Who says shoot-'em-ups are long dead? Well, quite a few people in fact, but that's beside the point. Personally, I'm fed up to the back teeth with all these involved and complex games. Nothing too complicated about Mission A.D., I can tell you! It's a straightforward game of assassination, and I love it!

In the game, you take the role of a Blade Runner style character in a futuristic city. Aliens have run amok and the whole city seems to have gone beserk. Every character you see (with one exception) is armed. The unarmed guys look vaguely Arabic, with a turban and flappy trousers. You don't have much time to check out these weirdos, though. You'll be far too busy plugging the creeps with the baggy space-suits, and those flying robots are real killers.

The music which plays while you are carrying out your desperate mission is great. It's very sci-fi and genuinely tuneful. There are lots of locations to explore, in search of your prey. There is an echoey cathedral, a very rough nightclub, an office and many more. My favourite area is the statue park. It's filled with bizarre sculptures.

To help you in your mission, a map appears in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, showing your position, and any renegade aliens which are loose in that sector. You can use the map while in the teleport to choose which destination is the most sensible to visit. By cycling through the various locations, you can drop a grey overlay over each area. Beneath this, some little dots will appear to make the position of aliens.

The only problem I found with this is that the map was a little too small. At times, I had to peer at the screen for quite a while in order to check whether or not the little white dots fall in or outside the grey area. This wastes valuable time. You're playing against the clock, too. Something horrible will probably happen to the World if the time runs out.

The animation is great. Your little character rushes at great speed through the screens, blowing away anything that stands in his path.

Apart from your main foes - the guys you have to shoot in the time limit - a considerable problem is posed by the baggy suit brigade and the robots. The man in suits stomp about, squeezing off the occasional round in your direction. Robots are by far the most dangerous, though. They fly around at about chest height, blazing away indiscriminately!

Mission A.D. certainly isn't for the strategy and mapping lobby, but it is a real joy to get straight into the important business of killing things again.