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Eureka! That's it! Move over Mogadon, now we have it, the most reliable cure for insomniacs yet. It doesn't come in the form of a pill or capsule either, it's a cassette - a cassette called Hopeless and it will send you to sleep in five minutes flat.

Brilliant though it may be as a sleeping drug, as a game it is aptly titled.

The completely unoriginal plot is that you, Al Bluntz, have had your girlfriend whisked away from you by some nutter known as the Mad Monk. This Mad Monk is a notorious space criminal. If he's so notorious, why then is he picking on your girlfriend? Nobody knows. (Just as nobody knows why RadarSoft bothered sending me this game). Who cares who he is anyway, all you know is if you're half the man you think you are, you're going to want to get her back. Right?

Wrong! When reading the instructions, I thought doesn't this look like fun, but then I made the mistake of playing the game. You don't have to.

The monk has taken your girlfriend and hidden her in the centre of a two-thousand screen complex (cue cries of Woo! Impressive!) When will software houses learn that, when it comes to maze or arcade adventures, a big game isn't always a good one?

So, off you fly, attempting to defeat the monk and get your girlfriend back. You start the game in which looks like the screen of Jet Set Willy XXXXIII. As soon as I saw the ladders I immediately thought, "Not another platform game!" but I was wrong. It is not even a platform game - it's not even that good! Hopeless is more when I could call Useless - a boring, unoriginal, poor excuse for an arcade adventure.

What the instructions say and what seems to be the basic idea of this load of rubbish are worlds apart. The instructions say that you fly on your Jetpack through outer space in search of the monk, whilst avoiding nasties. But the game I was playing was nothing like it. My version seemed to be totally different. It involved flying around loads and loads of screens full of tiny little sprites and ugly backdrops, watching my limitless energy supply stay at top whack. The sound was about as interesting as a buspass collection, and my biggest problem was staying awake!

The only even averagely interesting concept (this saved the game from getting the big zero!) was the computer terminals scattered around the maze, each one giving you a helping hand in their own little way. This part is a bit "Impossible Mission-y" - but then Impossible Mission was a good game, and this isn't.

Just one other thing that gave me a shiver down my spine, made my knees go weak and made my blood boil. That was the inclusion of the dreaded karate kick! Why, oh why, must they insist on making what was originally a good idea of a karate game in computers go stale? Karate is set to end up the same sour way as did the platform game. This game, though, is even worse.