'Don't call me 'Frankly'', Jonathan retorted, slapping his thigh and laughing uproariously. 'And it's not an RPG, it's an action shoot-'em-up. Honest.'

'Hmm. You don't see many isometrically-scrolling 3D action shoot-'em-ups these days. Especially not ones with character selection screens and chests full of magical potions and stuff that you have to hack open with swords.', I ventured doubtfully.

'No, no, look, the characters are just slightly different-but-equal players created to appeal to all social groups - there's a girl, a barbarian type, a weedy but intelligent bloke, and so on. It's just like Gauntlet.', Jonathan offered, by way of reassurance.

'Wellll...I'll give it a try', I said, 'But I'm not convinced.' Some time passed.

'Okay, you're sort of right', I conceded later. 'There certainly isn't very much of an RPG element on show here. Mostly, your character (and you've got a point, there isn't really very much to choose between the four of them) treks around aimlessly through maze-like levels, occasionally stumbling across a baddie and hacking it up with whatever weapon they've got handy. In fact, in that sense it IS pretty much like Gauntlet, only a sort of ghost version of Gauntlet, set in some kind of gigantic deserted Gauntlet - The Movie film set, where instead of the massive hordes of enemies there's just a couple of lost and forlorn extras who haven't noticed that the film's been finished yet. Every now and again someone will ask you to take some item from one side of the maze to the other side of the maze and do something with it, but that's pretty much the only non-arcade element of the gameplay.'

'There, see. Told you so', Jonathan chirped smugly.

'Not so fast, Mister Chirpy', I replied. 'You said this was a shoot-'em-up, but there's hardly anything to shoot in it. And there's precious little in the way of action, either. So I'm going to kill you anyway.'

'Blimey.', said Jonathan.