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The long wait is ovder. Magnetron, the new title from the Graftgold team of Andrew Braybrook and Steve Turner, is out.

So what's the verdict? Well... mixed. The trouble is that while the game is well up to the team's usual high standards of programming, you may find that the scenario is a little too familiar.

Magnetron has a peculiar history. It's a follow-up to Steve Turner's Quazatron, which was itself a sequel to Andrew Braybrook's Paranoid. You could be forgiven for thinking that it might be time for a fresh new idea.

The game takes place on a series of eight space platforms, each one of which consists of sixteen screens laid out in a 4 x 4 grid. You control the repair droid KLP-2, bless his little metal socks, whose job is to deactivatethe four reactors on each platform and disarm the alien fleet.

The good thing about the game is that there's an immense amount of variation. The main body of Magnetron consists of moving around the ramps, causeways, slopes and planes of the space platforms, gunning down enemy droids and searching for the reactors. To pep it up, though, there are several sub-plots which involve even more challegnging tests of skill and timing.

For instance, you can attempt to upgrade the power and weaponry of your droid by grappling with and taking over another machine. First, you should find a computer terminal and log on to obtain information about the level you're on. This will give you the position of the reactors, and the type and strength of the droids. Then choose a likely droid - they're number coded according to power - and centre the joystick, pushing the fire button until the display tell you that you are in "grapple mode". Ram your target, and you'll move into a kind of sliding-block puzzle game which you have to complete against an unnervingly fast-running timer. Fail, and you'll be blown to bits.

If you grapple a superior droid successfully, you'll obtain more advanced weapons - these include flying frisbees, mortars, boomerangs, and the dreaded bouncing bombs.

Once you've found a reactor, you move into another sub-game in which you must balance the negatively-charged inhibitors and the positively-charged fuel rods in the core. This isn't at all difficult if you can count; the clever bit is that the charges you carry away with you will affect your subsequent movement in the platform's magnetic field - hence the name of the game.

Speeding up a steep ramp carrying a heavy charge proves increasingly difficult. You'll also find positively- and negatively-charged plated in the floor which will push you in unexpected directions - like off the edge of ramps. If you can manage to destroy all the droids and power down all the reactors on one level, the lights go off and you can search for a transporter to take you through to the next.

Magnetron is an enormous challenge and should provide many hours - no, many, many hours of involving gameplay. But it must be said that if you have already played Paradroid and Quazatron, you might find it all a little familiar.