This Ubisoft offering is hardly representative of cutting-edge gaming. You play a nameless friend of the main character, Atrus, who's plagued by a vengeful man called Saavedro. The plot, and the five fantasy words, are sound enough, but the mixture of live action and pointy-clicky controls are more at home on the PC... about five years ago. Myst III also comes complete with a 'strategy guide' book - a telling indication of the type of game you can expect.

It's all about solving puzzles, pure and simple. In fact, everything's a puzzle, from getting into the first cut-scene, to getting out of the room afterwards. And life will be even harder without a USB Mouse - you'll be following clues and flicking switches along the way and the analogue controls just don't cut it. It's intricate and infuriating stuff, but the biggest problem is that there's no sense of reward. You just move to the next puzzle or area.

The five 'eras' are separate puzzle-filled worlds that you transport in and out of. The worlds themselves are brought to rich life graphically, but the fact that you can only point and click in the environments, rather than move through them, dispels any feeling of connection you might have had.

So, will we ever catch up with Saavedro? Will Atrus' family ever be saved? Frankly, by the time you get there, you're past caring. Designed around pleasing the kind of person who feels smug for completing the simplest of tasks, this is one for geography teachers or shut-ins. Or perhaps both.

If this is the kind of game you really want to play, then a shopping trip to PC World is long overdue.

We want a game to play while our teenage kids are at school.

It's just so dull and uninspiring.