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Atlantis. The very word conjures up images of mystery. Sunken cities, missing civilizations, Patrick Duffy's haircut - all things beyond mortal comprehension. Spook, eh?

Well, enough of this idle banter and on with the review. It seems that the fabled city of Atlantis is being used as a base by some nasty ol' aliens. Cunning bounders that they are, they've secreted their spaceship, HQ and in fact the whole sunken city TARDIS-like within a wrecked sailing ship. (Look, it's a Spanish game okay?) The Earth defence council are having none of this, so they call on their best agent to destroy the HQ and save the world. Unfortunately she gets eaten by a squid, so they have to send you instead.

There are three parts to Rescue From Atlantis. In the first you whizz around the scrolling seascape in your electric bathysphere, occasionally nipping outside to squeeze down a suspicious tunnel. The idea is to find something large and pointy in order to help you bash a hole in the ships keel, thus skipping inside the aliens' HQ. Having done a bit of aquatic breaking and entering, you go on to Level Two. Here, you have to explore the sunken city, eventually coming face to face with a top alien bod. Zap him, and you can get into the alien ship on Level Three. This is a state-of-the-art, beautifully designed interstellar cruiser which you have to utterly destroy. There are loads of computery bits to blow up, shiny robots to avoid and vital equipment to boot repeatedly. Finally you have to make a run for it before the star cruiser explodes gratuitously. Another mission complete. Hurrah!

I have to admit at this point that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get past Level One. This plays like a cross between the classic Scuba Dive and Ultimate's ancient hit Cyberun - which is no bad thing. It's fast and tricky, with a huge playing area. There's plenty to do, what with the belligerent undersea wildlife, a bathysphere with leaky fuel tanks and a diving suit with dodgy oxygen cylinders. Also, you can only carry three objects at a time, with the bathysphere able to hold nine. This leads to a lot of juggling of objects as you try to fathom the best combination of doodahs to go a-joggng around with. Do you lake the jet pack and the laser pistol? What if you come across two vital objects? What do you leave behind? And just where did you leave that blimmin' bathysphere? Good stuff indeed. Alas there are problems. Most seriously, the odds are stacked against you far too heavily. The nasties appear at random and skitter along unpredictably, meaning that it's extremely tricky to get them in your line of fire.

The energy system doesn't help either - you bob along, ignoring all and sundry until suddenly you're dead. Panic not though, for Atlantis is jolly good fun. The objects you need are scattered far and wide, and there's plenty of head-scratching to be done in between the shooty bits. It's just that the gameplay is unnecessarily frustrating. Just as you think you're getting somewhere, you run out of power. As an overall/to sum up/at the end of the day kind of comment, I'd say that the game is best suited to quick-fingered shoot-'em-up fans with a special fondness for cartography.

Fairly good. Quite Hard. Um, okay I suppose.