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Day 73,050. Dear Diary, another day in this infernal dungeon with only Ernie the rat for company. As rats go, he's not a bad sort, but his Jimmy Tarbuck impression is becoming a real pain. The gaoler turns up once a decade, but he isn't much company either, and he only knows one joke (about a thumbscrew and some Frankfurters).

Day 73,051. Dear Diary, today my eye fell on a mysterious dusty box that, inexplicably, I've never noticed before in all my 200 years in this prison. I opened it and discovered it was an ancient laptop computer with full tele-communication facilities. Unfortunately there were no games with it, but after fiddling around with the MODEM link I made contact with four helpful robots and managed to persuade them to rescue me! If only I knew where I'm imprisoned.

I started by sending my robo-rescuers to the planet Butre, and took direct control of the quartet, viewing the scenery through their eyes and directing them from my keyboard. I can keep a check on their energy levels and state of repair, list the items they are carrying and command them to use these items to get out of trouble (or into it).

After landing their spacecraft on the planet's surface I sent them on a walk around a maze of hedges until the came across a circular door in a wall which opened only when four buttons are pressed in the correct sequence.

Once inside, the robots were transported to an underground network of corridors populated by heavily-beweaponed androids and all sorts of psychotic mutants. Luckily, the robots stumbled across an armoury where they were able to stuck up on flame throwers, blasters and explosives. After testing them out (heh heh!) on a swarm of small furry things, I discovered (a) that the robots are terribly good shots, and (b) that dead monsters leave behind bags of gold. I plan to return to the shop I saw earlier and equip my team with some improved body parts, better weapons, and possibly some add-ons to provide various scanning facilities on each robots' supplementary viewing screen.

The shopkeeper informs me that this is just one of ten bases maintaining the prison ship where I am, and that to escape I need explosives to blow up each base's power source, after finding a computer disk bearing the co-ordinates of the next base.

Dungeon Master certainly spawned a fair few clones but this is about the best I've seen, because it's the only one that really uses some ingenuity. For example, the super ball may look like a toy but throw it against a wall and it bounces back and forth knocking seven deadly bells out of anything that tries to walk past it!

The object handling is fine, and the ability to change the robots' abilities by buying new body parts is a great idea, especially as there is such a wide variety of bits (including some really meaty weapons) available. The monsters are brilliantly conceived and brilliantly drawn too, rangng from innocuous Postman Pat lookalikes to enormous ED-209 clones which pack a frightening amount of firepower.

As if that wasn't enough to keep you awake all night, the game generates 5900 missions so you definitely won't finish it in a weekend! If you lament the lack of Dungeon Master-type games on a par with the original, say goodbye to Mr. Frown, because this is the business!