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Ssssooo, you want to be a Star Warrior, huh? One of those guys who wears white skin-tight jump suits, carries a sick bag and smiles a lot when subjected to G-force? Nice, real nice.

Well, say thank you mummy to Logotron because they've said you can be one - right now.

Well, go on then. What do you mean, where? Everybody (everybody who's anybody, anyway) knows that the most fashionable mission of the month is on Gorbaxa, guarding valuable Kryptium energy cells from the sort of guys who stop at nothing to get their hands on a bit of dosh.

Oh yeah - once you're out there, blasting those black market pirates out of their underpants, try to remember to collect those bonus balls. Well, where else are you supposed to get laser fire, temporary invulnerability, extra acceleration and bonus points? Be good and we might even send out an air bus with extra missiles and shield supplies. But don't stay around too long - or those mega-tough, incredibly nasty blue hunters come after you.

And when you come off watch, you can have a go at the six next most fashionable warzones in the galaxy.

Happy now? OK then - don't forget your thermal underwear.

Give me a copy of Dropzone and I'd say it was absolutely fantastic, triff, brill, wunnerful, dead amusing, stand on my head and do a dance an' all that an' everyfin'.

So what's wrong with Star Ray, you might ask - it's exactly the same gameplay, innit?

Well, it would be if it weren't for the fancy graphics. Logotron have tried ever so hard to give us some really snazzy parallax scrolling, but it just doesn't work.

Go too slow or too fast and it just judders and shudders and makes it dead hard to see what's going on. If they'd concentrated on getting more rapid fire instead, it wouldn't have mattered so much about the graphics - the gameplay would have made up for it.

As it is, the whole thing is only just above average. Oh well...

Aha! Looks like a classic case of ignoring the gameplay in favour of the graphics, here. Tut, tut. Shame really, because it wouldn't have mattered about the parallax scrolling if you'd just had the Amiga version's firing rate and smoother control of your ship.

I mean, parallax scrolling's great but not if it gets in the way of the game. Looks as if its got in the way of the sound as well, come to think of it - there's no title tune and only a few pretty basic in-game spot effects. As a Dropzone/Defender variant, Star Ray could have been really brill - as it is, it's just... well... average - innit Ken? [Yes - Ken]

Presentation 57%
High-score table and loading screen, clear control panel plus radar display.

Graphics 66%
Large ship, pretty (but sometimes busy) backgrounds - but the ambitious parallax scrolling judders too much.

Sound 30%
No title tune, basic but echoing in-game fire effects.

Hookability 62%
Easy to grasp, though the scrolling and the occasionally unclear graphics might put you off a bit.

Lastability 55%
It's not the shoot-'em-up you'll turn to over and over again.

Overall 60%
A near miss - with a bit of tweaking it could have been a big hit.