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Starship Command is one of the latest releases for the BBC Micro from Acornsoft. The program loads in two part as is usual and runs on the Model B.

The theme for the game is along the tried and trusted you versus the aliens format. On running the game you are passed through two pages of menus where you can set up various parameters which alter the game play. The action takes place in real time on a single colour, high resolution display. The left side of the screen shows a plan view of the space around your ship. To the right of this are various status displays. At the top is a long range scan, below that is the short range display which includes speed and direction indicators. At the bottom are indicators which display the state of the ship's four energy banks.

The graphics work in such a way that your ship remains stationary in the centre of the screen and steering causes everything else to rotate around you. At this point it is worth mentioning that the quality of all the displays is superb. The programmers have sacrificed the use of colour to provide a lot of extra detail.

At the start of the game your main display shows nothing but the space around you. The long range scan tells a different story. Screaming down on you from the surrounding space are hoards of enemy ships. This is my first criticism of the game. Because you start in the centre of these ships and your ship hasn't got the speed necessary to outrun them, you very soon find yourself surrounded with no way out.

If you have a good understanding of dogfight tactics then you will get on with this game. The alien craft you face behave very intelligently most of the time but occasionally they make some really dumb moves. Unfortunately the lapses don't help you. The two methods of destroying the enemy you can employ are shooting them, which takes about ten direct hits, or ramming.

Ramming a ship should be a last resort as it uses up about half an energy bank and scores you very few points. However, the enemy ships seem to take great delight in flying straight into you and this often is the cause for my rapid demise from the game; very rarely was I "shot down".

Your last resort as your energy fails is to launch an escape capsule. If this leaves the battle field safely and you have accumulated enough points startship command will award you with another ship. This is difficult to achieve. Even with a mis-spent youth of video gaming behind me I found myself killed off within the first few minutes more times than I consider reasonable.

Starship Command certainly offers a challenge but I found it frustrating in places, especially when running for my life and avoiding the enemies' missiles, only to have some incompetent starship captain run straight into me.