Laser Reflex entrusts you with the task of guarding a remote space station containing silos of liquid oxygen for refuelling space craft. As you might well expect, this station is under attack from a marauding alien ship, hell bent on making off with your precious cargo.

Waves of drone ships are sent down to attack you and you must defend yourself using your deadly laser cannon. The unusual thing about this cannon is that it is fired at a giant mirror on one side of the space station and the laser bounces off at angle dependent upon the distance of the cannon from the mirror.

The cannon must be refuelled from time to time and to do this it must be moved away from the mirror with a resultant loss of effective fire power.

Initially your space station is protected by a shield but this is soon breached by the constantly attacking waves of drones swooping down from the mothership. When the shield is penetrated the drones construct pipes on top of the oxygen silos and siphon away the fuel. Once all four silos have been drained you lose a life until all four lives are lost and the game ends.

Points are scored for shooting down the drones in the advanced attach wave which comes at the end of each level.

The graphics in this game can best be described as messy and result in a rather confusing display. I found that the position of the laser cannon was difficult to ascertain sometimes against the background of the space station silos. I use a hi-res monitor but would suggest that anyone using an ordinary domestic TV will find this game rather awkward to play. Sounds can only be described as adequate, so definitely no awards in this category either.

The game can be played with user-definable keys or by joystick operation and features the ability to switch off the sound or adjust the volume to any one of three levels. There is a high score table but it will take some pretty good shooting to ever see it as the qualifying level is set rather high.

Nothing about this game really impresses me at all. It's another slant on a well-worn idea that I am sure many games players are growing rather tired of.

A lot of effort probably went into producing the complex graphics display in Laser Reflex but the results are disappointing and, at the end of the day, it's just another shoot-'em-up. Certainly not one for my collection.

Dave ReederPeter Rochford