Hello children! I'm going to tell you a story today! Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin!

"More than once upon a time, a brave man has traversed hill and dale, river and valley, forest and fortress - to rescue his beloved. Yet never was a woman so beautiful and beloved as Maid Marion, and never was a man so brave as Robin Hood. Yet as much as Robin Hood was brave, the Sheriff of Nottingham was wicked! He was a horrible man, a dreadful, terrible tyrant who taxed the poor and made them poorer. And he hated Robin Hood, who was good and gallant and - unlike the Sheriff - so handsome that Maid Marion had no sooner met eyes with him than she was spellbound. She fell more in love with him than anyone had ever fallen in love before and more in love than anyone has ever fallen in love since. But the Sheriff was not only wicked, he was also jealous! Now he has kidnapped Maid Marion to steal her from her beloved, and that is where Robin Hood's Quest begins! Not hill nor dale, not river nor valley, not forest nor fortress will stop him!"

What's wrong children? What do you mean you're bored? But I'm reading this word for word from the introduction of Robin Hood's Quest! Well, yes, I admit that it would have been nice to have some sort of cut scene movie rather than dull narration and I also admit that your age group probably couldn't care less about true love or jealousy or taxes or handsome Robin and the wicked Sheriff, but still, can't you at least hear how it ends? No? Okay then, I'll tell you another story instead.

More than once upon a time, an incompetent developer has defied logic and reason, failed to master even basic coding principles and implemented a lousy concept in a totally inept fashion, to release a game that nobody cares about. The kind of game that is so bad that your average developer could have sneezed out better code while blindfolded, tied upside down, suspended from a bridge, in a force five gale, in a straitjacket, in a coma.

Yet never was a game quite so shoddy as Robin Hood's Quest, and never was a reviewer quite so appalled as Geoff Holland. Yet as much as Geoff was appalled, he still had to play through the game, suffering so that you wouldn't have to. And he hated Robin Hood's Quest, which was abysmally programmed and awful in its conception and - unlike many great value fun budget games or Platinum releases - utterly without a single redeeming quality.

Geoff wasn't the only reviewer who didn't take kindly to having his time wasted by Robin Hood's Quest, and the reviews were very bad. In fact, they were the unkindest reviews ever to have been written. Some magazines invented a zero score just for this game. Some even invented minus scores, especially for this game. Some even just left a hole in the page where the review should be. But our story lies with our intrepid reviewer Geoff Holland, and the following is an account of his misadventures.

The first thing Geoff noticed was that Robin walked like he'd just soiled himself, and that there was no tutorial of any kind, or indeed any inventory or signposts to give him a clue of what to do. He found himself accidentally wandering out of the starting area while he explored, only to discover that the game consisted of a small number of increasingly complex yet still rudimentary mazes to navigate, populated by guards who didn't see Robin even in plain view until they got very close, at which point they would run up and Robin would fall to his knees and lose a life, because although Robin Hood was gallant and brave and would stop at nothing to rescue his beloved, he wasn't actually willing to use sword nor bow to defend himself against the overweight guards, so he either had to sneak around them or drop a bag of gold to distract them and run past. Yes, the message of this game was clear - when tackling the corrupt forces of an oppressive dictator you should either use bribery or surrender, rather than risk personal injury to stand up for your beliefs. You should know as well, children, that if Geoff ran out of lives it would be game over, and the save system was such that if he had saved with only one life and kept dying, he would have to start all over again - and he wouldn't want that now, would he?

Geoff wandered around avoiding guards until he found a bunch of folks who'd had their stuff stolen - like Little John and his quarterstaff, fat Friar Tuck and his sugar, and other characters and their wheat, bagpipes, animal skins, lute and so forth - and he had to get them back. This was where the mazes came in - he would work around them opening chests, which would give him either an extra life, a bag of gold or a key. There were three keys in each level - the bronze key opened the bronze lock to give him the silver key, then the silver key opened the silver lock to get the gold key, which opened the gold lock to give him an item. It was unfortunate then that he wasn't told what the item was and if he couldn't recognise it or didn't know that a stick is a quarterstaff or a lute is a harp or indeed what the hell bagpipes are, which although Geoff did, young children almost certainly wouldn't, then he wouldn't know who to take it to. And even if he did know, there was absolutely no indication of where that person was, so it was time to wander around the small areas once more, waiting twenty seconds for each area to load, until he stumbled upon the right person and they stepped aside to give him access to a new maze with more chests and more guards.

By this time Geoff had noticed that the graphics were some of the most garish, grainy, awful monstrosities he'd ever seen - the kind of visuals that would be an insult to a PSOne. Indeed, the whole game was an appallingly gruesome display of programming ineptitude that looked like some digital character had eaten a digital rainbow and then vomited all of its multi-coloured pixels all over the screen. Meanwhile, the sound effects were dull as dull can be and the music ripped off the likes of Zelda but wasn't anywhere near as good. Worse still were the invisible barriers - there were low gates that Robin could only walk through one way. He couldn't reach over and unlock them from the other side. He couldn't climb over them. He couldn't even walk over the grass on either side of them, the complete lack of a fence or hedge in some cases defying the reason for even having a gate there. It made no sense at all and was one of the worst and most lazy instances of invisible barrier syndrome that had ever been seen in a game.

Worst of all though was the camera - every time Geoff would try to steer Robin around, the camera would jerk this way and that - it would get closer, then further, it would stick on corners, it would scroll inside walls so you couldn't see anything at all and it would have this constantly infernal desire to swoop upwards to an angled overhead view that made it almost impossible to keep track of the guards that Robin would encounter unless Geoff constantly fought the camera every damn second so he could actually see what the hell was happening. Yes indeed children, this camera was jerkier than any camera had ever been before, and jerkier than any camera has been since.

By this time Geoff had realised that this shambles of a shell of a sham of a wreck of a ruin of a shadow of a 'dog ate my homework' standard excuse for a game was nothing more than an abominably programmed, hideously simplistic yet almost entirely unplayable piece of garbage and that the whole game consisted of avoiding guards to open chests to collect keys to get stuff to give back to people whose stuff had been nicked who would then let Robin through to the next maze with slightly more complicated layouts and more guards and more chests until he eventually either died of a massive brain haemorrhage or rescued Marion and waddled off into the sunset, presumably with his top priority being to find some clean underwear.

The addition of the sneak button didn't help, while the ability to drop gold to distract guards, or whistle to wake sleeping guards and then lure them away from the chests they guard, was also rendered virtually useless by the fact that the guards ran very fast and often caught Robin before he could manage to drop the gold, and if he dropped the gold when he was standing still he would just instantly pick it back up again. In fact, the game's only redeeming quality was its mercifully short length - it could be completed in less than two hours.

More than once upon a time, an unsuspecting parent has defied logic and reason, failed to heed the warning of reviewers everywhere and fallen into the trap of wasting their hard earned money on a mind-blowingly awful game that they thought their children might enjoy. Don't be one of those parents, and don't let Robin Hood's Quest be one of those games.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).