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An orc's lot is not a happy one. He was born with a face that would sour cream and manners that were never intended to foster the cause of racial harmony. Even with these, and many other unpleasant characteristics to mark him as one of the lowest of the low, Grindleguts is a hero. Not perhaps a true hero in the normally accepted sense of the word but he is certainly the central character in Level Nine's adventure, Knight Orc. This was their first adventure to include a wide range of interactive characters and truly screenworthy graphics (only to be seen by disc users).

Sadly the Amstrad conversion appeared some time after other versions, giving other computer users a pleasure we could only read about. Available for the PCW and CPC (disc and cassette) machines, we can now stop 'orc bashing' and take up the colours of the Orc Preservation Society!

Knight Orc is distributed by Rainbird and the packaging shows the normal high standards. The instructions are very clear and helpful. And the short story, The Sign Of The Orc, by Peter McBride, sets the scene in a most colourful manner for the start of the adventure. Briefly, a small band of orcs has come out of the mountains on a raid. They end up in the cellars of an inn and become definitely the worse for wear. While in this beer-stained state they are cornered by the forces of the righteous and have to think of something to save their skins.

Their solution was to have one of their number fight it out in single combat with a human champion at the following day's tournament, Grindleguts, being unconscious at the time, was volunteered for the job and the other orcs stole quietly off into the night.

While the rules of combat were satisfied providing that one orc remained to give battle, the local ladies bowling team had other ideas. Their interest being not only seeing that justice be done but also a propensity for bowls made of bone rather than the more traditional wood. Closely chased by these formidable ladies, the orcs destroy the bridge that is the only access to their mountain retreat.

Although Grindleguts is used to foraging among the more unsavoury leavings of his world, he has never been so deep in the mire as now. This of course is where you come in - you have to help him win through. First across that broken bridge and then to solve the puzzles awaiting him on what should be his home ground, but what in reality proves to be an orc's nightmare.

The adventure is in three parts and although you can move between the last two parts at will, you must complete the first part before being permitted access to part two.

Surprise, surprise... friend Grindleguts ends up on a garbage heap after his abortive attempt at jousting with the journey's champion. Having come to and gathered his wits after this experience, he has to find his way home. The bridge is destroyed but there is a convenient iron ring in the carved rock above the gap. If he had a piece of rope, perhaps he could somehow attach it to the ring and swing across.

Although orcs normally have very little aptitude for magic, his close association with you seems to magnify what little he has. Small lengths of material that closely resemble rope may be tied together and magically meld to give a continuous coil of stout rope. The only problem, is to get a length long enough to serve his prime purpose of swinging across the chasm.

There are more than 200 locations in the first part of the adventure in which to search for these scraps of hemp, leather, hair and suchlike materials. There are also over twenty independent characters, including the formidable Mrs Wallop (prime mover in the Orc's Head Tavern Ladies Bowling Team), wandering around looking for golden treasure and the odd orc to brutalise.

The 200-odd locations are easy enough to map if you want to, but Knight Orc uses a similar operating system to Gnome Ranger that we looked at last month - you can GO TO or RUN TO locations without having to type in specific directions. GO TO describes all the locations as you pass through them and RUN TO ignores all the intermediate text.

Sometimes it might not be possible to get to the selected location because of a barrier in the way and occasionally your path may cross that of one of the independent characters. In the latter case they may steal from you (or retrieve something that is theirs) as you run past.

There are plenty of gold objects lying around for you to find but if you carry any of them openly, they will soon be stolen from you. Your score is wholly dependent upon the length of rope you have managed to put together, so try to hold back the orcish side of your team from grabbing anything that glitters.

The vast majority of the locations are repetitive groups of places based upon a type of tree - Elder Thicket, Elder Wildwood, Elder Grove, Hazel Thicket, Hazel Wildwood, Hazel Grove and so on. These locations have very little descriptive text and principally pad out the area where the independent characters can roam around. As you move about, you will hear them calling out their finds and needs, such as: "I've just stolen a gold finger from Attila", "How do I get a drink from the innkeeper?" or "Where can I find an orc to kill?".

You will have to map the entire area unless you can fathom out what are the significant locations. If you are stuck, remember that within just a few moves from the initial starting point (the rubbish heap), is somewhere that you can climb and see everywhere of importance... •

As in Gnome Ranger, you can FIND XXXX and sit back while the computer takes you there. You can also FOLLOW someone if you think that they will lead you to somewhere important. You may also get other characters to work for you, carrying out an independent action of your choice while you do something else.

In the first part there is only one character that is really friendly or stupid enough to do your bidding. In the other parts recruiting characters, especially those that compliment your own abilities, is very important.

Having found enough rope to swing across to Orc Mountain you enter the harder realms of part two. After all, the first part was only intended to give you an easy(ish) introduction to the new facilities available to you in Level 9's super new operating system. You now find that this extended symbiosis with a human has given him the ability to learn a number of magic spells. Finding them is not all that easy, but once learned they are a doddle to use - simply CAST XXXX and puff - instant magic.

NCE in the second part you also become aware of a strange helmet or visor that GG is wearing. Removal of this transports the action from a medieval fantasy world to quite a different technology altogether. Action in one world may be duplicated in the other. Some things are similar in both, many are quite different but may have similar functions - or do they...

GG himself is no longer the awkward, shambling, smelly, foul looking orc but is now something quite different. Which is the real world and which the fantasy... and does it matter? Those and many more intriguing puzzles are waiting for you to solve in Knight Orc. As with all Level 9 adventures there is plenty of built-in humour.

Just look carefully at all the treasures and all the characters and you will see what I mean. The graphics on the CPC disc version are very good and in my opinion better than on other computers, including those on the Atari ST. The parser and command interpreter is very good with all the facilities one has come to expect from Level 9. There are the usual RAM SAVE/LOAD and multiple OOPS command, you can even tell characters to WAIT a specific number of turns before carrying out a given task_ This latter facility may be useful if you wanted to plan a simultaneous attack on something that was too strong for one character to manage. An example given being:

TROLL, WAIT 2, IN, KILL VAMPIRE; MOUSE, WAIT 1, IN, KILL VAMPIRE; IN, KILL VAMPIRE.

Knight Orc is a great feast of all that is challenging in adventure gaming. The scenario is an intriguing mixture of ancient and modern with all the added difficulties of independent characters.

It is not easy, but for those of us that suffer from brain fade, excellent hint sheets are available that will help you without giving too much away as you use them.