The Black Mirror

The Black Mirror isn't an inherently bad game - there, I've said it. When placed next to last month's point-and-click clunker Midnight Nowhere, it's almost passable. It's slow, steady and pretty dreary - but it's got enough intrigue to keep you clicking away for a few hours.

In the same sort of way that you find yourself mildly interested in an ITV Poirot special, there's definitely some mileage in the slow drippage of information to the player - and it even brings a decent point-and-click feature to the fore (about five years too late), with hotspots disappearing should an item have no further impact on proceedings.

It's not a good game, though, the chief culprit being the dialogue: rambling, stereotypical, mistranslated and acted out in the style of a Jackanory presenter reading the extended essays of Karl Marx.

It's got enough about it to keep the hardcore happy, but (even though I have a soft spot for its recurring ineptness), the vast majority should steer well clear.