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"Credit should be given where credit is deserved," as they notoriously always seem to say, so let's bestow Dylan Dog with at least a little initial credit. In fact, to fail to mention some of the graphically atmosphere-setting extras to be found within this game would be a veritable crime - the stereo systems with speakers that actually vibrate to the in-game music, and the spurts of blood that convincingly ooze out of stabbed individuals to name but two.

This sort of attention to detail usually implies that the programmers have got everything else just right and are wisely filling any spare memory. This sort of attention to detail doesn't usually imply that the programmers have duffed up the rest of the game beforehand.

The smattering of above-mentioned touches pale into the deep recesses of insignificance considering the absurd animation, the appallingly slow joystick responses and the completely flat look of a supposedly 3D house. Dylan Dog, as you may have been wondering by now, is a bloke (and not a dog) and possibly the star of some Italian comic strip if I'm interpreting the title screen correctly. In the game, Dylan has been trapped in the house of evil - it is your job to escape with your life. The instructions give no idea how to do this. But on my first go, by walking between rooms, killing everyone in sight (by tedious repeated fire-pressing), collecting a few objects and picking up a few new weapons (via an awful selection screen that keeps needing to be called up), I suddenly entered a room to be rewarded with a tacky animated sequence that I could make neither head nor tail of, apparently notifying me that I was a quarter of the way through the game.

The fact that I was unable to get any further on subsequent games actually came as little disappointment; I could see that nothing was going to change and I had no desire ever to play the thing again. And by way of a conclusion? I'm afraid I'm completely unable to think of one. I think an epitaph would be far more fitting instead.

It's foreign. It's weird. It's boring. It's far too expensive and it should be avoided like the plague.