In Lunch A Palooza players enter frenetic food fights as one of eight dishes, pushing other delicacies off the table in single player or multiplayer for up to four people. Pepper your character with power-ups to spice up your unique attacks. When dishing out the pain anything goes, from serving side dishes to sweep up the competition, to setting up push traps to clear the table for the next sitting. Remember, the dinner table arena is a hazardous place for food with flying enemies that are always trying to nab a piece of you...

Lunch A Palooza feels more like a hidden mini game than it does a full blown release. You can play on your own or via local multiplayer (Yup, sadly there's no online support). So you can play against up to three friends with the computer AI taking up the remaining slots.

There are four modes (Main Course, Side Dish, King of the Cloche, and Royal Buffet) but to be honest there's not that much variety between each game - well, not enough to keep it interesting.

The gameplay is pretty simple. Choose between one of 8 different meals, each having different skills and attacks, that can be countered and balanced between other players. The idea of the game is to knock your opponents off the table (so that they lose a life) while trying to ensure that you don't get knocked off the table. The winner is the one who is the last to lose all their lives.

Lunch a Palooza has the potential (but to be honest not a lot) to be a fun party game. Take on your friends and see who is the last one standing. The problem is there's not a whole deal of skill to it and button mashing seems to be the best way forward. It's also random whether you are sent flying after you're attacked or get a gentle nudge. So you can pretty much throw tactics out of the window as your try and stay in the centre of the table and randomly hit the attack button.

There's a few environments to play in, with additional ones available to unlock later. Again, to be honest, there's nothing that interesting to get excited about. You can use items in the environment as weapons (but weaponless opponents seem to be able to knock you for six just as easily) and traps that can be set off to give you a winning edge.

I was expecting the RRP to be something along the line of £5-10 but the Xbox store currently has it for sale at £16.74, which is a little steep for a game that you'll play for a couple of hours (tops) before never returning to again.

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Nick Smithson