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At last. After years and years of waiting and several vastly-oversubscribed petitions and questions asked in the House, the most famous adventure game of all time, most probably, has been re-released at a budget price. And, on a second look, you can see it's crap.

Before writing this review, I hadn't seen anyone play the game. I'd just heard such good things about it. So when I loaded it up I was understandably disappointed. A good adventure needs an involving, complex plot. The Secret Of Monkey Island doesn't have one. A good adventure should be scrupulously fair. The Secret Of Monkey Island isn't. A good adventure, if it's of the graphical variety (as Monkey Island is), should have excellent pics, with atmospheric background pieces and well designed, finely animated sprites. The Secret Of Monkey Island has neither of these. Nor does it recognise a second drive, install on a hard disk or boast a mightily friendly point-and-click interface. And the jokes are dreadful.

OK, time to come clean. It's all a big lie. But the sheer fabulousness of The Secret Of Monkey Island is so well known that any review is going to be utterly predictable. So we'll concentrate pedantically on the few objectionable points. First, the relentless chirpy American tone of the piece. But that's beyond anyone's control. Er, the sound is a bit on the sparse side and not really worth waiting for. Er, er, the way the gameplay stops and starts in jerky movements instead of flowing along in a nicely smooth fashion? But that's another lie. (Damn.) Ah. Got it.

There's a lot of moving around in Monkey Island - walking from one location to another and back again, and so forth. There are no short cuts. You have to wait for Guybrush to troll all the way across the screen every time, and if you've just walked him across the map from location A to location B then suddenly realised that you've forgotten to bring item C, that's more than slightly annoying to say the least.

And another thing - the game feels all linear and set up (but such is the nature of multiple-choice adventurey things). And once you have completed it, you will never ever play it again. (It's really quite easy. At least, up to the point where I became totally and utterly stuck, hem hem).

So there you have it. The Secret Of Monkey Island is a fabulous game. Truly scrumptious, in a Dick Van Dyke-free fashion.

1. Look, it's Monkey Island for less money, ok?

1. None at all.