PLATFORM: XBOX LIVE ARCADE (REVIEWED)

Pie with all its delicious fillings and crusted pastry toppings has a strange hold on the public imagination and it is this fascination which forms the basis for Misadventures.

In fact, it is based entirely on one particular individual's pastry-based obsession.

But far from dealing with delightfully tasty treats, Misadventures is a dark, gothic take on the rather silly subject and comes across as something of an otherworldly odyssey.

Appearing like an abstract thought from the mind of Tim Burton, the game eases you through the opening levels, and past questions of "style over substance" with simple pie collecting before the required level of lateral thinking becomes Mensa-like around level 19.

What appears initially as nothing but a stylish if highly derivative game ultimately reveals itself as a fiendish little time waster that could easily sap hours, if not days of your life.

Its major flaw however is that in this dumbed down age of gaming PB's somewhat unforgiving difficulty curve could easily dissuade many people from playing it.

MARKS: 7/10