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They always say that the film isn't as good as the book. Well, now meet the game that isn't as good as the book either... Blood Valley. Yep, the very same Blood Valley as the Duelmaster fantasy adventure book, only without the playability.

In its favour, it has the fact that it is a real two-player game - the greatest fun you're going to get is chatting to your mate how bad it is.

The idea itself isn't such a bad one: You can play either nasty tyrannous landowner-type the Achveult, whose idea of fun is to hunt down the odd slave every so often, or the hapless poor person he turns loose as quarry.

Should you have got the plum job as a hunter, you get to place your grizzly allies at suitable strategic locations around the place, which has to rate as the highlight of the game. If you drew the short straw, you can choose whether you want to be a meathead barbarian, a wily thief, or a distinctly dodgy-looking priest. Each have a series of tasks that they have to perform - kill the evil Kritos Bloodheart, steal the Golden Idol etc - as well as getting out of the valley in one piece, of course.

So far, so good. It is only once the perfectly successful establishing screens are dealt with that the severe limitations of the game become apparent. For one thing, the split-screen effect that allows you to see what both characters are doing makes the sprites rather tiny, but this is compounded by the fact that the animation and scrolling is unforgivably jerky and limited. The chap getting to play the escapee gets to slash vaguely at his captors, and collect gold and other less identifiable items when they collapse as skeletons at his feet.

Really the instruction book is to blame here in that it fails to make it clear just what you are meant to do with everything, and you are unlikely to stick around long enough to find out.

To your right, there is a panel with various displays, but the one you really have to keep an eye on is your energy level, indicated suitably by a sword. I say suitably, as this is really a sword over your head, since your reserves drop at an alarming rate. Really, you have to eat something every two minutes or less, which gets to be a real pain quite rapidly. What this also tends to mean is that the game is biased towards the pursuers, enough to make the whole thing a bit of a farce.

I can't pretend I spent very long playing this, the whole thing was just too frustrating. It's come to something when the most praiseworthy thing about a game is its music, which in this case is atmospheric and not at all bad.