Hook promised to use the capabilities of the Mega CD to great effect, with a massive world of platform action and stunning music and effects which would bring the atmosphere of the hit movie sparkling magically into the MEGA office. Meanwhile, Paul sat a little grumpily beside me, plugging away at a particularly nasty section of Ex-Mutants which he was playing 'For fun, actually'. I allowed myself a tiny inward chuckle as I anticipated the delights ahead. Is this enough background, or should I just let you down now?

You guessed it. Hook, sadly, is just another in a long line of titles to be added to the list of Mega CD disappointments. It's big, it's tough, it's pretty, it sounds beautiful, but it's also slow, frustrating, and no bloody fun at all. It begins promisingly enough, but as soon as you stop listening to the music and start to play the actual game...

Okay, let's get the facts out of the way first. As you've doubtless deduced from the screenshots, Hook is a platform game. It uses the memory capacity of the Mega CD to be a BIG platform game, and one with a lovely soundtrack and the odd beautiful cameo sequence between levels, but a platform game nonetheless. Nothing wrong with that, of course (hey, some of my best friends are platform games), but beneath all the frills and frippery, Hook isn't a very good platform game.

Why not? Well, for a start it's really slow. Well, not REALLY slow, but to a generation of gamers weaned on the hyperactive hedgehog, Hook moves like a sleepy slug on sedatives. Not only is the overall pace of the game slow, but the control of your character within the game leaves a bit to be desired, too. As you control Peter Pan in his mission to rescue his children, you can't help thinking that Tinkerbell would have been better off employing someone more suited to the job, like Esther Rantzen. Of course, maybe Pan's SUPPOSED to be slow to react, being as he is a porky old accountant type who, in the plot of the film, gave up all this adventuring lark years ago, but if that's the case (which I severely doubt anyway, but we're all for giving people the benefit of the doubt here at MEGA) it's no excuse for making a game as annoying to play as it does here.

And that brings me tidily to the other major bugbear. Hook's levels are reasonably sizable, which is a Good Thing. They don't, however, have any restart points in them, which is a Bad Thing. Get killed, as you frequently will due to the aforementioned controls and the general difficulty level, and it's all the way back to the beginning (unless you've made it as far as the end of level boss, which is a Blessing. Restarting at the boss also applies if you use a continue, which is a Welcome Relief too). With no passwords on offer, this means that if you want to finish the game, you're going to have to stick at it (using your limitless continues) until you've been through the entire thing in a single sitting. Given the size and difficulty, this is (A) asking a lot of your average player who doesn't have three days solid at a time to play a single game, and (B) asking a lot of your average human being who'll start to get very bored indeed of the thrill-less platform antics by about halfway through level two.

Y'see, the very worst thing about Hook is that (gameplay-wise), it never really manages to raise an eyebrow. Sure, there are a few pretty bits, but nothing as good as 95% of World Of Illusion. Sure, there are a few nice touches (like the bits where Tinkerbell charges you up with a limited amount of flying power which you have to use very carefully and sparingly to get through some especially tricky sections, or the unicycling baddies on level three), but nothing as good as nearly all of Sonic 2.

And sure, it's difficult and you won't finish it in two hours flat (like, since we're being fair, the aforementioned Sonic 2), but it's a nasty, tedious, unimaginative and unfair kind of difficult, compared to (plucking a completely arbitrary but pretty close all the same example out of thin air) Rolo To The Rescue. There's a bit of the feel of the film here, but not nearly enough to keep you interested after your tenth consecutive death on the horrible (not particularly hard, just unpleasant) forest section that is level two. And lastly, this Mega CD game is in fact a slightly inferior version of the SNES title of the same name. I don't know about you, but it embarrasses me as a Sega owner to have to pay out £400 for a Mega Drive and Mega CD, just to get something that isn't quite as good as a bog-standard £130 SNES. We've said it before and I'm going to say it again, if it's going to be the success it ought to be, the Mega CD's going to have to do an awful lot better than this.