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The 48K Spectrum rather than the cinema is the venue for the latest James Bond epic. In Richard Shepherd Software's Shaken But Not Stirred you play the part of 007 sent on a dangerous mission to disarm a nuclear missile, which has been stolen by the dastardly Dr. Death. Having been briefed by M and after selecting your weapons from the range that Q has to offer, you set out on your adventure.

In the first stage, you must travel the world and try to stay alive long enough to gather sufficient clues to identify the island on which Dr. Death has his base. Muggers, midgets and priests are out to get you, and you will also have to cope with offers of mysterious meetings, unidentified packages and suspicious bowls of fruit. As long as you don't do it too often, you can return to London, replenish your strength and restock your personal armoury.

If you manage to find the island, you go on to the second stage in which you have to discover the entrance to Dr. Death's underwater lair. The locations on the island are logically connected (although different for each game) so you can build a map. The sea, beach, woods and plantation all hold their own special terrors which attack without warning as you move around. If you run out of weapons with which to beat off the attentions of sharks, wolves and scorpions, then you will have to resort to brute force, which leads to a rapid reduction in strength. There is no going back to London so it is important to try and discover the secret stock of benzedrine which restores your strength. I don't remember James Bond ever taking drugs (apart from the occasional Mickey Finn!) and I'm not sure it's the sort of idea that should be incorporated in a game.

I never managed to find the lair, but if I had I would have been confronted with a 10 x 10 room maze, displayed three dimensionally on the screen. Somewhere in it is the control room with the warhead, and also Paws, the steel-fisted baddie who is too strong to fight against, and so much be avoided at all costs. Movement is by using the cursor controls, and you can also get a map of the maze, but this is displayed for just ten seconds and can only be used three times. If you find the control room, you then face a mastermind-type puzzle to crack the secret code which defuses the bomb. And if you manage that then I think you deserve a vodka martini - shaken but not stirred, of course!

This is the best program I've seen from Richard Shepherd, and there is plenty of it. The game can be saved, but once restored cannot be saved for a second time. I think it's a shame that all the graphics are left for the last section, which is very hard to reach. Little use is made of sound and rather too much use is made of the RND function for me to be hooked.