The Big Red Adventure

How many of you remember the game Nippon Safes Inc.? It was a little known Italian point 'n' click affair from a couple of years back, and had about as much going for it as a one-legged racehorse with a broken leg.

The thing is when I found out this was a sequel of sorts to the above game had the same sort of look on my face as a Russian Cosmonaut might have upon embarking on a six-month tour to find he's packed only one pair of underpants and they're his wife's - pure joy! Another game to slate. I thought, and if there's one thing we Brits enjoy, it's laughing at those less fortunate than ourselves. And if there's another, it's slagging off foreigners, and here they are both rolled into one. I mean I'm only two paragraphs in and I've had a go at the Russians already Sorry.

Big Red Adwnture sees the hapless trio of characters from the first game (Donna Dino and Doug) all tangled up in another sinister plot. This time around their task is to raise Lenin from the dead and try to reinstate communism in mother Russia. However the difference this time is that game isn't half bad, and I actually found the point 'n' click interface very good. Hold down the right mouse button and up pops your inventory, which includes all the usual commands, such as talk, examine, etc., Select one and "use" it on screen. Very neat very quick and none of this messy cycling-through-symbols type stuff.

Rolf Harris?

There is. however, something that Dynabyte, the software house responsible for this title, needs - and I do mean needs - and that's a decent writer. I'm not saying the game doesn't have its moments, it does, but it just doesn't seem to flow. It's like a Rolf Harris painting in many respects - slap a few bits here, a few bits there (can you guess what it is yet?) and eventually hey presto a picture appears, bui it's no Da Vinci. The first two chaptcrs of the game are mini adventures in themselves and both end with Doug and Dino on the Orient Express.