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French games used to have a reputation for combining excellent graphics with non-existent gameplay. The situation has improved recently with Delphine's superb Future Wars which broke new ground in ST games programming, but Astate does little to further the image of French software.

Your task is to find five pieces of a statue that are sprinkled about the French countryside. The graphics are great and the backdrops are extremely well-drawn, but any interest this encourages disappears when you actually try to play the game.

Using a pair of boots, a drill, a detector, a sturdy pickaxe and a hand, you have to investigate screens and locate miscellaneous items.

Quite simply it's boring. You trudge around the countryside drilling trees, pickaxing houses and checking meadows with the detector, occasionally chancing upon something incredibly exciting such as a tin can or a key, but these items prove to be of little or no use solving the game.

The Astate legend is something of a mystery and that's exactly how this game remains to me - a complete mystery.