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Regular pant-swingers will no doubt know who Gilbert The Alien is - he's one of (and probably the best-looking) presenters from that kiddies' telly program on 'the other side'. Anyway, he's due to do another series, but the rest of the planet Drill aren't too keen on the thought of him returning to Earth (all this presenting seems to have gone to his head, you see). So they've stolen bits of the Millenium Dustbin (the spaceship he needs to fly back in) and will only tell him where they are if he can beat them at some of their favourite video games.

But does this mean that you'll simply be walking around a maze until you find one of the video games, entering a sub game, and then carrying on again? Er well, yes, it does actually. The walking bit merely consists of trundling about 'snotting' at passers-by to avoid losing lost time. You have 24 hours (minutes in real time) to complete the game, but whenever you touch a baddy time is lost, as it is when you fail to beat the video game and you lose a full hour (minute). As far as the games are concerned, there are 4 different ones (including one of those 'match the numbers' jobbes), 'Sprout Wars' (don't ask), and Earth Wars (you're an alien shooting waves of people).

At the end of the day, Gilbert: Escape From Drill is rather good actually. The map is large, but as games tend to last for ages, this is rather a good job. Its got a nice line in wacky humour and the graphics have that 'cartoony' feel to them that works so well on the Speccy.

The only real problem is that things are perhaps a bit too slow. And I'm not too sure how long it'll be before you decide that walking round mazes and playing subgames perhaps isn't such a good idea because it's rather repetitive. But for three quid, you can't complain.