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Gargoyle Games' new arcade label gets off to a flying start with Light Force

It took me about thirty seconds to become addicted to Light Force and my joystic and trigger finger haven't been the same since.

Light Force is the first game to be released on Gargoyle's new Faster Than Light arcade label, and the first to feature their new 'Lasermation' graphics techniques. The game itself is very simple; it's a straightforward 'blast everything in sight' shoot-'em-up tradition, you've got to avoid their attacks and blast them all out of the sky if you can. In addition, there are numbers of control centres based on both the surface of each planet and on spacestations in the asteroid-cluttered void between each planet. If you can destroy enough of these control centres you gain extra lives, so obviously their destruction becomes your main aim. The tricky bit is in concentrating your fire on these centres at the same time as dodging asteroids and enemy craft and also trying to destroy as many of these as you can in order to rack up a high score (it took two days before I finally managed to creep onto the hi-score table at no. 14).

Some of the attack waves are really vicious, coming at you in different formations, swooping across the screen, dropping bombs and generally giving your trigger finger a hard time. It's this multiplicity of targets that makes Light Force so addictive. It's not enough just to stay alive and zap a few spaceships, you've got to co-ordinate your attack so that you can handle the waves of attacking aliens at the same time as trying to get the control centres. To make things harder, the control centres require about three direct hits before they're totally destroyed, and the whole thing results in me frantically pounding away at the joystick's 'fire' button, rocking madly from side to side as I try to zoom all over the screen without losing my sweaty grip on the joystick. It's that kind of game.

The graphics in Laser Force have been programmed using Gargoyle's new Lasermation technique which, miracle of miracles, actually seems to get around the Spectrum's attribute problems. The result is a fast paced game with lots of large, colourful and smoothly animated sprites. It *does* make a difference to the game to have the improved use of colour that Lasermation makes possible, and it also gives the sprites a more solid chunky look that's quite nice.

My only major niggle about the game is that you have to shoot most of the asteroids and spacecraft absolutely dead centre in order to destroy them, so that quite often when it looks like you've scored a hit, you can still get pulverised by an asteroid that refuses to blow up and go away. And of course the asteroids and alien craft only have to strike a glancing blow to settle you hash and get rid of one of your lives. But that doesn't stop Light Force from being the most addictive shoot-'em-up I've played in months.

A Monster Hit.