The humble adventure game genre has been dying for more than a decade. In fact, the genre's been 'dying' for so long that such a morbid label is inappropriate. What's actually dying is the format of adventure games, where the traditional point-and-click interface exemplified by Lucasarts and Sierra has fallen away, giving rise to more cinematic and action-oriented gameplay.

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is the latest example of this new take on adventure games, where interactivity and action are used more than juggling your inventory and hunting for items in the background. It's a sequel to the 2000 hit, The Longest Journey, and picks up roughly where it left off -- it's not essential to have played the original, but it eases you into the initially confusing plot. Some characters return from the original, including the protagonist April Ryan, and once again you'll flit back and forth between our own rational, scientific world of Stark, and the magical, fantasy world of Arcadia.

You play through three characters, but your main anchor to the story is bored heroine Zoe Castillo – a prime candidate for Dreamfall's world-spanning adventure. Like Quantic Dream's recent Fahrenheit, (reviewed XX, page XX), it blends third-person action, puzzle solving and dialogue to move the story along, but unlike Fahrenheit, the gameplay cocktail doesn't mix as well as it could have. The third-person control system is clumsy and the camera never seems to be where it should be. This is a bad combination that makes the sporadic action and 'sneaking' sequences much harder than they should be. Good third-person action interfaces have been around for a decade, so it's beyond us why Funcom had such a hard time getting it right.

This is unfortunate, because Dreamfall is otherwise a stunning a game. It's a rich, detailed story that sucks you in after 30 minutes. The impatient gamer need not apply, as much of the story is told through extensive cinematics and dialogue, which is made bearable by some excellent writing and voice acting. In fact, the conversations are so lengthy and intricate, that you often feel like you're having little control over the story. Still, great storytelling is the crux of an adventure game, and Dreamfall fits the bill.

Ultimately, if it weren't for the clumsy interface, this could be the perfect title to put adventure games back on the map. But those after a good story, with gentle, logical puzzles, should look past its flaws -- Dreamfall is a fantastic way to spend a weekend.