But Adrian wouldn't have anything to do with that. Nope, the love of his life is Sophia. Hell hath no fury  like a goddess spurned. A year passes. On the eve of his wedding to Sophia, Ishtar strikes and Sophia disappears. Adrian searches for her, but the search is a vain one, and Sophia cannot be found. That's when Ishtar offers him a challenge. Adrian must win Sophia's love once more and if he can, she will return to him in the present.

‘Right,’ you're thinking, ‘and if he doesn't, what will happen? Is the world going to come to an end?’

Well, yes. You see, Adrian is transported back in time to August 20, 79 A.D. If the date means nothing to you, the location might — Adrian is in Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius is scheduled to go kabloohy at 1 p.m. on August 24, and the entire city will be engulfed in lava and volcanic ash. The volcano's final eruption was so violent, so swift, that many people did not have time to escape and Pompeii itself was buried under 15-20 feet of ash, rock, mud and lava.

Dreamcatcher and Cryo  Interactive have woven a tale of love, discovery and history in the release of TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii, a hybrid game that can be played on either a PC or Macintosh. The game is a real-time adventure, weaving through the streets of Pompeii, as it was in the days before the eruption of Vesuvius.

During the course of the game, you will have to explore the city, gather material which will help you free your beloved (Sophia), solve puzzles, talk to non-playing characters to collect information, and beat the time limit.

As with other titles by Dreamcatcher, this program comes with an encyclopedia rich in historical fact, and the city itself is designed on the ruins of the Italian site. Other options include the visit mode, which gives you access to all areas of the game. You can use this to look around the city without wasting time.

The game is mouse- and keyboard-driven. You can move forward and backwards using the arrow keys. However, this can create a tiny problem. The world has the appearance of three-dimensions, but if you get too close to an object, it tends to pixilate. And though you can rotate (with the mouse) 360-degrees, as well as a limited up and down, you can (through using the arrow keys) put yourself in a corner in the game. The walls are too close, you can hardly move and there are no interactive points. About the only thing you can do is back up, turn and try another direction. The cursor will change to let you know what is accessible, what is retrievable and what bears further inspection.

Graphically the game is well designed. The elements are bright and colorful, and set the time period quite nicely. The vocal characterizations and background music support the graphics very well. The controls are easy to access and learn, and the game moves easily from one section of the city to the next.

Not only is there the overall time limit hanging over your head, but you will encounter puzzles that have time limits on finding their solution — and that's a lot shorter than five days.

TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii does have some graphical drawbacks (such as the pixilization of elements if you get too close to them), but they aren't enough to detract from the gaming experience itself. There is nothing here that would present problems to anyone. This is family-oriented entertainment, a rich adventure tale that will have players spending, well, days of discovery in the doomed city.

This program is rated for Everyone. While the system requirements are relatively low, a Pentium 200, your system must have MMX or the game will not play.

Install: Easy. The game eats less than 300 megs of hard drive space and goes on quickly.

Gameplay: 7.5. The entire world is not interactive, and unless you discover the 'path' you may find yourself standing in one spot or retracing footsteps. However, the transitions from one area of the city to the next are smooth.

Graphics: 7. These are not as good as other Dreamcatcher titles — such as The New Adventures of the Time Machine, or Beyond Atlantis — and there you can only get so close to some elements before they pixilate. However, the game still does sport a solid look.

Sound: 7.5. The audio track for this game is solid. Nothing out of the ordinary here, but nicely done.

Difficulty: 8. Time is definitely not on your side in this game. You have to make quick decisions. A simple control configuration allows you to interact with the world easily.

Concept: 8. This program incorporates elements of historical education into an adventure game very well. Not only will gamers be immersed in a good adventure game, they may learn something of the period and devastation caused by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Overall: 7.5. TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii is a good program that has something for the entire family. This is harmless fun.