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Storm the warrior is a superhero: a bold, fearless, heroic righter of wrongs - and he even remembers to put his Y-fronts inside his trousers! But, while he was off doing daring deeds, some evil person called Una Cum made off with Storm's old lady, Corrine, and imprisoned her.

Storm is a bit put out by all this, and pausing only to enlist the aid of his best friend, Agravian the Undead, he legs it over to Una's castle to free his beloved.

The action takes place in the castle dungeons and is viewed from above. As the hero (or heroes if the game is being played in two-player mode) leaves the current location, the next room flips into view. A scrolling message at the top of the screen describes the location and lets the player(s) know if a character's strength is getting dangerously low.

As soon as a room is entered, generators produce groups of deadly denizens which run towards Storm and attack him, gradually sapping his strength. Fortunately, the evil creatures can be zapped with magic, in the form of scrolls, masks and amulets, which have to be collected. When activated, the magic item destroys any evil creatures on screen - a sort of 'smart bomb' effect.

Other useful items scattered about the dungeon are food (with added marrow-bone for extra strength and vitality) and armour.

Storm must collect three snake brooches in order to unlock the door to Una Cum's laboratory, which is where Corrine is being held captive. But if Storm dies before he can rescue Corrine... well, that's tough.

Mastertronic jump onto the Gauntlet bandwagon with this rather poor clone. The graphics are garish and lack any sort of clarity, and the sprites don't move smoothly at all.

Even the two player mode is dull and there's nothing which saves Storm from being a very poor program, even with a low price tag. There are several better budget games available - take a look at them instead of this.

At first glance Storm looks like it might be a promising game. The music is quite pleasant - even it doesn't really suit the game's theme - the graphics are bearable, and the presentation is reasonable.

It wasn't until I started playing that I realised that the whole thing has one major drawback - the method of control, which is similar to that in Asteroids. In a game which requires some nifty manoeuvring this just isn't suitable, and spoils what could have otherwise been a fairly decent budget game.

Gauntlet-variants seem to be all the rage nowadays, but I'm sorry to say that Storm fails to captivate the same sort of compulsion or playability.

The graphics are colourful, but quite confusing at times and it's easy to lose yoursel amongst a group of nasties. The awkward controls don't help much either. Storm is far from impressive, and barely worth the asking price.

Presentation 76%
Two player option, reasonable instructions and in-game presentation.

Graphics 39%
Large, quite colourful, but often indistinct.

Sound 58%
Bland title screen tune and in-game spot FX.

Hookability 38%
Little to impress or enthral.

Lastability 31%
Slow, and dull with it.

Value For Money 41%
Cheap, but not cheap enough for what's on offer.

Overall 32%
A very poor Gauntlet variant.