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Explorer is a son of adventure set in the future, 30 billion light years from the nearest service station. You play the part of an outcast, fated to wander the 40 billion locations of the emerald planet, in search of the nine parts of your space ship.

There is no attempt at a title-page for this game; you're straight in on the action. (I think it's the action.) You can wander about the planet at three different heights. The first is ground level, and the view is in intricate detail. You can move forward, backward and from side to side. There are supposed to be some aliens, but you will probably be asleep by the time you see one.

You know how some adventure games take hours and hours to play, but seconds to get into - well, this one takes hours and hours to get into (if at all!) and aeons to explore. This is mainly because scene drawing is ama...zing...ly slow and boring. You can leave beacons around the planet to help you survey it: however, this becomes tedious as you very soon get out of their range. There is no sound that deserves a mention. If there was any, its insignificance was drowned by the whirring of my disk drive.

It's a wonderful concept to have a game with billions of locations to explore and some delightfully varied graphics. The trouble is it is incredibly boring to play. An adequate substitute for Mogadon and "Horlicks".

Visible but still boring.

Play for three hours without falling asleep.

Graphics 86%
P. Intricate detail in every scene, including semi-moving water!
N. Very slow scene-drawing.

Sonics 0%
N. Couldn't hear a thing.

Grab Factor 34%
N. No action whatsoever.

Staying Power 15%
P. Literally billions of locations to search through.
N. Nothing happened in the first five hours play.

Overall 19%
N. £10 is a lot for a turkey.