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Before I really get into this review, let me explain about Origin Systems. For the past few years they have been releasing massive (usually double-disk) strategy/adventure games like the Ultima series. These have, overall, been excellent fantasy adventures with great depth and feeling - enough to keep fans of the genre playing for many weeks or even months. A few weeks ago, however, Origin showed signs that they were starting to slip - they released Autoduel, to a very mixed reception. Well, the bad news is that Moebius is no improvement, and is in fact possibly worse.

The story behind the game is that Moebius the Windwalker, an ancient Oriental deity, has picked you to recover his Orb of Celestial Harmony, which has been nicked by one of his old disciples, Kaimen. You must brave the four elements (Earth, Water, Air and Fire, if you didn't already know), find the wayward Mr. Kaimen, and persuade him to return the Orb - using tact, diplomacy and five foot long sword.

You can tell you're going to be in for a tough time when the infamous Origin disc turbo (that's the one that slows down the 1541 by up to 7.5 times) gets to work loading the game. A couple of hours later you're at the main menu, where you create new characters, train them, and then send them into the adventure.

The 'training' is mainly combat, which is achieved using keyboard control only (ugh!) and takes the standard side-view format usually seen in martial arts beat-'em-ups. You fight using either your sword or just your bare-hands, the controls being common to both, and it must be said at this point that the fighting is really grotty. On the fastest of nine speeds, it feels slower than Fist I, and with much worse graphics. Once you have won a fight with both your sword and bare hands, and developed your mind by 'divination' (keep a small moving sprite inside a box using the direction keys), you can enter the adventure. This resembles the Ultima style, i.e. your central character moving around a large scrolling land, only much less slick than the old classic, as the landscape appears cluttered with too many different types of terrain and obstacles. This clumsy presentation is not helped by the size of the characters and the step-size of the scrolling - big.

When you actually get into the adventure all commands are menu-driven and accessed by typing the first letter for the command you want, again like Ultima. The adventure is drab, though, and rather than exploring an interesting little world, it feels as if you'll find the fact that initially you have three lives very useful, as you will most probably die fairly quickly - the combat becomes much harder when you're only given a third of your opponent's strength. However, the spectre of the disc access will return to haunt you: each time Moebius has something to say, e.g. "live again, my disciple", the game loads his picture off disc! Aaaarrgghh!! Unless you want to finish this game on a pension, you'd better have a disc turbo.

And so to the real crux of Origin's problems at the moment - they keep releasing old games. This particular number was originally written in 1985, presumably it's been out in the USA for the last couple of years, as has Autoduel and they have both shown their age, with unpolished gameplay and naff graphics by today's standards. What is really annoying with games such as these, though, is the unfulfilled potential; it is possible to get good graphics and smooth scrolling in a large project, as games like Druid and Gauntlet (which have similar screen formats to this type of game) prove. Origin had better get their act together and start using modern programming techniques: at the very least speed up loading times, more hopefully turn out something like Ultima IV with improvements (Speech? Pixel scrolling? Fancier combat?). As it stands, there is no way anyone should have to part with £20 to be bored witless by this sort of junk.