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The brave ship Elapidae is on its way home after some tough trading in the Skillion system. But mere light years from home, the crew suggest to the captain, via a blaster, that they stop off for some action. Hence a visit to the eight-planet Octarian system. The good news is that Diogem Disks and Chrollum Crystals are abundant, while local ships will provide little resistance to the Elapidae's lasers. The bad news is that fuel is very expensive and the only way to get some is to accept missions from local corporations.

And the worst news is that Octarians' sworn enemies, the Homikahns, have picked this moment to ready a Promethean cannon to wipe out the entire system - it's a race against time to escape.

The game is divided into four arcade sections. The first is an overhead view of the Elapidae flying through space: the ship is fixed, left/right rotating the screen around it. Hostiles include pirates, cargo convoys, the odd space station, asteroid storms and oddities such as biological pods which spawn mutant flies when shot.

Once you arrive in orbit around a planet, the landing craft splits off and rotates to fly *into* the screen. Planets are guarded by Space Harrier-like leviathans which move at great speed. Destroy these and the craft proceeds down to hover over the planet's surface. It's an overhead view, with yet more nasties attacking. Deal with these and you can finally land. A crew member can now be sent out to fight through all sorts of baddies - giant spiders, tanks, lasers traps etc. A time limit is provided by a very limited oxygen supply, depleted by every hit.

Should you arrive at the underground installation, everyone will suddenly become very civil and offer to trade with you!

Disks and crystals can be sold, and a wide variety of weapons bought including mining lasers for exposing the crystals in asteroids (in space you can select which weapon to use before each battle, as well as switching energy between shields and cannons).

You can also choose which mission to accept. Missions basically involve transporting cargo to another planet in return for fuel. A neat touch is that the distance to a planet varies according to the time of year. You might need to wait until planetary orbits bring your destination closer - but this costs a lot in hotel bills!

Maybe this should have been named Mediocre. After all, underneath the fancy packaging (and horrendous price tag) it's just a hotch-potch of game styles, with none of the sub-games particularly strong.

The trading aspect is also very limited and it's annoying that you can get stuck on a planet through lack of fuel - and then have to start from scratch as this hopeless situation has automatically become your stored position!

As a glorified shoot-'em-up Awesome is fairly playable, but like most 'mega-games' it proves anticlimatic.

The programmers of Shadow Of The Beast II are after your dosh again, with another technically impressive intro, T-shirt and an odd remix of familiar game styles. Astroids, Space Harrier, Parallax and Elite are all called to mind. The latter is perhaps the most misleading, since you can't go off on your own; missions are fixed and essential to gain fuel - plus there's only a couple to choose between at each station.

Moreover, there's no disk save, and enemy patterns are fixed - just as well seeing as you have to choose your weapons *before* you know what you're facing in the next encounter!

That said, there is an impressive variety of enemies which provides a big incentive to keep coming back. On the other hand only the space combat is particularly playable; the rest is a bit tired and unoriginal.

All in all, a mixed bag, worth a look from shoot-'em-up fanatics looking for something a bit different.

Presentation 96%
Astonishing ray-traced space battle, "free" T-shirt, automatic RAM save. A fair bit of disk swapping.

Graphics 85%
Generally good with varied enemies and an impressive leviathan.

Sound 91%
A variety-packed rock soundtrack combined with good FX.

Hookability 78%
Shoot-'em-up action provides a strong hook, although the first planet scene is tough.

Lastability 80%
Eight planets and numerous missions provide a big, if repetitive, challenge.

Overall 79%
A slick remix of numerous shoot-'em-ups.