Liath: WorldSpiral

Adventure games stand or fall on the quality of their interface, and Hath limps along way behind the intuitive LucasArts titles that are a benchmark for the genre.

Although the control method is pretty standard point-and-click, you often end up pointing and clicking away on scenery that doesn't seem to offer much in the way of interaction. Everything is icon-driven, but rather than being informative the icons tend to be a bit confusing, which makes the first half hour of play frustrating as you try to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do. The manual is of little help, offering some of the most incomprehensible blurb this side of Bill Clinton's defence. Though this approach may have been designed to encourage exploration, the only thing it really achieves is to provoke your annoyance.

After getting used to the somewhat minimal control system, Hath is soon revealed to be a fairly standard adventure game with nothing to really make it worth an outlay of 40 quid. Fans of the genre will have seen it all before, and beginners will just get bored.

However, if you've got something of a fetish for prog rock album cover art and don't want to be bothered with any interaction, then it's perfect.