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Er, have you read The Colour Of Magic? No, me neither. I want to after playing this. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it from any of my numerous local bookshops or libraries. I will order a copy, but the book should have been supplied with the game, or at least an optional, book/game package should have been available. The reason I'm getting so worked up about this is that to fully appreciate this game, I get the impression that to have read the book helps. Doing so might also make the game easier.

Rincewind is a rather useless magician, who knows only one spell, which he cannot produce. He lives on Discworld, which is carried by four gargantuan elephants on the back of a turtle. And he's broke. So he can hardly believe his luck when Twoflower, Discworld's first tourist, offers him a vast sum of money to be his guide. Rincewind is the only person who can speak Twoflower's language, being an excellent translator. But guiding the blundering tourist - who is quickly kidnapped - is not easy. You must also cope with his luggage, which propels itself using hundreds of tiny feet and will viciously protect its master and his iconograph, which is like a camera but contains a miniature imp who paints very quickly.

This marvellously silly - and original - story is just the start. Having unsuccessfully tried to escape the city with Twoflower's advance fee, I, as Rincewind, encountered Death himself ("it had to be Death. The empty sockets were a 'dead' giveaway and the scythe over one shoulder was another clue"). Death (he has to visit wizards personally for them to die) was expecting me to be somewhere completely different. His system has been screwed up, and he's none too pleased about it. Another problem...

Because it's based on Terry Pratchett's book, COMB has a different style humour to Delta 4's normal unsubtle farce and spoofery. It's more gentle, and comes largely from the strangeness of Discworld and the Twoflower's naivity.

In some other respects this bears the familiar hallmarks of previous Delta 4 successes. There's loads to read (though EXAMINE is disappointing) and many amusing little occurences, like the Iconograph complaining he's out of film because we took too many pictures at the Whore Pits. The graphics are much better than in any other Quilled game - Delta 4 don't get the acclaim they deserve in this area - and for the first time ever in Quilled product, they do not scroll up with the text.

However, I felt distressingly out of control during COM. To progrss with the game, it would seem you must perform individual actions in the right place which trigger off a whole sequence of events. So you spend them wandering about looking for which action to perform... somehow, whilst I enjoyed the descriptions, I felt I wanted more to do.

Because of this, I don't feel The Colour Of Magic is Delta 4's best. However, since there are four parts, there's lots to see and be entertained by; which means good value for money.