PC CD-ROM minimum system requirements: 486DX4/100mhz; 8MB RAM (DOS 6.0); 16MB RAM (Windows 95); 7MB hard disk space; Dual speed CD ROM drive; SVGA. £39.99
THERE comes a time in everyone's life when the Grim Reaper comes a calling and life ceases.
On Discworld, it's not always so simple. All around, people are dying but the man with the scythe has done a runner and as a result nobody is officially dead. Not properly dispatched, they are caught between two worlds.
This, as you can imagine, is problematic. The man selected to find out exactly what has happened to the harvester of souls in this point and click adventure is Rincewind, incompetent wizard and highly-trained coward.
This is the second Discworld game based on Terry Pratchett's books and, while you don't have to be a fan of his writing, no doubt more pleasure would be had from the game if you were. To set the tone for what follows, there is an opening sequence of a skeleton dancing and singing to a tune called That's Death (the air is not unlike Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life) and Eric Idle, who wrote the song, provides the lead vocal - and Rincewind's dialogue throughout the quest.
As in the first instalment, your companion for the game is your six-legged trunk, a piece of luggage with endless capacity to store anything from a hammerhead shark to a burning incense stick. As one can imagine there is an abundance of puzzles to solve and some are far less logical than others.
Discworld II has a number of improvements on its predecessor - it's bigger, the graphics are better and when one tries something new, Rincewind no longer gives a flat "I can't do that", offering instead a tid bit of information as to what exactly you should be trying to do.
But for this player, the over-indulgence in unnecessary dialogue - which you just have to listen to in case you miss some important clue - is patience-sapping. While Discworld fans may appreciate all this extra waffle, for me the irrelevant ramblings of other characters in the game is a bit monotonous.
Discworld II is, if anything, is a bit overdone. The graphics, gameplay etc are fine but one gets the feeling that the people responsible were trying a little too hard to get the laughs. As a result, instead of being a brilliant game Discword is banished to the world of the plain old good games.
Graphics: 90%, Sound: 87%, Gameplay: 79%