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You know how it is. One moment you're happily playing baseball in the park with your sister, the next you're whisked away to another dimension.

Such is the fate that befalls poor Brad, a typical all-American sneakers-'n-baseball-cap kinda kid. While sliding into fourth base, a magic portal appears right in front of him and to his dismay Brad suddenly finds himself tumbling through time and space.

With a thump, Brad lands in the magical realm of Zeloria, surrounded by hideously deformed creatures. He barely has time to come to his senses before he's dragged away and imprisoned in a dark dungeon cell. As if things weren't bad enough already, Brad soon learns that his abduction was all the plot of an evil witch who requires a human male child as a vital ingredient in an eternal youth potion - him! Can Brad escape, defeat the wicked witch and find a way back home? Only you (as they say) can decide.

Curse Of Enchantia is a graphic adventure written firmly in the first foray into the genre but it's obviously been taking a few pointers from the American experience - lush hand-painted backgrounds, animated characters and a friendly icon-based player interface pitch Curse into direct competition with the games from the US masters.

But can it topple the incredible Monkey Island 2 from the top of the graphic adventuring tree? Only one way to find out...

Curse uses a point-n'-click icon interface. The icon bar can be brought up at any time by clicking on the right mouse button and then selections are made by with the left button. Some of icons when clicked on bring up a second Icon bar allowing further actions. That hand, for example, is the 'manipulate objects' icon, which brings up a second set of icons allowing you to do a range of actions from unlocking a door to eating and throwing.

In all, there are a possible thirteen actions in all, many requiring interaction with objects in the scenery and/or in your inventory. It's a bit more cumbersome than Lucasfilm and Sierra's interfaces and even after a fair bit of use it can still confuse.

As seems to be the trend with most modern graphic adventures, Curse's scenery was first painted by hand then digitally scanned in and retouched.

The resulting graphics are far more attractive and flowing than those you'd get if they'd been drawn on the computer screen (compare the backgrounds to Hook's, for example). The only drawback is they can be a unclear in places - finding some of the objects you need to solve the puzzles amongst the jumble of pixels can be difficult sometimes.

There's lots to enjoy in Curse Of Enchantia. The graphics are attractive if a little 'scratchy' in places, the character animation is fun, the sound is fine - the brief speech samples when you greet someone or cry 'Help!' are a particularly neat touch - and the player interface, although a tad cumbersome at first, works fine.

Curse Of Enchantia looks good, sounds good and plays well - so why don't I like it as much as I should? There are several reasons. For a start, the 'arcade'-like sections are nothing but a pain in the butt, especially as there's no real threat of death from them.

More importantly, the puzzles are too linear and their solutions too simple - if you've got a problem, nine times out of ten the answer can be found nearby. These criticisms are especially true of the first section of the game - it's easy to get a good fifth of the way into it on your first go.

Admittedly the game opens up from then on, but it's still a relatively easy ride. The only time you ever really get stopped in your tracks is when a solution relies on an object that you've missed because either it's too small to see clearly (some are literally a couple of pixels big) or it's hidden 'behind' the scenery (which is plain annoying and totally unfair). Also, despite some good moments, Curse lacks real humour and atmosphere.

This may be partly due to the lack of text in the game - it's hard to relate to the characters you meet when all they do is spout obscure icons at you. Although entertaining, Curse Of Enchantia is to Monkey Island 2 what Smash is to mashed potato - although at first you may be fooled into thinking it's the real thing, you'll soon discover that it's just a weaker substitute.