If you need only one reason to play this game, then let it be this: in what has to be a first in gaming history: Lyle, one of the brethren, has an animation wherein as you approach him at the docks to further your training, Lyle digs lovingly at his behind and then in a deeply contemplative state he ... oh, I can't bear to even think of it again! Needless to say, Lyle and his friends are pirates and they're not the "punny" ones from Monkey Island. These louts cuss (a lot), drink themselves into oblivion and stab their enemies--and friends--in the back. You play as a young lad of 17, one Nicholas Dove, and you must have your wits about you: not only are there puzzles aplenty to solve, but you must also learn to wield a cutlass and fire a cannon. So put your steering on autopilot and lower your mast as we follow Nicholas on this quest to be a pirate. And what about Lyle? Well, maybe by the end of this review I'll be able to relive that moment.

The Plot: Nicholas has wasted his entire life away on Lizard Point. He feels that destiny awaits, but not having the benefit of the Psychic Friends Network on his little island, Nick decides to make his own fame and fortune when a pirate ship chartered by the Brethren of the Coast and Captain Justice lays anchor in the harbor. The Brethren are at the end of a perilous 17-year journey to reunite with the ghost of Redjack and claim a treasure long buried at sea. But the journey may come to a premature end, as hooded assassins are stalking the remaining Brethren and chopping off their limbs. During the course of your adventure you will face cutthroats and ghosts, sharks and kraken and journey to exotic ports of call. Yet, haven't we all seen this before in every grade B pirate movie ever shown on the Late Show? Yes, the plot is pedestrian and unexceptional, but to be honest, if the storyline had deviated from the time-honored norm associated with pirating, then I am sure I would be complaining about the aberration. It is better to just accept the tale for what it is--a rousing, old-fashioned pirate adventure yarn--and give the storyline a grade of B.

The Action: Your survival in Redjack will depend on more than your wits; it will also depend on your eye/hand coordination. The primary question on every adventure fan's mind is, I'm sure, how do the action sequences fit into the game? Well, they are incorporated seamlessly into the game and are integral to advancing the gameplay, but I quickly came to dread the next sword fight or the next ballista attack. It was not because the action sequences were difficult. The majority, with two exceptions, are extremely easy. It is more a matter that I never felt like I had total control when I was parrying with the sword or aiming a small cannon from a mine car. What could have been enjoyable instead became tedious frustration. I never got that "rush" as though I had actually defeated a foe in battle. It always seemed as thought the game was providing me with too large an area of attack to compensate for the awkwardness of the controls. Yet there are two instances that are so frustratingly difficult that I almost quit the game in despair. The first occurs during a training sequence with Lyle. He tosses bottles, and you must duck to the left or right to avoid them. After successfully avoiding the first twenty bottles, Lyle then begins to throw them at a speed that Superman can only dream of. Ready to give up after over thirty disastrous attempts, I yielded the keyboard to my 15-year old son, who beat this portion after only five attempts. Draw your own conclusions here, as I will not suffer any indignities about my age.

The second instance occurs at the end game's climatic battle. As you repeatedly parry with and are slashed by the main villain of the game, it finally becomes evident that your acquired skills are for naught and that you must ... well, I don't want to give it away, but I was extremely disappointed with this scene.

My question is, who are these action sequences meant to attract? They are too easy and require too little skill to attract an action gamer who would then be turned off by the "puzzle" aspect of the game. The pure adventure gamer, such as me, will find the action scenes to be an intrusion. Maybe with some fine tuning, so that I felt like I was more in control of the action, these sequences might be more tolerable. As it stands now, the action portion of Redjack gets a grade of D.

The Puzzles: For the most part, the puzzles in Redjack are fair and of a progressive degree of difficulty. There are a few inventory-based puzzles, but your inventory is never more than a few items so it is usually quite simple to figure out what goes where. When you really get stuck, though, conversation with another character often supplies hints, if not an outright solution, to problem. There are also a few logic puzzles (i.e., put gems in correct order to raise/lower boulders) and one step-on-the-correct-stone-in-a-pool-of-lava obstacle which is particularly annoying. If you have played Torin's Passage, you will recognize this puzzle immediately. Only this time you have no more than a second to stand on a stone before it sinks into the lava. But the biggest puzzle of all to me is why Nicholas Dove was chosen to partake of this adventure. It is alluded to many times in the game that Nicholas is the "chosen one;" that fortune tellers have had dreams that Nicholas will lead the brethren to the treasure. But why Nicholas? We are never given an explanation as to what in his past made him the savior of the Brethren. The puzzles in Redjack receive a grade of B-.

The Graphics: If you have played Dust or Titanic, previous CyberFlix releases, then you are already familiar with the graphics in Redjack. The main characters are 3D puppets whose mouths move in synchronization with their speech. The effect is surprisingly satisfactory, and when you imbue each puppet/character with its own characteristics and idiosyncrasies, they become amazingly lifelike. I was already a fan of this "puppet animation" from Dust and Titanic, but this time they have reached a new pinnacle. Even better though are the gorgeous cut scenes, usually viewed after you have solved a puzzle. A few of these are as good as any I have ever seen. If I were to voice any negative comments at all concerning the graphics, it would be that at times they were pixelated when scanning 360 degrees around the screen. The graphics are colorful and outstanding and get a grade of A.

The Sound Effects, Music and Voice Acting: Nothing special or outstanding in any of these categories. Yet nothing bad either. The music, while it is appropriate for a pirate game, is at times repetitive. I wouldn't have minded some old pirate ditties or a "Dead Man's Chest" tune during the game. The voice acting is never horrible, but neither does anyone in the game stand out in my mind. If there was any disappointment in the voice acting, it was with Captain Justice and especially Blackbeard. I wish they would have sounded more gruff and a little less educated. The sound effects are, like the music and voices, only average. They never really enhance the gameplay as much as they should. There are a few scenes that could have been genuinely scary with the addition of more sound effects. The discovery of Redjack's skeleton, for example, could have been greatly improved if we would have heard the wind whistling on the mountaintop and heard the creaking of his bones. Overall, the grade for this category is a C+.

Final Grade: To poorly steal a line from Charles Dickens, "it is the best of games, it is the worst of games." Redjack is a hybrid three-CD action/adventure game with many admirable qualities that would lead me to recommend it without hesitation were it not for an almost equal amount of annoyances. It was fun being a pirate for a while, and the puzzles were never so difficult (except for the lava puzzle) that I could not advance in the game. The cut scenes were so nice that they always left me wanting more. Yet there is an overall average quality about the game that prevents it from standing out from the crowd.

So what is it that Lyle did after digging lovingly at his behind? Well, he takes a big sniff of his finger. I think Lyle's performance is an appropriate metaphor for the action aspects of Redjack. For this reason, the final grade is broken down as follows:

• As an action game: D
• As an adventure game: B

Final Grade: C