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During superpower arms reduction talks a small, previously ignored nation launches an insane nuclear attack which uncontrollably escalates into World War III. Only a handful of humans survive the resulting devastation: the governing elite who hid in their underground nuclear shelters (hence their name, the Sheltered Ones) and others who survived above.

Feeling terribly embittered, the latter form a resistance movement to stop the Sheltered Ones re-establishing control. In secret they begin the development of a powerful laser cannon which can use a geostationary satellite to bounce its beam down to vaporize the Sheltered Ones. This elite soon learn of the laser weapon and plan to reassemble an old neutron bomb to destroy it. The bomb is in five pieces stored separately for security reasons. As the resistance hurry to complete the cannon the Sheltered Ones launch a desperate bid to recover the pieces of the bomb in the teeth of continuous resistance attacks.

Armour-Geddon has a huge play area of 80km by 80km, including mountains, lakes and buildings. You play the leader of the Sheltered Ones and live in an underground headquarters equipped with a few basic vehicles and weapons to arm them with. However, you also have teams of scientists and engineers to make new systems. There are six vehicles in all which can be developed: a fast attack fighter, stealth bomber, gunship helicopter, hovercraft, light tank and heavy tank. You can simultaneously have six vehicles active of any type (all bombers if you like!). All the vehicles have their own performance capabilities and can carry their own appropriate weapons - such as laser cannons, free-fall bombs, rockets and missiles.

Other devices include night-sights, drop tanks, cloaking devices, fuelpods (which can be dropped on out-of-fuel vehicles) and telepods. The last is critical; you can have up to six in operation to instantaneously teleport vehicles between them. Telepods can only be carried and dropped by the Stealth Bomber.

You can choose either to go for the complete game or single missions (where you go after just one bomb part). In either case you'll face an enemy armed with fighters, tanks, helicopters and a whole lot more. These craft are generated by buildings which can be knocked out.

The overall game essentially consists of five principal tasks:

1. Assigning scientists to research vehicles, weapons and special weapons. Then, once you have the blueprints, dividing up your engineers to produce the most important. Choosing priorities can be critical.
2. Finding and bringing back various mineral deposits vital for constructing machines.
3. Completing missions, which essentially means going to set locations to pick up and bring back elements of the Neutron Bomb.
4. Extending the power build-up time of the beam weapon by finding and destroying its powerlines.
5. Fire support. Chiefly using the various aircraft to take out enemy generators close to your base, or the routes taken by your ground vehicles.

I'm not normally very keen on complex simulations, but Armour-Geddon is very user-friendly and easy to pick up. What first attracted me to the game was the ability to try out all the vehicles which all have a totally different feel. But I soon realised that this was much more than a glorified flight sim.

As well as standard missions, there's a lot of long-term strategy in searching for all-important minerals to produce weapons, giving air support yo your own ground vehicles and knocking out enemy installations and powerlines. And, unlike most complex strategy games, you get to do everything yourself - in fact, with so many pressing matters it's hard to decide what to do first.

But don't be put off by the enormity of the challenge: Armour-Geddon is great fun to play and well worth a look even if, like me, you wouldn't usually touch military sims with a long-range missile!

Psygnosis's first foray into simulations is remarkable on three points. Firstly, it has the speed and graphic detail to match the likes of Falcon, together with *six* vehicles essential for completing the game, rather than just fancy extras.

Secondly, there's the depth of play which really does involve some serious strategic thinking. Researching weapons, exploring the land, using the right vehicles in the right situations (often two or more at once!) and coping with an increasing enemy onslaught are all very strong parts of the game and prove as demanding as learning to fly the helicopter (no mean feat when under fire).

In some places, the landscape isn't particularly overflowing with graphics to look at but there's a lot more to Armour-Geddon than shifting masses of polygons at speed. Geddon can and *does* do this anyway but for once there's a game behind the simulation and that means top marks from me.

"And the third point?" you cry, well let's just say Phil loved Armour-Geddon so much, prying the joystick from him took real courage. A truly remarkable combat sim!

Armour-Geddon offers the sort of huge, open-ended challenge that should keep most ardent warmongerers happy for weeks, probably months. It's up to you to organise your resources to produce the important hardware, then work out what objectives you'll go for, planning tactical strikes to make success possible.

Unlike Carrier Command, which sneakily divided its vast map into tiny islands and soon get repetitive, Armour's giant warzone is all pretty much accessible. The multi-faceted challenge takes some thinking about: do you go for a neutron bomb piece first or instead concentrate on gathering minerals? It's a big challenge and compulsive.

For the first few days, though, everyone is simply going to be messing around with the vehicles which look great and come with their own unique handling characteristics. Then there's the weapons: missiles are easy, but getting the timing right for bombs takes practice. And of course days can be spent using the vehicles together: it's great how you can flick instantaneously from one to the other, and the 3D is superb.

Objects are a little blobby at long range, and there's no light-sourcing shadows, but the variety and speed is excellent. Atmosphere is further enhanced by a great range of sound FX, all rising and fading in perfect relation to the closeness of various vehicles.

No plans as yet, but with Battle Command imminent it's not impossible.

Presentation 94%
Impressive ray-traced intro, save/load/format disk options, training, single mission or campaign option, five saved games, choice of keys, joystick or mouse. Superb multi-player mode with a serial link between two Amigas, or even an Amiga and a ST!

Graphics 92%
Excellent 3D system, combining plenty of detail with high-speed movement. Good 'fading to night' effect and vehicles are great.

Sound 88%
No monitor-shaking rock track, but instead a superlative range of FX with perfectly varying volume levels according to distance.

Hookability 96%
Forget the game's sophistication, the desire to mess around with all those different vehicles is utterly compulsive.

Lastability 96%
A tough, open-ended challenge.

Overall 94%
Great fun!