You know I really feel like a Scorpion Warrior right now... tromping through endlessly changing landscapes, fighting my way through hordes of miscast alien extras from other games/films/TV shows, with only the little wiggly lines bursting from my fingertips for protection. Sigh. Yes folks, it's a platform-based shoot-'em-up dressed up as lamb.

The promise of the screenshots of the box had me anticipating a rip-roaring arcade adventure with quality graphics and animation, ear-shattering sound and gameplay to keep me coming back for more. But no, instead we have a dose of undoubtedly fine graphics, but stiff animation and a host of irritating design flaws which impair enjoyment of the gameplay.

The game covers five levels, The Harbour, The Forest, Stay Cool (a snowy landscape in fact), The Crypt and finally The Castle.

Graphically speaking, the game is nice, with a hundred different aliens and five scrolling backgrounds. But the animation lacks a certain fluidity - the scrolling backgrounds are smooth enough, but the frames of animation for the main sprite and for his enemies are stiff and lifeless. A bit like being menaced by cardboard cut-outs.

Jumping from a platform higher than his height, our hero lands as if he's just stepped off a kerb. I think it might have been better to err on the side of too much reaction to things rather than too little. Before we leave the subject of graphics, though, I feel I ought to say one thing about the design of the aliens themselves. They're very nicely drawn. I expected a kitchen sink to come scrolling on-screen at any moment.

Daleks? ATAT scout walkers? Wolves? Pirates? Parrots? Droids? Even Robin Hood? How many different things have been cribbed from other sources, I wonder? Every TV programme and film the author has ever seen I shouldn't wonder.

The sounds are sampled, of course, and thin on the ground too. No background music, no nothing. Just silky silence. I like my games a bit more noisy and naughty than that. No clumping of boots on the boards of the ships. No crunching of our feet in the leaves or the snow. The sound lets it down quite a lot I feel, apart from the brilliant idea at the start of the game; a looper sample of the open phrase of Holst's "Mars - The Bringer Of War" from The Planet Suite. This is good to listen to, but you keep wanting to hear the next bit, which is annoying.

The worst thing about the game, and the thing which points out the game's design flaws, is the repeating death syndrome. If you die by falling off into the water, say, on the first level, you are replaced in the game on your next life in the same spot. Therefore when you start again you just die again. And again. And again. Until the game ends, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's no excuse for this sort of error, and it's one that should have been picked up during play testing.

This is a competently executed game, let down by some easily corrected errors, and suffers from not enough outside criticism before release.