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Take half-a-dozen or so hard-boiled eggs, mix in a few crystals, marinade in colour then simmer in a lukewarm plot for a couple of hours. Has this latest Dizzy game got the recipe for success or will it give you an appetite for destruction?

Some things never change - the Match of the Day theme tune, coffee out of coffee machines being disgusting, Dannii Minogue singles, the plots in Dizzy. But hold on. There is something different about this latest Dizzy. However, it's not the plot; nope, after years of wandering around in a rather dark, dingy, Speccy-coded twilight zone, Dizzy has now gone full colour. Y'see Crystal Kingdom is the first Dizzy game to be programmed on the C64, and it shows.

The first differences you'll notice are the backgrounds. No longer does it look like the whole thing's taking place at night - there are blue skies and sunshine. When you move from screen to screen the scenery matches with the screen before; if there's half a tree on the right-hand side of a screen there'll usually be the other half of the tree on the left side of the next.

Another improvement is the control system. You are able to control jumps more precisely than before; changing directions part of the way through a leap is possible, as is controlling the height of the jump. This makes for a far more playable game. Unfortunately it also makes the game far too easy to complete - I finished the first three levels in two days [But then, you did have an infinite lives poke, didn't you? - Ed]. An adventure should have enough in it to keep you busy and keep it going for a while. But Crystal Kingdom Dizzy hasn't got the lastability that it needs. You've either finished it with a few hours playing, or, after ten minutes bouncing around, you switch off your machine and go and do something less boring instead.

And yes, a few lines back I did mention levels. It's yet another new concept for Dizzy. Crystal Kingdom is a four-level game, each with an access code. And a nice touch it is too, great if you get called for your tea two levels in. The levels are quite different from each other; the first is your bog standard Dizzy thang with grass, clouds and platforms in the trees, while others are set on the deck of a ship and down in dingy underground tunnels. If you do have to go deep underground, to explore dank caverns, you'll need a torch. Without light you won't be able to see the tips of your little red feet, let alone avoid the flying rats that live down there.

After all these new additions to the gameplay it's disappointing to see that it's the same old story revamped once more. Plotwise, Crystal Kingdom hits the heights of repetitiveness with this walking-and-jumping, pick-up-things as you go adventure. In this episode Dizzy's on the hunt for the treasure that has been stolen from the temple in the Crystal Kingdom. The thieving magpies took a crystal-encrusted sword and a crown along with the sacred wooden chalice.

Dizzy's grandad is a mite upset by this, so being the conscientious relative that he is, Dizzy sets off into the wild yonder on the quest for the lost treasures of the yolk folk.

One day maybe the Codies will learn that you can have too much of even a good thing. There's nothing so stunningly different about this game that sets it apart from the rest. If you still love Dizzy after all these years then you'll more than likely think Crystal Kingdom is the best thing since sliced bread, but everyone else should be warned that, despite the improved looks, essentially this is almost exactly the same formula as before.

Ultimately there's nothing wrong with Dizzy himself, or the latest game, but I think we've all had enough of the basic scenario and would relish a bit of a change. How about a Dizzy shoot-'em-up, or a blast the baddies platformer? Yeah, little Dizzy running around with a laser gun, I could go for that...

1. All new colour Dizzy.
2. Improved control system.
3. Four different levels, each with a password.

1. Too easy to complete and not enough levels.
2. Same old story, just vamped up a bit.
3. Aren't we all a little fed up with the egg?