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What's your attitude to polar bears? Do you think that they're sweet, cuddly things, wrapped up snugly in white fur jackets looking like something off a Christmas card? That used to be my opinion until I played Polar Perils.

The action is set in the Arctic and your job is to guide your eskimo through the icy wastes, safely. Easier said than done!

The first screen has the eskimo at the top of the screen facing the cold Arctic waters. He has to get to the other side by leaping onto a passing ice floe. The trouble is that these floes move randomly and there's no guarantee that the one chosen will take the eskimo within leaping distance of the other shore. Happily you do have three eskimos, but it's amazing how fast you use them up.

To make things worse a polar bear is also leaping from floe to floe looking for its dinner (the eskimo). You have to guide your little man to one of the two islands, grab the spear you will find there and kill the bear.

Next comes a trip across the ice, which is so thin that in places it can't bear the eskimo's weight. The bears can't wait either and try to devour him while he's attempting to collect rocks which can be used to map out a path through the thin ice and so to the other side.

Once there the eskimo faces a journey in a fragile kayak through iceberg infested waters. Apparently, he has to collect six blocks of ice to build an igloo but I've never got that far (thanks to the bears).

It's a smashing game; addictive, irritating, amusing and frustrating in turns, the sort that has your family giving you queer looks as you scream at the Electron. I can't remember when reviewing a game gave me so much pleasure. Thoroughly recommended.

Nigel Peters