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As if life wasn't hard enough in space, what with zero-gravity toilets and all, there's always some alien life form or other wanting to invade your orbiting energy collection station. Today it's your turn to repel the alien boarders, but not having any weapons on board, you've had to put some extra shielding on an old Hull-Crawler and use it to bounce linear energy pulses into the enemy spacecraft.

Single pulses are too weak for this so the crawler must first bounce them into a lens where they are focussed then shot out again as one large pulse. This rebounds around the surface until you can manoeuvre it into a hole in the deck where the aliens appear. Once this is done, you can move on to the next section of the station.

My initial bemusement with this game almost had me writing a condemning review, but it only took a short time at the joystick to make me realise that Pulse Warrior isn't a bad little game at all.

The graphics are good, the music and sound effects are good and the gameplay is... very good. A space setting like this for a puzzle game is pretty unusual and that in itself makes the game a bit more interesting to play.

My only worry is that there isn't an awful lot of variation in the game beyond the differing deck plans. Still, at the price you can't really go wrong with this little number - check it out.

If you were just to lift this off the software shelf and look at the screenshots on the packaging, you'd probably think this was a Star Force-style shoot-'em-up. The surprise is it's quite an addictive puzzle game, with a fair wodge of enjoyment - and frustration - guaranteed.

It took a while to fill in for the inadequacies of the instructions, but after a few minutes play I soon got the hang of the game and after that I was loathe to leave it.

Well worth a look.

Presentation 50%
Options only extend to joystick or keyboard control and instructions could be clearer.

Graphics 71%
Smart bas-relief station decks.

Sound 73%
Good electro-rock soundtrack with a few spacey sound effects.

Hookability 78%
Once you've worked out what you're supposed to be doing, play becomes quite compulsive.

Lastability 73%
Lots of deck plans, but no major gameplay variations.

Overall 78%
A novel and compelling puzzle game.