The voice acting is excellent - once again, meeting the standard set by NOLF. The accents are by-and-large very well done, though the main character, Patrick Galloway, seems to slip occasionally between sounding vaguely Irish, vaguely Scottish, and vaguely American. Dodgy accent aside, the delivery and dialogue is very convincing, and once again, it wouldn't be out of place in a real movie.

Combat is tough. The weapons are all designed in such a way that the killing happens at close range. For example, the pistol is next to useless at long range, and ammo is so scarce that you really need to be making one or two-shot kills to avoid running out. You need head shots to do this and they are only possible at the very last moment before you get mauled. (Any secret Counter-Strike aimbot users out there? Find out how good you really are...)

Needless to say the focus on close combat is all designed to keep the adrenaline pumping. It works.

The unique aspect of combat in Undying is its spell system. The idea is that Galloway and Covenant fought against some sort of arcane tribe during World War 1, Galloway got hit by a shaman's spell and was given the tribesman's amulet after Covenant killed him. Between the amulet and - maybe - getting blasted by the spell, or maybe just through being naturally magical, Galloway finds himself in the ironic position of being a paranormal investigator/ghostbuster type figure, while at the same time gaining more and more powerful paranormal powers himself.

Some of these spells are non-combat, such as Scrye, which allows you to see 'echoes of the past' or general evidence of ghostly activity. Others are combat spells, such as Ectoplasm (remember Ghostbusters? - "He slimed me!"). All are powered by Galloway's 'mana', which is rapidly spent as you cast spells but, fortunately, regenerates also very quickly.

Weapons are wielded in your left hand, leaving your right hand free to cast spells. Early in the game you might find that you are only using your gun. You'll regret it as soon as you run out of bullets. Through necessity, you will quickly discover that you need to combine your offensive spells with your guns if you are going to survive - for example, hurling ectoplasm bolts at a howler as it closes, and using a bullet to finish it off at close range.

The interface is mostly standard for an FPS, using a mouse-keyboard combination, and all controls are fully re-mappable, though unfortunately the game wouldn't recognise buttons 4 and 5 on the sides of my Intellimouse. The biggest innovation ise a compass-point selection ring for quickly selecting the right weapon or spell (as an alternative to scrolling with the mouse wheel or keyboard). This tool takes a bit of getting used to, but in fact it works very well. The eight weapons or spells appear like a compass overlay on the screen when you hold down a modifier key (e.g, mouse button 3). By pushing the mouse up you select the weapon at the north point; pull it down and to the right you get south-east, and so on. I was sceptical, now I'm sold. It's precise and virtually instant once you get used to it - every home should have one.

Overall it is difficult to find fault with this game. I almost feel picky and churlish looking for cons. But I guess I should mention some things that may annoy you.

In terms of gameplay, it has to be said that the game is extremely linear. There is not a lot of freedom of movement. There are generally only one or two doors that you can open at any one time - with all the rest you will get a somewhat repetitive phrase such as 'Won't budge!' or 'Jammed!'. This is a little frustrating, but is clearly designed to keep you moving towards the next plot development location. This is more like an immersive horror story rather than a free-ranging FPS, but fortunately the game moves along at such a pace that you don't really have too much time either to notice your lack of freedom. You will never get bored kicking round the endless, same-looking levels that some games inflict on fans of the genre.

There is also a bit of a reliance on finding keys. This is nowhere near as bad as it sounds, partly because the game is so linear. Keys are obvious (when it is time to find them - other doors stay locked for several chapters), and with the areas so small you never get the feeling that you are on a tedious hunt'n'fetch mission.

Some player feedback on the web has complained about frequent loads and long load times. One gamer complained of 5-10 minute load times. He didn't give his system specs but I suspect they were well below average. I have experienced 5-10 second load times, on a 'typical' install, which I think is perfectly reasonable. It is true that the game loads frequently - areas rarely consist of more than a handful of rooms, and each time you move between areas the game needs to load up the new one. This seems to me to be a small price to play for the richly detailed environments. In addition, the game auto-saves at each such transition, so even if you have neglected to quick-save in-game, you will never have much ground to make up when you die.

Undying is strictly a single-player game, though there are rumours of a multiplayer patch on its way. This is bound to bother people. Personally I don't think the lack of multiplayer is a big deal - like Half-Life, the game is strongly story-focussed, and it is this focus on the single-player story that makes the game so good. I'm not sure how having yet another deathmatch/CTF game would have made the world a better place. Undying may eventually allow multiplayer action, but ultimately this game is about being all alone in the dark.

One final little gameplay gripe is that it took me ages to find a way to force a reload of the pistol. There is no reload key - instead you use the caps-lock key, which toggles between shooting modes on other weapons. Call me stupid, but I spent the first few chapters having to empty the gun before auto-reloading, before I got another weapon with different modes and stumbled across the reload function in the manual's fine print. I think it takes 'RTFM' to pretty unreasonable lengths not to have an ordinary, FPS standard reload key.

On the technical front, this game is one of the first to require (and ship with) DirectX 8.0. This means you will need to install DX8 and may need to update drivers accordingly. Good luck. A lot of manufacturers have been slow in releasing DX8-certified drivers, though generally your DX7a-certified drivers should be adequate. Last time I installed DX8 (and promptly removed it) I found myself experiencing input lags in D3D (but not OpenGL) with my PS2 mouse. As far as I could work out this was most likely due to my Voodoo3 drivers not being DX8 certified. However, since then I have upgraded to a USB mouse and haven't had any problems. Be aware, though, that if your hardware manufacturer doesn't yet support DX8 you may experience similar niggles.