Have you noticed just how many adventure/RPG games there are knocking about nowadays? In case you haven't I'll tell you - blooming loads, that's how many, and a happy fact is that the quality seems to be getting better and better.

Actually, if you're anything like me then this isn't always good news. It's very easy to decide which product to buy when there's only a couple of decent choices on the market, but take a look through the rest of Gamer - there isn't a bad mark to be seen.

If I were a punter (to use a technical term) I'd probably spend hours dithering over which game looked that little bit better and then up buying two or three, thus scuppering my Friday night beer feast because all my money was in the till at the comp shop. Am I waffling? I think I probably am. Let's get down to business.

Coktel Vision - the team behind Ween - have a slightly chequered past if previous reviews are anything to go buy (and of course, Gamer reviews are the ONLY thing to go buy, as you all know).

Gobliiins was an excellent interactive puzzle-type thing, and we eagerly await the sequel which you should see next month. Their most recent offering Fascination, however, wasn't quite as well received, to say the least. Since I have seen very little of either, it was an open mind that I opened the box and inserted 'disk 1 into drive A'.

On doing this I was met almost immediately by a funny looking old man with a beard who, it transpired, was Okrham the master sorcerer, and great-grandfather of Ween, the character you play. Now it was pretty obvious that this guy was a bit agitated about something, as he began to explain.

Ten years ago Okrham was saddened by the chance in his understudy Kraal, an excellent sorcerer who had a big future ahead of him - Paul Daniels had been in touch and everything - but he began to realise that far greater power awaited him on the dark side of magic.

Eventually Okrham was forced to banish him from the kingdom of the Blue Rocks, which is where the action takes place, to whatever strange place is reserved for such spooky people. Milton Keynes probably.

Anyway, the boot's on the other foot now: Okrham is very old and his magic is fading. This wouldn't be a problem usually, and he'd be happy to gracefully retire: trouble is, he knows (and don't ask me how) that Kraal is planning to return to the Blue Rocks on the day of the eclipse to fulfill his ambition of ruling the kingdom from whence he was banished.

Since Okrham's powers are weak he will be unable to defend the Blue Rocks from Kraal's evil, so surprise surprise, it's up to you, as Ween, to do the decent thing. The eclipse is only three days away and the one hope you have of defeating Kraal lies in the power of the Revuss, or magical hourglass. According to some prophecy or other, all evil will be banished from the Blue Rocks only when the Revuss is furnished with three grains of sand.

To manage this you'll have to overcome three major obstacles, being rewarded with a single grain of sand for every success. Luckily and somewhat predictably, the Revuss lies deep in a hidden temple, the entrance to which can be found in Okrham's house. It's point-and-click, pick-'em-up-and-use-'em adventure, viewed from the eyes of Ween, or you. Several strange inhabitants of the Blue Rocks will show their faces from time to time to either help or hinder you.

Most helpful of these is Urm the fruitbat, who will perform certain tasks for you in return for a snack. Petroy is a friend of Okrham's and frequently communicates telepathically, deciphering ancient text and other such things you might expect of a wise old man with psychic powers.

There are certainly plenty of puzzles and obstacles in Ween - not all of them logical - and the screens are detailed enough, it's true. Unfortunately the colours are very monotonous and in certain instances you could be forgiven for believing that you were using a monochrome monitor.

Sound is in the form of a very forbidding, Omen-like tune that I think enhances the game by providing an atmosphere which the graphics lack. There appears to be a fair bit of depth to Ween, and despite my gripes I enjoyed playing it very much.

As I mentioned at the start, there are oodles of RPGs on the market, and although Ween is not a poor relation by any means, it doesn't exactly stand head and shoulders above the rest either.

If you're an adventurer with a cupboard full of RPGs then Ween is worth a try because it's a good adventure - but those looking for their first game in this genre could very well be disappointed by the way in which Ween is presented. Unfair perhaps, but a fact of life.

