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At last, at last, here's one game that's got all the qualities you'd hope for in a good adventure. Graphics, variety, plenty of surprises, a good plot, easy to play - yes folks, Rescue has the lot!

You are an agent of some kind, who has to try to rescue a princess held captive in a castle, and bring her back to your base - alive. You'll need a 48K Spectrum to get you through in one piece...

Yes, the princess is there in the castle, just waiting to be rescued.

But before you can rescue her, you have to break into the castle - and before you can do that, you have to find it. And before you can find it, you have to collect various objects to help you - a torch, a gun, a rope, a uniform, that sort of thing - and of course, you have to find *them*, by hunting in couple of dozen different places where they could be concealed.

Oh, and all this must be done while at the same time avoiding prowling enemy guards and notching up the points you'll need to survive the castle...

At first glance at the cassette, you'd suppose that this is a remarkably simple adventure game. No instructions at all, apart from how to load it. Then you realise that what it's telling you is that the instructions are there on the tape - and so massive are they that loading them takes almost as long as loading the game itself.

You can choose to read them or go straight on to load the game - but if you vote to read them, you'd better have a pencil and paper at hand, because they go on for over 20 screenfuls. And there's no provision to print them out with the ZX printer, so you'll just have to get scribbling.

I wished heartily that Computer Rentals had produced a separate sheet of printed instructions.

Four levels of play are offered, from 1, that's easy, to 4 - otherwise known as impossible.

I consider myself to be a reasonably smart bloke, so I chose level 1. A good luck message was printed, and the game was underway.

The game is played on a 'board' made up of concentric circles, linked together like a spider's web - and a fresh board is created every time you play.

You start by hunting for a map and radio in the innermost ring, and only then can you move out to search for other objects in the next three rings. From the outermost ring, you get to cross various obstacles, such as a river, to look for the castle on the other side - but only if you have the right object, for example, a boat, with you to help you cross.

I moved around the middle ring, nine-men's morris style, since you can only move to an adjacent location or an adjacent one on the ring or rings next to yours. I looked in the house, but all I got was a few points for visiting it, and "Sorry there appears to be nothing here".

Undeterred, I tried the garage where I found the map, and picked it up. Now the Spectrum displayed a map showing the layout of the rings, and my position, and after finding the radio, I was also shown the exact positions of the enemy patrols.

These two guards keep on the move at the same time as you, and if they catch up with you, you are well and truly dead.

And they play pretty intelligently, lurking near locations where you might want to go when you have collected a particular object, and doing a neat pincers movement to try to cut you off.

They certainly kept me on my toes.

You are shown a status panel after very action you make, showing you your location, score, objects you have acquired, patrol locations, and the options open to you - MOVE, PICK, LOOK and so forth.

I finally crossed the river with the boat I'd found, and managed to find the castle. Armed with my chosen entry object, a key, I broke in and started the hunt for the princess. But there are a large number of rooms to be searched, on several floors, and each may hold dangers as well as princesses, and you have only a limited supply of energy. If it runs out - back to the drawing board.

Well, I got wiped out in no uncertain terms, by a large and deadly cobra, so I can't tell you what would have been involved in getting my princess back to home base. Probably I should have saved the game, but although you can in fact do so, this option is not mentioned in the instructions.

You cannot re-run the game at a later date with the same difficulty level, hoping it will be the same - because it certainly will not. It is different every time it is played.

At a guess, I'd say you would need about three hours at level 1 to complete the game successfully - I say "guess" because I haven't managed to do it!

This is the best adventure game I have ever played. It is excellent, for a number of very good reasons. Many adventure games give you a severely limited range of ways to achieve things - to pass a dragon, say, you either kill it or cast a spell. But Rescue has a different philosophy. You decide how to rescue the princess, you decide what tactics to employ, you decide what objects to use and how to use them.

I give my blessing...