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Well, here I am minding my own business, see, and up comes this elf - funny little bloke - clever, though. He's got this mate, not too bright, but looks a bit handy, know what I mean? Before you can say Gollum, off we go on a quest or something. I wouldn't mind if there was the odd tavern in sight, but no, mountains, poisonous snakes, trolls and all that. Wish I'd stayed in Essex.

The Journey is an adventure with graphics, and from the loading time, it's a big one. It's very much in the Hobbit tradition, but owes more to Tolkien's sequel Lord Of The Rings. In the company of various other characters, an elf, a wizard, and a very surly and suspicious warrior, you have to seek out the White Ship of the elves, and what happens next is anyone's guess.

The program's language-handling ability is not as good as The Hobbit, no adverbs and you can't chain commands, but the characters are a lot more talkative - the elf chatters away like made with rumours of giants and homespun philosophy. Winning the other characters' friendship is one of the biggest problems and I just couldn't hit it off with that warrior. I didn't even get the chance to buy the guy a pint. But I kept on trying and I'll probably have another go later, so I must be hooked.