Before we start I should advise all of you who are expecting any sad attempts at a joke about a game called Ween that you're going to be disappointed. This is not a magazine where we would even attempt such a low blow at a game, we think Ween is a perfectly good title and wouldn't dream of making any jokes about it. (I am relieved. - Ed)

Okay, so it is one of those French RPG thingies. I'm looking forward to this one. Let's see, what does it say here? One day, blah blah, evil omens, blah blah, anger of the heavens, blah blah, nasty wizard, blah blah, good wizard needs help. What, no women with no clothes on? What's with all this 'good wizard needs help against bad wizard' stuff? There can't even be much violence with that plot. Oh never mind let's see what the game's like anyaway.

Playing these French adventures for the first time is a very refreshing change. They've obviously put a lot of thought into how to make these games playable. Gone are the endless icons or the ridiculous text entry systems what never understood what you were trying to say.

Now with two clicks of a mouse button you can go from examining a rat close up to stuffing a drug down its throat or slaying a dragon. I wish more companies would take a good look at this control system to see how it should be done. Bravo Coktel.

So, what about the game itself. As you would expect from looking at Coktel's other games (Fascination for one) it's a point and click adventure. You are Ween (although you only actually see him once) and you have to roam around the various locations solving deviously tricky puzzles. Well actually the puzzles range from blindingly obvious to slap on the forehead "Why didn't I think of that?" type problems.

SO HOW DOES IT WORK LES?
The way the system works means that anything that's of any use to you will be shown on screen when you move the mouse over it. This is fine but it does tend to have one drawback: whenever you first enter a screen all you have to do is just swing the mouse over everything, see what's highlighted and you get the general idea of what you have to do to complete that particular puzzle.

In Coktel's earlier games this detracted from the gameplay and made the games too easy. Luckily that particular program stops here because of the puzzles in Ween take a hell of a lot of working out. However with pure, ice cold logical brain power (and the help of the guy upstairs who's played the game before) I managed to get through the worst of it.

The graphics are a real mixture of styles. Some of the outside scenes are done in a lovely sepia style while the interiors tend to use more purples than anything. This may sound rather odd but it does create some strange lightning effects which are really atmospheric, especially if you're playing the game late at night with the lights down low and some soft music coming from your stereo.

Sound effects in this type of game are never up to much anyway. There's very little animation to speak of, bats flying overhead and a moving rat. What there is quite well done but doesn't really add anything to the game. That said, touches such as this do tend give you quite a start.

These point and click adventures are usually fun to play because they're easy to get to grips with. Ween however is a lot of fun to play and the feeling of satisfaction when you solve a particularly tricky puzzle is immense. Many's the time I've been seen wailing around the office with a smug grin on my face after wrestling with a nasty problem for hours on end. You'll have to face up to those problems as well because you can't progress until each problem has been well and truly solved. None of this 'Oh I'll do that bit later' stuff here, thank you very much.

There are only a couple of places where you're likely to get well and truly stuck, but even there you can work it out eventually - it's just a case of trying everything you have in every possible combination, ooops, was that a clue? Nah, not really. Ween isn't one of the biggest adventures I've played. In fact when you know what you have to do you can breeze through it fairly quickly. I'd say for the experienced adventurer - the kind that eats Monkey Island games for breakfast - this may be just a smidgen too easy. For the novice to beginner, however, it will be a real battle of wills as you go head to head with your Amiga just to prove who is the smartest.

Several times I found myself cursing the machine and swearing that no way would this damn game get the better of me. It was normally at these times that I would find out that the answer had been staring me in the face all along.

To me these adventures are an ideal way of spending a few afternoons when you have nothing better to do. They're not overly expensive when you compare them to some of the others on the market and they can be a lot more user-friendly. I can see Fascination appealing to more people because of its more up to date plot but I think Ween is more of a challenge and therefore a better game. It's the classic example of just how a good adventure should be challenging but solvable.