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Pass me the smelling salts, Code Masters have brought out, wait for it, an arcade adventure. The only differences this time are (a) Dizzy doesn't appear in it and (b) it's not actually very good.

You play a wizard, called Slightly, who has been entrapped in a castle. You have to escape the castle and free the princess who has also been banged up by an evil dragon.

At the start of the game your mastery of the ways of wizardry are sketchy, to say the least. You can't even cast a single spell. Playing 'find the lady' in a two-card deck would be a tall order for you. What you can do is walk, jump and use your powers of logical deduction on the puzzles in the game. Early puzzles are dead simple: when a dragon complains of thirst, you have the almighty task of deciding whether to give him the flea collar or the bucket of water. Mercy!

But pass through the first few puzzles in the game and the bottom falls out of your cosy little world. Not only can't you find anything that looks remotely useful, but such animated monstrosities as ghosts, bats and rock monsters test your reflexes as well as your brainpower.

This puzzle-intensive formula is a good one. It's similar to that used in the Dizzy games which were excellent. Where this game falls flat is in its poor execution. For a start, the graphics don't exactly cause your C64 to break into a sweat. Also, progress is slow. Slightly shuffles apologetically along, as if he's wandering around a library in a pair of bubblewrap shoes. And, worst of all, the menu system for picking up and dropping objects is flawed beyond belief. When you meet a creature that wants to talk to you the screen flashes on and off several times. Then, when you try to access the object you wish to use, it takes about seven joystick presses - unresponsive controls have never been so, er, unresponsive.

Slightly Magic is not a dreadful game, but we've come to expect more from Codemasters - especially in the way of arcade adventures. Sorry guys but if you're going to create something as popular as Dizzy, you'll have to make sure you've got something at least two thirds as good to back it up. And this isn't it.

Sorry, but cute graphics and good animation won't help you ignore the appalling programming. Is it written in BASIC?