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This odd little number, originally from the Empire stable, is an odd cross between your average role-playing game and vector-based adventures like the Mercenary trilogy. Exploration and puzzle-solving are the names of the game as the player wanders around a 3D fantasy world on a mission to wake "the sleeper" and thereby rid the kingdom of the horrible demons that rule it. Ho hum.

Those immediately put off by the mere mention of the word "role-playing" should not be put off, however - at least not for that particular reason. The emphasis is much more on adventure and exploration, and despite its magical scenario, the game is pretty much free of any stuffy RPG pretensions. In practical terms, the idea is to explore the eight kingdoms of Tessera, acquiring objects, chatting with characters and battling the wide variety of monsters with an equally wide variety of weaponry and armour. As you progress, portals to new kingdoms can be found, opening up new avenues of exploration and so on ad nauseum.

If anything, Sleeping Gods Lie is very easy to get into. Combat, for example, is as simple as selecting a weapon with the relevant function key, pointing yourself in the right direction (it's played in first-person perspective) and hammering away on the fire button. The only problem is though it may be easy to get into, it's not so easy to stay interested in once you've done it. Imagine playing Mercenary without the spaceships - it's not much fun having to walk everywhere, especially when the landscape is as flat and unconvincing as it is.

From a distance people and monsters look a mess, and don't improve much when they get up close. It's difficult to imagine who Sleeping Gods Lie could appeal to - it's far too slow-moving for most of us, and any serious RPG fan will no doubt dismiss it as lightweight piffle. Personally, it bored me to tears. There's just no compulsion to actually achieve anything, so feeble are the aesthetic rewards. Your time is better spent elsewhere.