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After reaching new heights with Hearts Of China, Sierra seem to have taken a wrong step somewhere along the line, and this is the sorry result...

Let's just come out and say it, shall we? When reading the documentation is more fun than playing the game, you know that you're on to a loser. In the packaging that comes with Space Quest IV is a fun little mock magazine called 'Space Pistol' that introduces the character of Roger Wilco, ex-janitor, space hero and star of the three previous Space Quest adventures, as well as providing other info which is handy to know when playing the game. It's colourful, well put together and quite humorous in places, three things the game miserably fails to be.

Having read the magazine, and indeed, having looked at the similarly jokey packagin, you might reasonably expect the game to be a jolly little number with lots happening and loads of great characters. If so, you're going to be disappointed. Space Quest IV is a very dry, slew affair which seem to ignore all the encouragin advances made in the adventure genre over the last couple of years.

The story concerns Roger being plucked from his own time and dumped back on his home planet Xenon far into the future. The place is looking a bit worse for wear and zombies wander the street. As it turns out this is the result of a super computer having gone mad after being infected by a virus caught from a pirate copy of Leisure Suit Larry (and if you think that's a hoot, then the humour is just about on your level - it never gets any better). Somehow the computer has also developed time travel facilities which some rebels have got hold of, and that's how Roger has been transported here. ROger has to cpature a time vessel, do a lot of whizzing around in time and space and generally put everything bang to rights.

Sure, it sounds like there's a lot of scope for fun in here, and, indeed, that could have been the case if all the opportunities hadn't been so roundly missed. Instead, the game plods along, and is not helped by the fact that each screen takes an eternity to load - there are some set sequences, such as the shuttle flying you from the ruined city to the time machine base, that take a good few minutes to unravel, filled mainly with static pictures and music that sounds as if it were composed on comb and paper. It's not as if there's anything worth looking at while you're waiting either - the old-fashioned 16-bit graphics are, to put it politely, hideous, and the animation, such as there is, makes Roobarb And Custard look like a Disney classic.

The other big problem is with the gameplay itself - there is very little interaction with other characters. For the first quarter of the game, if you try to talk to anyone, you end up dead seconds later - hardly an incentive to continue! This is the kind of lame plotting you were unlucky to find even in the bad old days of text only adventures.

The problems you're faced with are slightly better, but only slightly - most are pretty straightforward and shouldn't really challenge any halfway experienced adventurer. The only thing that'll stop most people from completing the game in a couple of hours is the fact that it's so darned slow.

Want to know more? Okay, well, the control system is far from friendly too. By clicking the mouse button you can change the cursor from a walk icon to pick up, look, taste, smell or talk. When you collect something you can also select that using the cursor.

There is also a menu bar which appears whenever the cursor goes to the top of the screen - a decent enough idea, but in practice annoying, as it always appears when you merely want to make Roger walk that way. The system works, but it's slow and awkward to use, as there is always a pause between your click and anything happening.

And the humour! How sad it is - full of in-jokes and irritating 'well, what did you expect?'-type captions. In no time at all it gets very wearing and does little to lighten the overall leaden atmosphere of the game. The main joke, since the plot concerns time travel, is that the bar at the top of the screen changes to show various supposed future sequels in the series, such as Space Quest XII. They're hoping! If this one is anything to go by, they'll be lucky (and we'll almost certainly be unlucky) if there's ever a Space Quest V.

Uppers: You can switch it off when you like. The packaging is nice.

Downers: A pretty big list: the primitive 16-bit graphics, the plodding storyline, the ages it takes for anything to load (even when you have a hard disk), the irritating humour, the total lack of originality to the whole affair. Very much one of those PC games which should never have been converted (and certainly not by shoddy American Amiga programmers).

It's hard to imagine even real adventure buffs enjoying this much. It's very old-fashioned and has an air of tiredness about it. Avoid.