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Gargantuan is an over-used adjective, but a game with 40 billion mappable locations seems to qualify for this description - so using it one more time to describe Explorer won't do any harm. The Ram Jam Corporation has ever been a source of oddities, from its first and marvellously humorous Valkyrie 17 adventure. In this new quest, the cosmic joke is that your second-hand space vehicle has broken up over the Emerald planet. To make matters worse, fragments of your craft have scattered around nine of its 40 billion locations - and you've got to find them all before escape is possible... some cosmic joke, huh?

Several vital instruments have survived the crash. There's a Compass, a Homing Beacon, Direction Finder, a Laser Pulse Gun and an all-important Sonar. Recovering the ship parts is a problem, but at least the sonar makes life sound brighter - by bouncing an echo off an object, its bearing and rough distance is revealed. A short walk through the jungle is okay, but you're told if the range is too far for a scroll and it's then time to take the trusty jetpack.

When within range of an object, travelling can be done on foot. Pressing the forward key brings the front view into sharp relief and shows the next planet section. Left and right movements (or even a full 180 degree turn) are shown as a bearing at the top of the screen.

The Emerald Planet is largely uninhabited, except for a strange breed of energy-sapping robotic bugs. Energy loss can be fatal, and although there is a means of replenishing it, killing the robots is a far better method of staying alive. A Laser Pulse Gun is a handy extra when it comes to bugs - it's accessed through Weapons Mode.

Swirling patches of colour are encountered deeper in the jungle. These act as doorways to locations elsewhere on the planet. Remember: there are 40 billion, so almost any name will do for a destination. Mind you, you can get lost too, so this is where the homing beacons come in. These can be dropped anywhere to be used as useful reference points - they're seen from the air as flashing squares.

The energy available to power all the equipment is limited, and the level of reserves is shown as one of the menu options, which can be accessed at any time by pressing Fire and then the first letter of the required option.

This is a computer simulation of searching for a needle in a haystack. It's absolutely mind-numbingly tedious - literally spending hours flying over what appears to be the same landscape, achieving absolutely nothing.

And when you do finally get within range of your target, it takes hours to pinpoint its exact position... Aaargh! I would also dispute the manufacturers claim that the planet consists of 40 billion locations - it appears to me to be 40 boring locations repeated a billion times!

Don't buy this under any circumstances, unless of course your idea of a good time it taking up the carpet and watching the floorboards warp.

How does the idea of attempting to explore forty billion locations grab you? No, me neither. Explorer is basically a programming exercise designed to impress rather than stimulate - but it does neither.

The graphics, though reasonably well executed, are lacking in any sort of variety - there could be ten locations for all we know! It more or less consists of triangulating compass bearings to find the parts of your spaceship.

A heavily sarcastic 'wow'. Maybe this system of creating locations can be put to better use in another game - it's completely wasted in this one.

In order to be able to call this computer entertainment, the term would have to be redefined. Locating the nine inconsequential objects within the 40 billion virtually identical screens is unbelievably tedious, monotonous, pointless, fruitless and rubbish.

The gameplay is completely unrewarding, there's no action, and all of the locations that I've seen look exactly the same. If you really want to do some exploring why not buy a rail or bus ticket? There's a whole world outside your computer that has an infinite number of locations, the scenery is portrayed in highly convincing 3D and it moves in a lovely parallax scrolling fashion.

Presentation 42%
Confusing, awkward, and frustratingly slow.

Graphics 64%
Attractive, but repetitive.

Sound 10%
Very little, and what's there is poor.

Hookability 27%
Irritating and far from addictive.

Lastability 7%
Absolutely nothing stimulating or worthwhile to return to.

Value For Money 6%
Represents an abysmal investment for ten pounds.

Overall 13%
In this case, big isn't remotely beautiful - not one single redeeming feature to write home about.