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Ultimate's Arthur Pendragon has seen some action in his few brief months of superhero-dom.

In his first game, Staff Of Karnath, he wrestled with the ancient Egyptian ghouls underneath one of the pyramids. Snakes and beetles were his foes in the second archaeological game, Entombed.

Now our hero finds himself aboard a mysterious galleon drifting crewless in a distant ocean. Your mission is to find the captain's soul hidden in the bowels of the ship.

Several nasties attempt to thwart Sir Arthur in his quest - principally the harpies and giant flying spiders. Hidden in one of the rooms below deck is a magic sword, which you must find immediately to find off the energy-sapping nasties.

You begin the quest with 100% energy and this is decreased each time one of the nasties touches you. Energy can be boosted by finding doubloons hidden in some of the rooms.

You need to keep a constant eye on your energy level because if it reaches zero a skull and skeleton's hand appears on screen and drags you off.

As with the other two Pendragon games, mapping is paramount. You need to collect various items as you explore - not all of which are useful.

Critics are going to say that Black Wyche is no different to Emtombed, which in turn was no different to Staff Of Karnath.

Certainly, Ultimate appear to be a bit short of ideas when you look at their recent launches - for the Spectrum as well as the Commodore.

But even if the game is a bit samey, it still has better graphics, smoother scrolling, and more pure addictiveness than 99% of the other arcade adventures available for the C64.

If you haven't got an Ultimate game for your machine yet then now is the best time. Black Wyche is the best of the Pendragon trilogy - you won't want to put down the joystick until you've solved it.