WTF: Work Time Fun is a strange mix between Wario Ware and that old wacky PS1 game, Incredible Crisis, but somehow misses the mark and comes off as more of a chore than actual fun.

Graphics are an interesting topic for this game because there is no uniform style in the game. Instead, each job has its own look and feel, which can leave you feeling a bit disjointed at first, but after six mini-games or so, you get used to the drastic differences. The graphics range from simple, 8-bit Frogger style to cartoony, seemingly hand-drawn characters, to cut-up and manipulated photographs. The only real consistency is in the hub area (the temp agency) between jobs.

Sound is about the same as the graphics. Each job has its own style and the sound effects match their visual counterparts fairly well. The game's music, though also themed for each game, tends to blend into the background so much that songs are often forgettable as soon as you move to another job.

WTF: Work Time Fun lets you partake of a wide variety of jobs that most would consider mundane and boring (census counting, wood chopping, etc.) and attempts to put some fun into it. As you perform your jobs, you will earn money to be spent in the in-game vending machines.

Jobs either give you a certain number of lives/attempts before it's over and you collect your paycheck, or they only end when you get too bored with the game. One job sees how many mushrooms you can collect in the middle of a busy highway (until you get run over one to many times, that is), while another game has you working in a pen factory putting tops on pens. This particular exercise is a trial in patience because, as far as I can tell, it ends when you get fed up and decide to try something else.

I mentioned vending machines earlier. These machines come in several tiers and will give you various knick-knacks. Each tier not only costs more than the previous, but the items that fall out are a bit more valuable. While the lowest level one will net you magnets and other little trinkets, the bigger ones can get you interesting PSP Tools. These tools are everything from a bill splitter for dividing up the check at the end of a meal or a Ramen timer that you can set to various times while your noodles sit in your microwave. The Ramen timer is one of the aspects of WTF that makes this one of those "crazy Japanese games." While you wait for your dinner, a bathing-suit clad guy or girl (your choosing) will count down the time or talk about how much they like Ramen.

Between games, not only will you stalk the vending machines, but you will also be able to check e-mails sent to you by your various jobs, co-workers and of course, spam. The spam is what really got me - if you think it might be spam, it's best to delete it because some messages will take money from your bank account immediately (for that plot of land at the bottom of the ocean). But decide carefully, because you could also get gifts in your e-mail. I've gotten everything from that Ramen timer, to money, to various other trinkets.

Like I said at the start, Work Time Fun takes cues from mini-game style titles, but where Wario Ware kept you on edge and frantic with it's short games, WTF's approach makes the game seem never-ending and almost tiring.

Difficulty is, like the graphics and sound, an unusual topic in WTF: Work Time Fun. Most of the jobs start off at a reasonable pace or difficulty level and little by little, the game turns up the burner. Where you might be able to easily spot out 10 people in the census-checking job for the first couple of levels, you quickly find yourself in a street packed with random objects and vehicles trying to pick out just how many humans walk by.

There were a few jobs that seemed to ramp up the difficulty a little too quickly for my taste (the census one being a good example), but for the most part, the gradual increase in difficulty was at just the right level.

WTF: Work Time Fun's controls change with every job and, for the most part, it always took me a few attempts before I was able to get the hang of a particular activity's controls, but it rarely took too long. On the other hand, there were a few cases where I just never got a good enough grip on the controls, an early baseball-catching game springs to mind, and I just rarely went back to those activities if I could help it.

These schemes ranged from just clicking a button a certain number of times to having to hit two or three button combos over and over again to navigate a guy across a busy intersection. Thankfully each activity has a How To section that lets you review these control schemes before actually trying to earn money.

WTF ends up being one of those games that just sucks time away from you and you are left wondering how you spent the past hour putting caps on pens. I never really found the game to be fun per se, but it was a good way to take up time ... come to think about it, I wish I had pulled it out during my wait in the PS3 line -- those 30+ hours would have just flown by.