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Welcome Lance Gryzor, straight from the Arnie S. clone zone, all muscles, murder and mayhem. And get a load of his weapons! All of them designed to take an alien's head off with ease.

Coin-op fans will already know what's in store with this Konami conversion - Action with a capital A.

And to be honest, I haven't enjoyed a straight shoot-'em-up so much since Elite's Ikari Warriors.

So let's get down and get with it.

Alien creatures called the Durrs from the planet Suna have somehow infiltrated the earth's defences and set up their HQ and created an APP - Atmosphere Processing Plant. This fiendish device is capable of controlling the weather and the idea is to bring about another ice age.

Step forward man mountain Gryzor. His mission is to put the heat on the Durrs and stop the big freeze. And to do that he must infiltrate the complex, collect weapons, destroying guards until - or rather if - he manages to reach the centre of mischief.

The gameplay is split into three sections, each of which is loaded automatically when a level is completed.

The first section consists of three scenes, in which Gryzor, initially equipped with a machine gun, blasts his way along a three tier-scrolling landscape, avoiding the guards, taking out machine gun, nests and hopefully collecting extra weapons. The first scene ends with you blasting through a wall. The next section involves threading your way through tunnels to a control room. The final bit of this section is the destruction of the control room.

The middle phase of the game is virtually a repeat of the first, only more difficult.

Finally, Gryzor reaches the APP. This final part of the game comes in two sections. First, a battle through the APP to the aliens' mother-ship. And finally into the ship and then destroy it.

The weapons Gryzor can find - watch out for "weapon eagles" - are rapid fire machine gun, scatter gun with three-directional fire (I found this the most useful of weapons), laser gun and barrier which gives temporary invulnerability.

At first I thought the colourful Amstrad graphics were rather garish with everything blurring into one but this was hasty judgement and I soon got used to it. The Spectrum version is okay but suffers in comparison with the Amstrad, but it is still very playable.

This game is highly recommended. Why not start the New Year grappling with Gryzor?