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From the 'parental discretion' warning on the box to the scantily clad female flesh scattered throughout the packaging, it's clear that Sierra is perfectly happy to keep the Leisure Suit Larry series where it's always been, walking the sidewalks of Sleazeville.

For those of you unfamiliar with the sexploits of Larry Laffer, a 40-year-old self-styled ladies man and celebrated (?) no-hoper, his story began in 1988 in Sierra's The Land Of The Lounge Lizards. His mission? To 'score with a chick', of course. Thus, the formula for this phenomenally successful innuendo-laden interactive adventure series was born - a point-and-click romp through a series of pre-defined encounters, each with a puzzle or two to be solved.

His next two adventures - Looking For Love In Several Wrong Places and Passionate Patti In Pursuit Of The Pulsating Pectorals - further explored the lower echelons of locker-room humour, adding a spot of KGB-embroiled intrigue and introduced us to Passionate Patti, nightclub pianist-cum-FBI agent and foil to Larry's ineptitude.

And so now we some to game number five. Hang on a minute, though - can't somebody count around here? Whatever happened to LSL4?

Well, it's a joke, you see. Apparently Patti has run off with it. LSL4 The Missing Floppies details Larry's and Patti's passionate affair, which happened after LSL3, you see, and there ain't no way she's letting us look at it. A shame.

Hence the latest installment - Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work. Larry finds himself working for a TV company specialising in pornography (surprise, surprise) and is given the job of finding the sexiest woman in America to star in a new show. Meanwhile, the Mob is keen in a new show. Meanwhile, the Mob is keen to get porn off the TV and profitably back under the counter - to this end, it is engaged in making sure the show gets banned. Patti's task is to finger the man behind the mob which, as one might guess from the title, is more than likely to entail her taking her clothes off and having sex with people. Good for her - I understand it's a very old and revered profession.

So far, so smutty. The adventure, if you will, kicks off with Larry setting out to find three sexy women and video his 'dealings' with them so his boss can appraise their performance. Hidden around the TV company offices are a selection of items that will enable Larry to travel, find the women and bring back the footage.

Your actions - for you, of course, play Larry - are carried out by means of a selection of cursors, each having a different function which can be selected from a pull-down menu at the top of the screen or by cycling through them with the right-hand mouse button.

For example, if you want to find out more about the lampshades, select the Look icon, click on the shades and a message ('they're just hanging around, just like you Larry') will appear. There are action icons for walking and talking and one for manipulating an object, which is great fun when you click it on Larry as the message implies that he's fondling himself. Oh, what a hoot.

Each time you collect the right object, which goes into Larry's inventory, a little 'ping' sounds to tell you you've done the right thing and off you go to the next scene. At this point it's wise to put the kettle on for, even when installed on a hard drive, the story update is sloooow.

Indeed, if there's one thing sure to sabotage the Amiga version far beyond the soon-wearing nature of the subject matter, it's this. It's yawnsville, alright - and it's not as if you can sit back and admire the gorgeous graphics on display while your drive grunts away, either. Perspective and proportion have gone out of the window in favour of a stylised, comedic setting, but the drawings look clumsy and do little to draw you into the action. The animation is worse.

However, the game does have variety on its side. If you tire of playing Larry, just wait till he falls asleep on the airplane en route to his first steamy encounter. At this point, if you can prevent yourself from joining him in Nodland, you get the chance to - hurrah! - play Patti.

Having found herself made redundant from her job as a singer/pianist, she is enlisted into the FBI - fairly standard recruitment practice I believe - and set loose to uncover the Mob. And here's where LSL5 starts to get stupid.

During her induction into the Bureau, you may laugh as a technician is carried off-screen by a heat-seeking vibrator. Or chortle as yet another technician is propelled across the lab by his own flatulence. Or perhaps you might not. By the time an FBI's gynaecologist started to fit Patti with an in-body tracking device I'd more than had enough.

And there's more side-splitting eroticism to come as the game switches back to Larry. My first trembling foray had him travel to New York to meet the first of his quarry in the Hard Disk Cafe - bit of a computer joke there, eh, tech-heads? After getting past the snooty maitre d' and striking up a conversion with one of three sexiest women in America, Larry is treated to the sight of her doing something original with a banana dessert, followed by - but ah. If you're even going to consider buying the game, we don't want to spoil all the thrills, now, do we? Suffice to say, it'll appeal to those who get eye strain at the newsagent through ogling the top-shelf mags while fumbling for their copy of Amiga Power...

So, where does this leave us? Well, with a very average graphic adventure game saddled with a lot of distinctly sub-Carry On perv jokes. I've seen reviews of Leisure Suit Larry before and Sierra is not ashamed to quote glowing approval from Playboy, Rolling Stone and the Wall Street Journal in is blurb. Such publications are obviously off on the "it's harmless risque fun" and the "golly, isn't it amazing what you can do with porn and computers" angle so beloved of our tabloids, and I suppose we can forgive them - they don't know what a good computer game looks like.

For the rest of us though, it's all rather sad. If we put aside prudishness for a moment, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there is a place for sexy, adult adventure games - but they have to be well put together too. My apologies to Larry Laffer's creator Al Lowe, who must have had a good time thinking up the various 'funnies' here, but this simply isn't a good game.

In brief then: it's painfully slow, the puzzles are in some cases insoluble without the hint manual, the animation is so-so, the graphics are average... In short, it's a trial to play. As for the humour, well, that's entirely a matter of taste. If you're the sort of person likely to blurt embarrassing one-liners in the style of Finbarr Saunders then you may find yourself outclassed, or outcrassed, by some of the jokes in Leisure Suit Larry. (Then again, you'll be just as satisfied by a copy of Viz, which is almost 40 times cheaper.)

The accompanying booklet describes Larry as the consummate ladies' man and yet, to paraphrase, only rarely does Leisure Suit Larry manage to consummate anything at all. Laugh? I nearly did.

Although the 'humour' in Leisure Suit Larry 5 may make a game a worthwhile purchase for those of certain comic tastes, any worthwhile criticism has to consider gameplay first. And a large part of the art of designing a good game is in balancing challenge and reward...

The challenge of Leisure Suit Larry 5 - aside from the self-control required in not putting your boot through the monitor at some of the smart-ass wisecracks - is trying to figure out whether there's any logic behind the puzzles at all. For example, when Larry is asked to go out and get video footage of the three sexy women, he must obviously take a video camera, some tapes and some money. Hands up who spotted what's missing? Yep, the battery charger. And how do we charge the batteries with it? At a power outlet, which you'll of course find... at the airport! Obvious really, as is the fact that you'll still get nowhere because you must completely wipe clean the tapes before you set off. *How many bleedin' video cameras are incapable of recording over old tapes*?! The one Larry's got, apparently.

With such a level of 'assumed' knowledge cropping up throughout the game (you just can't solve some of the puzzles), the purchase of the (handily available) hint book is essential. Clever old Sierra. Simply by putting some ludicrous, illogical 'puzzles' in the game they've guaranteed a whole load of people will have to lay out another £7.99 just to complete the thing.

Uppers: A jolly cocktail lounge-style soundtrack sets off the sleaze quite well, and I'm told at least one of the jokes is funny. Even better, there's a no-risk money back guarantee.

Downers: The puzzles are infuriatingly illogical (captain), the action is slow and there's no real addiction factor. Even the promise of finding anything seriously pornographic in here is an empty one.

If you enjoyed the first three in the series, well, it's a free country. However, if it's titillation you want, buy the Sunday Sport. If it's a computer game you're after, stuff the sleaze and got Sierra's King's Quest V instead - much more wholesome. (And a good deal more fun.)