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For the producers of Rocket Raid and Snapper, I'd say this was a real comedown. Century claim it's colourful, zany, fast and addictive but the proof of a game is in the playing.

Colourful? Yes, but in a sort of chunky, unsophisticated way, and the gameplay is in no way going to 'glue you to the keyboard'.

Zany? Definitely! You control a green blob with a white spike which even with a great deal of imagination doesn't look anything like a horseman.

Anyway, the screen appears, with you (the blob) at the start and you follow a little track around until you reach the centre of the screen where the message you're carrying is to be delivered. Once this is accomplished, you start all over again with different obstacles.

These obstacles consist of water courses which have to be jumped, and foot soldiers who have to be killed. When you reach one of these on the first screen it dissolves into a larger representation of you and either your opponent or water course, with the water being far more deadly. You then have to kill or jump and if you manage it you're back to the track and on to the next obstacle. Simple.

The nasty little foot soldiers (yellow blobs with spikes) appear in several different locations. With a bush, without a bush and with a bridge, but this doesn't make much difference to the gameplay since all you have to do is shoot them with an arrow and carry on.

In later levels, you even get two or three of them attacking at once. After you've managed to pick up the rather obscure keys and work out what to do the game becomes rather easy, if not boring and you begin to wonder why you're bothering.

When I read the blurb for this game, I thought that I was about to enter into epic quest, an arcade adventure that would rival anything now available for the BBC. I should have realised by now that copywriters do not always tell the truth.

Supposedly based on a novel I've never heard of, The Horse Lord is basically a race against the clock interspersed with some fairly primitive problems. Having fought ruthless warriors, leapt wide rivers and reached the end of my quest three times, I found I was bored and no amount of blurb or coaxing could stop me resetting the machine and loading up Elite.

The author of this game is Jonathan Griffiths. Does that ring a bell? Yes, he is the man behind games like Snapper, Rocket Raid and the infamous JCB Digger. Well, this latest creation is original but, oh so boring!

It falls down badly on playability even through the presentation and the graphics are pleasant enough. What's happening to you, Jonathan? Give us another faithful copy of an arcade game!