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It's fourth down, fourth and inches. The situation's getting critical, real critical. Like, if you don't complete the next pass the ball will explode destroying half your squad sort of critical. Can it be done? Have the Assassins got the know-how, the nerve and sheer guts to make that play?

That's the excitement of Cyberball, sport of the 21st century. A game where action's the attraction, skill the thrill and head-cracking tackles an everyday occurrence.

Long ago, after the steroids controversy, athletes found a neat way to cheat. If something broke - be it knee, arm or neck - gridiron players had it replaced with bionic bits and bobs. Naturally this gave them better than average performance - and an unlimited mileage guarantee - so football dissolved into violent chaos. Players were literally getting killed out there, which didn't do much for career prospects or wage demands. So rather than mix man and machine, the Cyberball league was founded, a completely robotic sport where facemask violations ended with players in the workshop and not the morgue.

Based loosely on the old American footie rules (although there are now six quarters!) the game's controlled completely from the sidelines. Pitchside players can pick the plays, time the passes and take the rap for missed assignments. Now with Cyberball you too can take command of a team, and guide it from practice to the big league.

You control seven mean machines on offence, seven more for defence. Each has been designed to do a specific job. Some speed along on wheels as receivers, other tracked hulks play as tacklers and love grinding the defensive ends into the turf. Running backs have speed and durability, while defensive backs are fast, ferocious tacklers. You must use their abilities to drive up field and score a touchdown - the only thing that will stop the 350 lb steel bomb, affectionately known as the ball, exploding. It runs from cool to critical, and to make it safe you must first cross the halfway line, then the other guys' goal line. Take too much time and things may well go up in your receiver's face as he sprints for glory.

Explosions and heavy hits naturally weaken even the best steel-suited war wagons, so dosh is doled out for good plays allowing you to rebuild - literally rather than spiritually - your team at the end of a match. And they'll need it. "Damaged 'bots drop balls", the 'gipper' used to say, and he was right.

At first sight, the list of plays seems daunting even to a hardened grid-iron fan. Arrows and lines appear over a representation of your team, each indicating the route they will try to take. This of course depends on whether you decided to run the ball - as in rugby - or throw a pass as in American Football. Squares mark the spots receivers need to reach to complete a pass, while the backs run bootlegs and screens to ensure success. Throw in the defence, and an organised street fight is the result. Plays have to be adjusted on the spot if defenders break through, to try to sack the quarterback, or stop the runner in his caterpillar tracks.

Good play calling is essential if your team is to succeed. An airborne assault, throwing pass after pass, is a high-risk strategy that eats up the yards, leaving the clock virtually untouched. Running the ball is safer, but more time-consuming. Sometimes, though, if a lot of yardage is needed, there's no other choice than a Hail Mary bomb to the other end of the pitch.

On defence, life's even more fraught. Combined with the choice of playing three different styles (long, medium or short) you have four basic set-ups. Choose the defender that's to be under your personal control, assign the rest of the robo-thugs a job, and get to it. You have to guess - after you've selected your play! - what the other team's going to do. Then track and trash their key man, no easy task as tons of of titanium titans collide.

For such a complex game, covering fourteen on-screen players, Cyberball can be for-given for being slightly less than stunning to view. The players and their movements are, though, as clear as they need to be. The overhead view does detract from the immediate violence of the whole spectacle, but that's not vital to the game - there is, after all, the pleasing crunch of metal on metal every time a tackle's made. This is a war, where the strategies have been laid out in advance. The troops and their positions are the important thing, not watching the bullets fly. The excitement comes from outwitting the other team and steaming past to score, or sacking their QB real hard.

Cyberball is the best American football game to date, even though it isn't strictly based on it. There may only be six teams but with hundreds of plays to try, Cyberball's assured a long, if bruising life. The new rules are sometimes a bit strange, especially those surrounding safeties and conversions, but then again robots probably don't understand cricket! Used properly, even these quirks can be turned to your advantage and help make you Cyberball champions. Eventually!

The trouble with Cyberball is the complication factor. If you're not into American Football then you're stuck. The jargon's confusing and the playbook just looks like a mass of arrows and lines. A good game if you can work out what you're doing!

Win a game!

American football is full of weird and wonderful buzzwords. AA takes a 'time-out' to explain some of them:

Unload - tackling (or hitting') another player as a hard as possible. On the numbers - a well thrown pass that hits the receiver high on the chest, where his team numbers are!

Popped - Hitting an opponent with brutal force e.g. This man really got popped.

Facemasked - a foul where one player grabs another by the facemask in a thinly disguised attempt to pull their head off!

Time out - Where the game stops for 30 seconds so teams can organise plays, who hits who and when etc.

Bootleg - a disguised running play.

Flea flicker - a highly complicated, highly risky multiple pass move.

Nailed - being hit particularly hard by another player.

Sacked - where the Quarterback's hit particularly hard by another player [Uhhh, there's a lot of this hitting business going on here... - Ed]

Unsportsmanlike conduct - hitting another player particularly hard before the play starts.

Late hit - hitting another player particularly hard after the play is over.

LT - Lawrence Taylor, AA's fave footballer. Plays for the New York Giants in shirt number 56 as a line backer and hits everybody particularly hard! [I think we get the idea! - Ed]

Trouble-free.

Graphics 66%
P. Small sprites are sometimes hard to spot. A good overall view.

Sonics 71%
N. Good, futuristic theme.
N. Lovely metal-hits-metal sounds.

Grab Factor 33%
P. Exceptionally complex tactical.
P. Just what is going on?

Staying Power 91%
N. Hugely varied.
N. So many plays!

Overall 82%
A futuristic sports sim that's right on the numbers.