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Douglas Adams - the man who brought you Hitch Hiker's Guide is back again with Bureaucracy - the latest smash from Infocom.

If you're the sort who gets thoroughly frustrated by officious people who won't let you get on with things, then you'll enjoy Bureaucracy, but be warned - some of the problems may leave you just as frustrated as the real thing!

It all starts when you change jobs and move house. The removal men have failed to deliver to your new address, and your bank will not acknowledge that you have moved, due to your change of address form not having been processed. You have no cash in your account, and your credit cards are either over the limit or expired.

But not to worry, The Happitec Corporation, your new employer, is sending you on a two-week trip to Paris, all expenses paid. A money order for $75 spending money, is in the post. A niggling worry starts, when, examining the contents of your mailbox, you discover a leaflet addressed to the place next door. No sign of a money order, and without cash, the Getlost cab company are not going to take you to the airport!

Exploring the neighbourhood, you soon discover that the mail for the whole road has got mixed up, so in desperation you start scrutinising everyone else's. What makes this quite realistic, is that before you started the game proper, you were obliged to fill in an application form for a licence to play it. Thus your name and address is built into many of the messages that follow. If you live at number seventeen, for example, the road stretches from the Bank at number fourteen, through to a mysterious house at the other end - number twenty. However, if you live at number one, some of this realism is lost, since, to keep the road layout the same, you are accused of making an error on the form, and assigned house number fifteen.

In the search for your money order, you will cross paths with a couple of undercover agents, a hungry llama, a deaf old woman with a powerful elephant gun, and a fanatical philatelist. Not to mention an obnoxious nerd who will constantly try to sell you junk gadgets, and won't take no for an answer.

Eventually, you will be saved by your poor financial state. For failing to repay your Excess Card account, the firm has had an option but to send you a cheque made out for a negative amount. All you have to do is to figure out how to persuade your bank to turn this into positive cash, and you're on your way!

At last you feel sure you can sit back and relax and enjoy a less demanding part of the game! What could be easier than catching your Omnia Gallia four o'clock flight at the airport? Many things - Omnia Gallia, you discover, has sold out and ceased operations. Nevertheless, after a tiring round of the airline desks, seemingly trying to hit a moving target, you catch up with Air Zalagasa, who have agreed to honour Omnia Gallia tickets.

Zalagasan food, as everyone knows, is disgustingly vile, and aboard your plane, the stewardess absolutely insists you eat it. In fact, how to not eat it occupies your wits for much of the journey, until you have solved yet another of those delightfully simple yet baffingly unapproachable Infocom problems.

The detail in this game is immense, even by Infocom standards, and for that reason, Bureaucracy will not be available for the C64 - a minimum of 128K of memory is needed to run it

That detail tends to prevent boredom during a difficult stage with a puzzle, whilst you are inevitably attempting all the 'non-solutions'. For example, I decided, in desperation, to hire the cab under the false name of Fassbaum. No good - I was soon sussed. So I rang again, with my 'real' name. The cab office was suspicious: "You sound like Mr Fassbaum to me - sure you're not a prankster?"

Next, I tried giving my address as that of the old lady up the road. She had the habit of answering her door with her elephant gun, so I reckoned she might shoot the driver, allowing me to make off in the cab. And I was right! "We don't send cabs to No. 18 any more," explained the man in the office, "Our drivers kept getting shot!"

Scoring is out of 21 points (few are easy to come by) but an additional factor is the player's blood pressure. If it rises too high - curtains! And believe me, it can shoot up alarmingly at the airport!

And here's some advice for potential players. There are certain strategic points at which it is almost essential to save the game if you are to have any hope of solving the puzzle ahead without replaying from scratch a number of times. Save when you have the cheque, save when you reach the airport, save once you are aboard the plane. More than that I can't tell you at the moment - I'm dangling on the end of my parachute, which is caught up in the plane's escape hatch!

A totally unbelievable fantasy with a nasty ring of truth about it, Bureaucracy is an hilarious game. Perhaps the humorous text is slightly overdone in places, but there are plenty of good, solid belly laughs hidden in memory, just waiting to be screened! The boys from Boston also have to take a ticking off though - for producing a game that only runs on the C128 or Amiga. What about the C64 owning faithful Infocom?

My lower 'overall' rating reflects the price. I think £35 is just too much for any game - £20/25 would have brought this within reach of so many more players.