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Chrimblast is a Christmassy shoot-'em-up game which happily reunites us with the R-Type style gun. That's the one where a quick press on the fire button gives a short burst of gunfire but holding it down releases something that obliterates everything in its path. The game starts with sampled speech booming "Chrimblast" and has a Yerzmyey soundtrack too.

The aim is to complete eight missions and the objective of each is to collect nine seasonal objects - i.e. presents, puddings, fruits, etc. These bob about in space, casually floating left and right as they descend towards your scout-ship which you can attempt to position so it's ready to collect them.

Making this a bit tougher are the aliens who come streaming down the screen and must be either avoided or blasted with one of your two weapons. Unfortunately, your bullets will destroy the collectables as well as the aliens; you therefore need to try and position your craft in such a way that you don't accidentally shoot the collectables.

There is some skill involved in this but not a great deal of it. Chrimblast gives you an insanely large amount of lives (Nine!) and does not penalise you even for blasting the seasonal items, hence its first few missions feel rather unchallenging and it's tedious to work through them more than once.

If you persevere, the missions do get tougher, and you come under attack from more aliens at once, with penalties for shooting seasonal objects being introduced too. From a very impressive intro however, it's odd that the game feels so undemanding; with the excessive lives, most players would be able to complete all eight missions on their first go! Three lives would have been quite adequate to inject a bit of a challenge to Chrimblast.

Nevertheless, if you're in the mood for some mindless, forgiving blasting fun, then Chrimblast will certainly fit the bill.