Small is cute

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For those of you who somehow managed to miss Bug Hunter the first time around, the story goes like this: Genetic scientists decided to produce an incredibly strong, intelligent and loyal super-soldier, but unfortunately got it wrong and ended up with a six inch biped with a stupidly large mouth, an irrational dislike of insects and a silly name: Hysterion Proteron. However, it proved its worth by eradicating insects in highly entertaining ways.

But now the Earth is threatened by an alien invasion, and for some thoroughly obscure reasons Bug Hunter has been sent to stop the invasion force before it arrives. This involves going to each ship, switching off the engines, disposing of all the aliens and causing each ship to self-destruct.

In the original game, each level comprised a fixed screen around which Bug Hunter wandered or jumped - up walls and across ceilings using sucker feet - picking up things and dropping them on the bugs, or in some cases letting go of things and letting them rise up to knock out the inverted invertebrates. Essentially, each scene is a puzzle to be solved.

In this new version, the levels are much larger and scroll around with Bug Hunter in the middle, but the puzzle element is the same. The bugs/aliens all have new and interesting types, apart from the obvious ones that just move back and forth there are the sleeping ones, at least one sitting in a chair firing a gun and probably lots more.

However, there's one more new element - the Return key. In the original there were just three controls: move left, move right and jump/pick up/drop, all performed with Shift. But now Return has been added which means Use/Activate and if Bug Hunter is carrying a gun it will fire.

Unlike the original, there's also much more interaction between items in the new version; for example, on one level there are a whole series of security guns and a switch to deactivate them. An alien keeps switching it back on every time you switch it off.

The graphics are cute and everything has an underlying sense of humour. Bug Hunter was good, but Bug Hunter In Space is brilliant.

Lazarus