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How do you review a game like this without spoiling it for any potential buyers? The whole point about Hacker is that it simulates the experience of breaking into a large corporation's mainframe and becoming involved in its operations. However, just as you would experience this in reality, there are no instructions to help you determine what is happening or what you are supposed to be doing. In other words, you stumble in 'blind'.

Consequently, there's not much I can say about the game without giving it all away. This isn't a game where you simply have a task to solve - well, yes you do actually, but first of all you have to figure out what that task is. What I can say about Hacker is that it will take you all over the world and involves a search for various pieces of information.

Hacker begins with a simple blue screen, blank except for the words: 'Log On Please', and from here on it's up to you. If you succeed in logging on, you'll get into the mainframe and have to sort out the information that is presented to you.

This is not a game that's likely to appeal to arcade addicts, but for adventure fans and people who like to get their teeth into a good, infuriating puzzle it's probably the best thing to come along since Level 9 adventures.