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Based on the space baules in Star Wars, Death Star Interceptor is a technically impressive game which falls down on playability.

The first screen, if you can call it that, simply involves launching your X-wing fighter through a portal. It's not much of a challenge, but is a bit tedious to have to go through each game, as the control of your ship is fairly erratic. Once launched you head for outer space, with the Death Star and lots of small pinpoint stars in the background.

Some of these stars then seem to move and grow larger, developing into wave after wave of attacking Tie fighters - a very impressive piece of graphics, but I found shooting at these ships very difficult as your own ship leans to the left and right whenever you move in either direction.

If you survive all that, you enter my favourite part of the game - the trench. Ducking and weaving to avoid the Death Star's defences is really gripping, even on the lowest skill level, and the moving perspective graphics are excellent. with none of the flicker that afflicts similar games.

My only real criticism is that the keyboard controls aren't very friendly. For a start, the 'Down' button (Q) is actually above the 'Up' button (A), which is a bit odd. And, like most games that don't support user-defined controls, the keys chosen assume that the player is right-handed, which I'm not, and so I found it very hard to play.

C.J.