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Er, excuse me, but who exactly is Dylan Dog? Some Disney character? Some Magic Roundabout puppet? A late April-fool by the perennially sad CF team? No. Dylan Dog is Italian. He's a comic-strip superhero, too. And, before you say it, no, he's not a dog. He's a man.

Anyway, the game is subtitled The Murderers, and the plot is this: "Dylan Dog is in the house of Evil and he is alone. He is in a trap, ensnared by the other guests who have been transformed into bloodthirsty Murderers. Is it a dream, or is it not? Dylan Dog hasn't a clue, but the stench of blood is so close. Evil has blocked the exits..."

Finished laughing? Good. Well, what you've basically got here is a platform game. You wander around the upper and lower floors of the mansion, shooting and punching people. You have to collect keys, weapons and other objects. Your only objective is to get the hell out before the moon crosses the sky.

Dylan and the baddies are large, well animated and nicely observed sprites (they burst horribly when you shoot them), but the rest of the house is a bit empty. There are plenty of rooms to rush around, but there isn't much to interact with, apart from doors, stairs and other people.

Finding other objects around the mansion is tough, partly because of the sheer size of it, but also because the doors seem to connect together in weird and illogical ways. So you can run through eight rooms, go through one door and be back where you started.

But this weirdness is all part of the style. Dylan Dog is a most strange game. It's dark, gloomy and atmospherically frightening. People wander about like zombies and Dylan's inventory screen is terrifyingly horrible, with graves and grisly clawed hands dotted about all over the place.

Perhaps the Italians expect different things from their games, but I must confess that I didn't get all that attached to Dylan Dog. There just isn't enough going on at any one time to keep me riveted. Sure the graphics are nice, especially those that move, and things are smooth and quick, but when it comes to a fight, Dylan and his enemy just stand toe to toe and trade weedy thumps. Every time Dylan is hit, a grave in the data area pushes itself further out of the ground. Creepy, eh?

This creepiness continues throughout the game, with such unpleasant little touches as giving you 666 horror points at the start of the game. You have to try and whittle that down to as low as possible. If you get it to zero, you've officially escaped from the Evil of The Murderers. Hooray, you'll probably be saying.

So basically we've got an off-the-wall game from Italy which, apart from having the most amusingly written manual and plot ever seen, is otherwise rather depressing in its dealings with death, destruction and tragedy.

It's a big game, but there isn't much to keep you sticking with it, and the pace seems rather slow. But having said that, it isn't as rubbish as you would first think, especially once you manage to start puzzling the twists out.

1. The dark and mysterious atmosphere is a bit depressing.
2. There isn't an awful lot going on at any one time.
3. The puzzles are tough and rather few and far between.
4. Dylan Dog sounds like a poor cartoon, and not a hero.

1. Nice animation and the sprites are hand-drawn in the traditional Italian manner.
2. Lots of background detail which, although a bit miserable, adds to the game.
3. Some decent weapons to be found and used as well.
4. It's fairly fast-moving.
5. And there's a generous time-limit in which to solve the mystery and escape.