Flight of the Amazon Queen: 20th Anniversary Edition - The old ones aren't always the best ones

Veteran point and click adventures have enjoyed something of a resurgence on mobile, and while Flight of the Amazon Queen never quite set itself apart as a classic, aspects of it still transfer very well 20 years later.

Its biting wit is still sharp, there's some fun and interesting characters, and the remastered art style very much looks the part.

But unfortunately some things have been lost in translation.

The touch interface feels like it would have benefited from some extra polish. It works well for the most part, but you'll soon learn it's not been designed for convenience.

Pressing the question mark in the top right of the screen shows all the interactive hot spots, but when you hold a finger on any of them, the base option is to look. You have to tap the verb bar at the bottom of the screen to perform any other action.

This is fine and works well enough, though the icons for cycling through your inventory are a tad too small, there's occasional input delay, and it's very easy to create screen conflict and send Joe wandering off into the thickets of the Amazon instead.

This is the standard way to play, but you can also attempt the classic style - something we definitely wouldn't recommend - where your finger is used like a mouse pointer.

Which would be okay, except the cursor regularly gets lost and has to be placed several centimetres above the verb bar or your inventory in order to use either of them.

Flight of the Amazon Queen also really struggles with sound in this port.

While the graphics have received a slight facelift, the voice acting remains tinny, there are regular hiccups and distortions during conversations and monologues, and during cut-scenes there's sometimes as much as several seconds complete audio break-up.

The music does sound greatly improved however, and it complements the exotic environments better than ever before.

You play as Joe King, pilot for hire. Joe is a down on his luck, baseball hat wearing pilot, who has been struggling to make ends-meet and get passengers on board his not-so luxury plane.

His fortunes seem to change when he wins a contract to pick up Faye Russel - an actress scheduled for a photo shoot in the Amazon - but then he stumbles across a scientist's mad plot to turn women into dino-people. Because, why not.

Flight of the Amazon Queen has a distinct Indiana Jones vibe to it, except that you'd need to replace the lead with a grown-up Short Round, and go with a B-movie plot that makes Crystal Skull seem Oscar-worthy.

It's not all bad though. The game raises the odd chuckle, and throws in some devious, yet logical puzzling. There's some real character and flamboyancy layered underneath the narrative direction, helping you look past some of the game's crucial flaws.

But sadly - unlike the likes of Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Monkey Island - Flight of the Amazon Queen just hasn't aged as well. This remaster could and should have been much better, and for the most part, really isn't a natural fit on mobile.