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"Gather round, yer sea dogs," old Captain Budsaye leant forward, "and I'll tell ye a tale to make yer ears curl." His dramatic air only slightly compromised by his beard, which was nicely bathing in his ale and his parrot which was pecking at his ear...

'Ee be good a' stories," growled Pagwusch, and slapped him hard on the back in the kind of way that, though appearing boisterously friendly, hurts like bloody hell.

And so, as Neemoh, Kurke and Scarlet sat around roasting their chestnuts on the open fire. Budsaye began his story.

'T'was Cap'n Puckahd and I, aboard the Stardog on the high seas, headed for Nehrnehrland, when we saw this fair vessel to portside. Well, we thought we'd take a look for the sakes of our bounty, y'hear, so we sails up to her to find her laden down with sea dogs, armed to the teeth with the sharpest cutlasses between here and Gonahd Bay.

'An' you fought like the mules of the sea that you so right are,' shouted Pagwusch, slapping his thigh and spilling ale all over Ahab, who'd just come over to join them, and hadn't been expecting a bath for at least another seven months.

Budsaye recovered. 'Yeah, well, we fought and won, anyway. So we's lookin' her over, seein' what we could sell, like, when we found this box of wondrous magical light on a table. On a piece of rope coming from the chest was this nobbly plank with all writin' on loads o' bumps.'

'I'm telling 'ee now, it be a Commodore 64 you're sayin' about,' interrupted Pagwusch with enough vigour to make Kurke drop his chestnut, which rolled off and started patiently setting fire to a chair leg.

'Look, will you shut up? I knows it were a C64 'cos it were running Hook, the new budget game from Hit Squad.'

The others drew breath through their teeth, when they realised that Budsaye had seen the release they'd all been waiting for. 'How did it play?' asked Captain Ehmericka, drawing up a stool and taking another toasting fork from the fire.

A voice from behind them took over. 'Well, it was all much of a muchness really, what with quite a weak film licence, there wasn't really much scope for originality. Playing Peter Pan is quite fun, though.'

Slowly, they all looked round to see the tall silhouette in the doorway, hair flowing over his shoulders, lightning striking into the darkness behind him.

"It takes the form of a platform game, with various sub-games based on fighting, flying, swimming and scrolly arcading. The only problem is that it's really quite repetitive, not giving much scope for free exploration - you're almost following a predetermined route round the levels," continued the figure, a long coat flapping around his legs.

"It's a film licence, it's a platformer, and it's a multi-load - a long multi-load. James Leach gave it 85% or thereabouts when he reviewed it a while back - mad bugger. I mean, the control system is all very nice n'all, but there's nothing new from level to level, and with a multi-load system as naff as this one (spend several minutes just loading up an interval screen) progressing through the game loses a lot of its attraction". He almost scratched his nose, until he remembered the hook on his hand, and thought better of it.

'There's not much else I can tell you - the graphics are reasonable, the sonics un-intrusive, but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired - at the end of the day, Hook just doesn't have enough scope.' The figure was moving closer, scraping his hook along the table as it did so. By the time it had walked right up to the group, his face was clearly visible.

'Why Cap'n Hairy - what happened to your hand?' Pagwusch heard more than one tale that night...

1. Graphically, it's nice n'all, but nothing special, and really quite garish, unfortunately... 2. ...the gameplay is really limiting and, to be honest, quite boring after a while. 3. It's got probably the most irritating multi-load system in the history of gaming, making you wait while it loads a sub-screen, then wait again while it loads the main level.