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Once again Roger Wilko inadvertently finds himself in the thick of things. Following his gnat's-whisker escape from Vohaul's asteroid he's been enjoying a restful kip within the sleep tank of an escape pod which currently drifts aimlessly through the vast emptiness of a cold, black space. Empty that is save for a huge junk freighter which catches sight of Roger's pod (not a pretty sight!) and, believing it to be space junk, beams it onboard to let it rust amid the decaying shells of other unfortunate machines. Roger slowly comes to his senses (difficult for a guy like him) and leaves the now-defunct pod to explore this space-age rag and bone cart in the hope of finding a way out.

The first thing he finds is a warp motivator which looks jolly useful but is too heavy to manoeuvre. A wider exploration reveals the head of a giant robot with one eye missing, an array of old space ships (including a TIE Fighter) and a vertical conveyor belt. Travelling upwards on the belt is no big deal but getting off it before it throws you into a bone-crunching masher is another matter.

Safely negotiating the masher, you come across a machine, complete with a magnetic grabber, used to collect junk from the area from which you've just ascended. Playing around with this machine is not only fun but also essential to your escape.

Eventually - should you successfully avoid being mugged by the mutant rats - you find a ship in reasonable conditin, repair it and blast your way out of the junk freighter.

During subsequent space travels you discover that two famous programmers have been captured and are being forced to work for the dastardly company, Scum Soft. As you're a hero born and bred, you can't help but take up the challenge of rescuing them.

Employing keys and/or mouse, you steer a strutting Roger through a 3D environment, using text inputs to get him to carry out specific tasks. Animation of Roger and all other characters is effective, considering the size and complexity of the game, and detail in background (and foreground) graphics is very good. FX are an improvement on earlier Sierra games (they couldn't get much worse actually) and music, when it kicks in, is suitably jolly.

At £34.99 it's not everybody who can afford Sierra (little car joke there) games, especially when - without wishing to brag... much - it's possible to complete one in approximately seven hours (give or take a couple of disk accessing). Making the cost of playing Sierra Quest III about five pounds an hour.

However, even though the ending is less than enthralling, I regard it as well worth the buckazoids because it's incredibly enjoyable to play, and there's more than one solution, so in a couple of years you can play it again, in a different way.