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Slaine (or Sloyna as various intinerant Irishman round here will tell you it's pronounced) is the latest in a growing procession of strips to be converted from the nation's wowza comic 2000AD.

Those who regularly seek their thrills within the comic's confines will know that Slaine is an ancient Celtic warrior who wanders around Britain with his sidekick, the dwarf Ukko. The stories are a combination of Celtic myth, comic book violence and hippy dippydom. Despite the latter's undertones it is well drawn and scripted. It's not my fave but it warps all over the likes of Bad Company.

Slaine the game attempts to stay close to the original strip and this is reinforced by the artwork of Glen Fabry on the packaging and the aid of scriptwriter Pat Mills on the game's text.

The plot is a little vague and so is your task, despite a booklet that comes with it. Basically the land of Lyonesse (an ancient name for Scotland) has fallen under the dark powers of the drune lords and it's Slaine's job to help the Jocks out of the mess they're in.

Wary of the pitfalls of writing another platform game comic licence, Martech have gone for the extra depth involved in playing an interactive graphic adventure. They also claim a new approaching to the method of play by trademarking what they call a revolutionary new concept in gameplay called REFLEX(TM). It's probably the most stupid thing ever incented.

The idea sounds nice, it's supposed to mirror the houghts of Slaine,, but in practice all you get is half the screen taken up with a typical set of adventure commands like look,e xamine, actions, objects, move, etc, which slide around the screen at random. The idea is to move a hand that floats around under joystick power and touch them as they appear. The trouble is they come and go so quickly you end up stabbing at thin air and chasing the words round the screen like an idiot. It's a bit like trying to swat a fly. It's nothing like thinking. Occasionally you'll stab the wrong thing and that wastes more times. In fact in an hour's play I managed to vist about fifteen locations which is pretty poor. Pur simply REFLEX(TM) is disastrous and detracts so much from the game that it completely discourages play.

This is also true of the promise of 'realistic combat'. This simply behaves like REFLEX(TM) and a bunch of words concerned with fighting like defend, swing, kick and puch dance around the screens. Ho hum. It normally culminates in your massacring everyone in sight.

In fact, Slaine fails to deliver on most of the boasts on the back cover. The action is hardly continuous unless you count a bunch of words ricocheting about the screen action. Nor did I find the graphics 'superb'. They were adequate as was the text, little more.

I'm afraid this all leaves Slaine in the average to dire line of comic book conversions. I just hope Piranha don't do such a miserable job on Halo Jones.

As office Celts are wont to remark, "God never closes one door without slamming all the windows."