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I played the Dragon version of Operation Safras which follows the successful Pettigrew's Diary. In fact, Safras is not a sequel - quite the reverse, since it describes events before the Diary.

Pettigrew's Diary has been described as one of the best adventures ever for the Dragon, and Keith even rated it as the best adventure covered in last January's Adventure Supplement! Personally, I have always disagreed with that assessment and therefore viewed Operation Safras with some doubts when it arrived.

Operation Safras follows a similar format to the Diary, having three parts. Each part has a connection with the other parts, but it is very slight.

The first part is about Pettigrew, giving his height, weight and so on. There follows a few scenes, one of which is set in a lift which is filling up with water.

To stop yourself from being drowned, you must press the right button to open the door. The remaining puzzles in the first section are rather similar.

Next follows the adventure game. Here you have to find five agents with the help of an agent locator. The locator shows which agent is nearest to you and how many hours you have in which to find him. If you fail, he will end up rather dead!

The adventure is written in Basic, as are the other parts of Operation Safras, and I found it very slow and boring! In fact, it could send an insomniac to sleep!

The third and final part is a collection of challenges to test you. In the first of these, our hero has to get past an axe-wielding giant. This seems to be rather out of place in this modern-day Adventure, but then this is a very disjointed adventure!

The only thing I liked about this game was the sound effects, but sound alone is not sufficient to make up for the shortcomings. My own feeling is that this so-called adventure is best left to those with an IQ of about 10!

Operation Safras is for the Dragon 32 and Tandy Colour Computer from Shards Software, priced £7.95. The Pettigrew Chronicles, a two-cassette pack containing the best of Pettigrew's Diary and Operation Safras, is available for the Commodore 64 and Spectrum for £9.95.