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Welcome to Zero. No, it's not the lowest score C&VG has ever awarded to a game. Zero is a planet facing extinction following attacks by the war planet Destrovia. Life-saving supplies of plutonium have been badly damamged.

Enter the Gunrunner. That's you, in case you didn't know, and your mission is to save Zero from "termination".

You must fight your way across successive plutonium pipe network levels, destroying the alien saboteurs. Scattered throughout the levels are various pieces of equipment to help you. Complete each level and you fight your way to the next one via a bonus screen of fast jet-packing zooming action.

The game - by Christian Urguhart, perhaps best known as co-programmer of Daley Thompson's Decathalon - scrolls left and right but to get anywhere you have to keep heading right.

The Gunrunner starts out equipped with one gun. Along the way, he will find the following:

Multi-fire - this converts the blaster to a tri-directional, quick fire weapon.

Poison - the noxious gas will wipe out all the aliens on the screen. It can only be used three times.

Jet-pack - this enables the Gunrunner to fly but it has limited fuel.

Shield - this gives the Gunrunner a limited immunity against the aliens.

It is possible to collect and carry all the weapons and devices at once. But contact with an alien may remove one of them from you instead of one of your three lives.

Graphically Gunrunner is very nice. Others may disagree but in some respects it reminded me a little of Dropzone. No? Okay.

Each time you lose a life you go back to the beginning of the level and have to start all over again. I would have liked to have just picked up from where you die. Okay, so I like the easy life.

Gunrunner is not sufficiently different to set the world on fire.