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If video games are anything to go by, aliens do exist, and have only one thing on their minds: making mincemeat of planet Earth!

And here they come again, threatening to give the planet a good kicking for no discernible reason. But wait! As usual, a lone soldier is on hand to see off this terrifying alien menace. Except this time, he's a mad Russian geezer armed with a powerful armoured suit to see 'em off with. Yes, not only is our Ivan a bit bonkers, hence the honorific 'Krazy', but he is also packing enough firepower to level an average alien invasion fleet. It's a good job these one man armies always show up just in the nick of time, otherwise we'd have been overrun by exactly 4087 alien invasion fleets by now, and that's official!

Krazy Ivan contains five different combat zones; Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, France and North America, each packed with nasty alien tykes just asking to be blown up. Each zone also contains three or four unique boss characters that, more often than not, take on the form of some kind of animal, although they tend to be heavily armed animals made out of metal. Once the bosses have been seen to, the location of a power core is revealed, which you then have to destroy to complete the zone.

As you progress through each level, your support team provide Ivan with handy updates about the status of each target.

As you'd expect for a large robot power-suit, Krazy Ivan is stuffed to the gills with all manner of exotic weaponry. The standard 30mm and 50mm machine guns are admittedly not all that exotic, but also available are destructive missiles ideal for mass destruction. The lasers are part of your special weapons complement, and do a useful amount of damage. Next up is the plasma cannon, which is powerful but unfortunately overheats quickly.

The vortex bomb acts like a grenade, with a huge blast radius decimating anything within range. But the biggest, baddest weapon of them all is the Z-Beam, which toasts enemies within seconds and consequently is a handy piece of kit to have at your disposal.

When the Playstation mags reviewed the original version of this, they went ape over how good it looked but, to be quite honest, I can't see what all the fuss was about!

Krazy Ivan's landscapes are extremely uneventful, and this isn't helped by the fact that you can't see that far into the distance. You're supposed to be going up against aliens, but the enemies don't look all that extraterrestrial to me; they could be any run-of-the-mill multi-limbed mechanoid. And it's not as if the game is all that exciting to play; chances are you'll be getting pretty bored roughly halfway through the first level!

Krazy Ivan does have a particularly cool intro, but that's not really a good reason to buy it, is it?

Although I feel Steve is being a little harsh with his criticism of Psygnosis' 3D robot blaster, I do agree that Krazy Ivan is a bit of a puzzler.

Why wait over a year to convert a less-than-successful Playstation title to the Saturn and in the process fail to improve the game's limited mission structures? That's the real disappointment with Krazy Ivan. Shoot a few robots, pick up a few icons, go to the next level.

There are no real surprises (except for the appearance in the intro sequence of the blonde bird from Eastenders who sang in the Queen Vic a few times and who Nigel tried to snog) and players will soon tire of the repetitive gameplay.

Hey Psygnosis! How's about a few decent original Saturn-based titles for a change?

As well as looking and sounding distinctly average, Krazy Ivan is a game of such monumental dullness that you may as well not bother with it, really. Only five stages means there's no lasting challenge either.