about ten to fifteen minutes; depending on how much you observe the stylistic surroundings, or equally, how shit you are at playing the game. Throughout the level there are little musical notes to collect, which will make the sound of a plucked string when you pass through each of them. These notes go on to add points to your score, which is totalled along with the time it takes you to complete the level and how many enemies you defeat (pretty much like every platformer then).

The most interesting aspect of the game for me was the way in which you defeat your enemies. As you play the level your character runs with a guitar and as you jump in the air you can strum the guitar using L1, L2, R1, R2 and Δ. As you strum the guitar a little bubble will appear above your players head and each button you press will add a little feature such as an eye or a mouth, which you then have to use to replicate the features of your enemy in order to defeat them. So say your enemy has two eyes and a mouth, you would strum L2 twice and R1 in order to defeat them. I found this to be a really nice touch that created something different, yet so simple, breaking the boundaries of any conventional platformer where jumping on them or firing something at them may be enough to destroy them.

Fret Nice is a beautiful, picturesque type effort that really incorporates both its own art style and its own look. Guaranteed, that's what so many game developers are out to achieve nowadays, it's difficult to find something that really works, whether you love it or hate it. I did happen to think that maybe recent platformers such as LittleBigPlanet may have proved to be some inspiration behind this latest PSN title and you can occasionally see it.

The demo is far from perfect, I did find myself getting stuck and the controls are a bit dodgy at times. For example, you have to tap □ in order to run and by doing so your character doesn't seem to move any faster. Having not played it using the guitar controller I can only assume it is as difficult as you would think to play a platformer with a guitar. The game also allows fixed tutorial bubbles to get in the way of gameplay, so it can be difficult to see what you're doing at times.

Fret Nice is priced at £9.99 from the PSN. For what it is, I wouldn't say it's worth that. Having played the demo, I would expect to see this game for no more than £6, but it's a pleasant enough experience nonetheless. I don't happen to know how long the game is or what other features are available. Online can be accessed to view other players' high scores and as said before, multiplayer is also an option.

To conclude, I would say Fret Nice is a very good looking platformer in terms of style and sound but it's not a major pinnacle in the genre of platformers, it does however, include some very nice and artistic features. The game doesn't play so much on music as could be expected, and the controls may get a bit iffy at times, but for what it's worth I would definitely recommend downloading the demo as it's free and giving it a go to see if it's for you.