If you are a veteran in these parts, you are holding your breath and hoping things will be different this time. Things will not be different this time. For the sixth week in a row, we leave the elves and the aliens aside and turn our attention to a sports game. Yes, it really is getting to be a bit much. Sorry about that.

But.

Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Games is a sports game for people who cannot abide sports games. It is doe-eyed and gentle and syrupy and it does not like getting grass stains on its knees. It is a sweet and kind sports game that hopes you will win but really, really hopes you will try hard and have fun and maybe we can all make S'mores or go out for hot chocolate afterward.

The game features a cast of athletic hamsters. Most of them star on a TV show, which is also called Hamtaro and which you have probably seen if you watch a lot of YTV. Hamtaro is a Japanese cartoon, or animé, but it has little in common with the campy sci-fi magical-overfiends-of-the-apocalypse animé you studiously avoid when you go to your local independent video store.

No, Hamtaro is a lot like The Care Bears, which is to say that it features great numbers of friendly, cuddly critters in assorted colours, most of whom try very hard not to hurt each other's feelings. It is the kind of show you watch on days when SpongeBob strikes you as just a little too overwhelming and overcharged with conflict and intrigue. To say that it is for children is to miss the point. It is a bold experiment in unthreatening wholesomeness, sailing bravely into the syrupiest of waters. So yes, Ham-Ham Games lays it on a little thick.

It is the Olympics, more or less, except that it has rodents instead of buff human athletes. You take charge of a team of hamsters, competing in a wide variety of events over several days. You must run the 100 metres. You must take part in a diving competition. You must master the art of synchronized swimming. You must also participate in something called "Carrot Pull," which the IOC would do well do consider for medal-sport status.

In most Olympics and track-and-field video games, running and jumping and vaulting are all accomplished by hammering repeatedly on the same button as quickly as you can. The idea is that, even in virtual competition, you should feel a little pain before you get to stand on the podium. That is not the way things work here, however. To run, you must watch a little dot bouncing back and forth along a line. You must tap a button just as the dot reaches one end. Get the timing right, and your little hamster will race down the track as if a hungry cat were in hot pursuit.

Watching the little dot and swatting at it is an inane task, true, and performing it repeatedly will make you feel a bit like a rat in a psychology experiment. But will also make you grin. And standing up to receive your bronze medal afterward will make you grin even more. Maybe that is how the rat feels when it gets a food pellet.

In diving, your hamster leaps off the platform, and then little icons blink at you, prompting you to tap a specific sequence of buttons. Up-up-right-A-B-down, for example. With each successful entry, the hamster performs a tuck or a twist or extends its legs or something like that. If you fail to complete the full sequence in time, you will have no endure both a middling score from the judges and harsh-looking bellyflop. Either way, your hamster pals will root vigorously for you, and will tell you they could tell you tried really hard. This will also give you that food-pellet feeling.

One of the hamster teams in the competition is comprised entirely of pirates. They are also unrelentingly cheerful, but they do say "Arrrr!" every once in a while, which is nice.