After Leisure Suit Larry (STF 53, 57%), King's Quest is the second in the Sierra series of adventures re-released through Kixx XL. Leisure Suit Larry was pretty poor, but sadly King's Quest is marginally worse.

You see, the inherent problem with re-releasing early Sierra titles is the age of the damn things. King's Quest I was first released in 1986, when all it had as competition was Defender Of The Crown - a pretty game but a bad case of amant (all mouth and no trousers). Since then, we've seen adventures from Rainbird, Lucasarts and Revolution, to name but three who have produced games that are many times better than King's Quest.

In the game you play bold Sir Graham, a knight who has been requested by his king to go and rescue three valuable magical artifacts which were pinched from the kingdom in order that their land would prosper once more. The rescue of these artifacts proves extremely difficult - not because of the cunning puzzles and traps throughout the game, but because of the appallingly bad interface between you and the game.

It's a mixture between graphical and text adventure styles. You control Sir Graham with your mouse, and move him about the land; but when you need to examine or do something you have to type it into the command line. The point-and-click interface is rather slow and tedious, especially with the addition of inputting text.

The next batch of Quest games contain Police Quest and Space Quest games, and then we move on to the second game in each series. As each sequel came along, the games got better - so we have some reasonably decent stuff to look forward to later this year. Don't wait for them, unless you're really desperate for another adventure, that is.

1. Good puzzles, decent storyline.

1. Graphics that were almost certainly drawn by a five-year old.
2. Terrible, outdated interface.
3. Still £15, which is now way too much money.