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Your girlfriend has just been abducted - what d'you do... what do you do? Well, if you're about six inches tall with mangy fur, a cheap pair of shades and a whole lot of attitude, then you grab yourself a machine-gun and go after her!

That is the rather loose plot behind this platormer-with-guns from Take 2. Mr. Rez is a rat with a problem. The love of his life has been kidnapped by a mobster called Marion Mozzarella who happens to be both her father and also the head of a massive underworld crime syndicate. So to win his girl bacsk Mr. Rez needs to pick his way through no less than 75 levels, each of which is populated by some very unfriendly adversaries. None of these guardians is feeling particularly romantic and they're all intent on making sure that no matter what, if they have anything to do with it, then boy will most definitely not be meeting girl.

Basically, Rats, originally titled Reservoir Rats for the minutia-obsessed amongst you, is a platform game styled after the many hundreds of 8-bit platformers that used to be around on such antique gaming platforms as the Sinclair Spectrum 48K and the Commodore 64. In those days graphics were - to put it bluntly - lousy, and the capabilities of the machines limited. If you too an N64 and a copy of The Legend Of Zelda back in time and presented it to one of the early programmers that worked on the games for those machines he'd probably wet himself with excitement. Hell, the Game Boy Color version would be enough to have him throw a fit!

Anyway, what we're trying to say is that because these machines were so aesthetically-challenged with very little power, the games had to be simple but still very playable. Which is basically what Tarantula Studios, who developed Rats for Take 2, have gone for.

The format of the game is very simple. You need to get Mr. Rez through each level to an exit door in order to progress to the next stage. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? To hamper your progress however, there is a vertiable army of guardian nasties who come in four distinct types.

The first look like snails and are slow and stupid. The next level up resemble snakes, are a little faster and will follow you when you get onto the same platform as them.

The third are very fast, look like rats and can jump across gaps. Finally, the fourth type of enemy look like foxes or squirrels depending on your point of view, move like lightning and roam everywhere. Fortunately, Mr. Rez is packing some pretty heavy firepower which should stand him in good stead against most nasties - unfortunately though there are also two other types of guardian, the bird and the rotating axe, and these are indestructible so you have no choice but to avoid them. To help you through the levels you'll find some useful pick-ups that give you bonuses such as extra time or more lives, plus ones that freeze all the nasties on the screen. You need to be careful what you collect however because there are also pick-ups that mutate low-level nasties into the more dangerous high-level types.

The levels start off small and get bigger as you progress through the game. As you move around, the screen scrolls smoothly along with you ensuring that Mr. Rez isn't taken by surprise by some off-screen nasty - at least, not one of the slow ones.

In addition to dealing with his on-screen adversaries, Mr. Rez also has to collect items of food from each level in order to get the exit door to open (which sounds a little implausible, but hey, you're a rat with a machine-gun!) Take too long in this task and a winged henchman is despatched by the big boss, which will make your task all the more hazardous.

While the gameplay structure in Rats may not sound particularly exciting, like the old 8-bit titles it resembles it's surprisingly addictive. After battling through the first level without much difficulty, things quickly become much more tricky as the route to the door becomes less obvious and the food seems to be always just out of reach.

Timing your jumps and planning your routes is essential, and one of the easiest ways to die is to jump onto what looks like a safe platform without spotting the enemy roaming just above and head-butting him - death is a one-touch deal in this game. Fortunately, a password system is included for when you die and you don't even need to write them all down - the game remembers the last password you found and recalls it for you - at least until you turn the power off.

Rats is by no means an easy game but at least you're not going to finish it too quickly. If you're after some retro platform gaming fun, then you can't go far wrong with this.