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This is one of those games that probably started with a programmer coming up with a nice routine and then trying to build an entire game around it. In this case the routine is the nicely animated spaceships which zoom in and out of the screen at great speed. Trouble is, the rest of the game just doesn't match up to the promise of the graphics.

The game is based around an alien take-over of Uncle Ronnie's current favourite toy - the so-called Star Wars defence system. The aliens are using the system to attack earth - turning the atom weapons on suddenly defencesless cities. Your job is to take off in your second-hand spaceship and defeat the aliens by attacking their ships and blowing up the possessed defence satellites. You can earn different weapons by blasting aliens. The weapons have silly names and the only really useful ones are the Blaster which can be used to zap the offencing satellites and the Dyno Ray which knocks out any bombs which the satellites drop on an unsuspecting Earth.

It's not too difficult to get weapons - apart from the Blaster which requires 144 hits to obtain. This process is essentially tedious as the shoot-'em-up skill required to kill off the aliens seems simply to be the ability to stay awake for the duration.

You also have to "turn-on" windows containing your score and the essential VDU message readouts. Quite why they aren't there to start with is a mystery as you need to see the messages and score. Playing the game with them turned off just leaves a pretty empty screen full of the nicely zooming space craft.

You are supposed to navigate yourself around above the earth - represented by a crude revolving "half-moon" shape at the bottom of the screen. But as you don't get any real impression of movement - there are no stars - you have to rely on the map to discover where you are. This is called up from the menu - which you keep having to call up in order to change weapons. This holds up the action terribly.

Defcom, from Binary Design, the people who brought you the disappointing Max Headroom game, is dull and uninspired. It wouldn't be much of a bargain at a budget price - but at £8.95, it's something of a rip-off.