Those who can remember the old days of gaming (1993 DOS and Amiga) will remember the beginnings of Simon the Sorcerer and his misadventures. The fourth title in the series was released almost three years ago (the English version two years ago) and now we have the fifth from The Games Company. It is another point-and-click adventure in which Simon finds himself in a spot of trouble and you need to explore, collect and combine items in order to solve things and get his life back to normal.

The game opens with a New Year’s celebration, the following day aliens visit the planet and come knocking on Simon’s door (of course). Narrowly avoiding the first close encounter we see his love Alix, being abducted. So begins Simon’s quest to get his love back and perhaps, accidentally save the planet. After all, he’s not the most reliable sorcerer there’s ever been.

Simon the Sorcerer 5 is a classic point-and-click style adventure with more modern 3D graphics and cut scenes. At time the game drags a little due to fairly long conversations that you have to sit through to get some information. But thankfully those are fairly limited and you can skip over them and the quests will still get logged in your book. The game, like many others, often requires the clever combination of items to turn them into something useful. It also requires some lateral thinking at times to figure out what you exactly need to do. If you get stuck you can check in on the quest log and get a couple hints all the way to the game just telling you what you need to do if you’re totally stuck.

Here are a few useful keyboard shortcuts I found:

• H - Highlight all items of interest on the screen (right click to look at, left click to interact with)
•  I - Inventory - Display all items in your inventory
•  P - Pause
•  G - Guide? Highlights only items that you can interact with (left click)
•  F1 - Quest book
•  F4 - Load
•  F5 - Save

You’ll need all of your powers of perception and logical problem-solving as at times things aren’t completely obvious. But that’s the whole fun of a game like this, wandering around clicking everything that the game allows you to click until you’ve acquired everything you need to solve the current puzzle.