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Beach Head, one of the best selling games of the year, eclipsed only by Software Projects' Jet Set Willy, now has a sequel to thrill war game fanatics.

Raid Over Moscow is the follow up to Bruce Carver's excellent Beach Head, which won the award for the best graphics and sound on a computer game in a poll of readers by the American magazine, Billboard.

Raid Over Moscow, unlike Beach Head, places you in the cockpit of the world' fastest fighter bomber. As the squadron leader, you must lead your men on a bombing raid over the main industrial centres of the Soviet Union, in an attempt to knock out the computer installations which are at this moment guiding missiles over the north Atlantic to targets in North America.

The first part of the game takes place in a space station orbiting earth. Russia has launched a series of nuclear strikes. You and your men are all that stands between the destruction of every major city in Canada and the USA. You must guide your ship out of the landing bay and fly it through space towards the Soviet capital.

The view then switches to one of the ground. You must fly your aircraft very low to avoid being detected by the Russian radar network. Jet planes, patrolling tanks and stationary guns all take a pot shot at your plane.

Buildings, huge columns and walls must be negotiated during the mission. Staying as close to the ground as possible is absolutely necessary as enemy fighter planes come rushing up behind, giving you only seconds to react. Flying low also makes you a much better target for the roaming tanks.

Each successive screen takes you closer to your ultimate target, the centre of Moscow and the Kremlin.

Raid Over Moscow scores highly on graphics and playability. The game is much more difficult and challenging to play than Beach Head, and will certainly take a long longer to master.

The game at the beginning is certainly difficult, and in my opinion, far too difficult for you to really enjoy the game without a hell of a lot of practice.

Once you have finally mastered the game, there are another four levels for you to beat. On the highest level, I couldn't even get out of the space station with five lives!

Will Raid Over Moscow be a bit hit this Christmas? I don't think there's any doubt about that.

There's no doubt that Raid Over Moscow is an extremely slick games program. It's very playable, the graphics and sound are the highest quality and the packaging rivals anything on the market. However, no amount of slick production can disguise the fact that the basic philosophy behind the game is - to say the least - questionable.

Maybe we're being hypocritical by criticising this aspect of the game when many games we review feature alien blasting and other forms of destruction. But nuclear war is not a subject for fantasy.