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Oh dear, what have Taskset done now? I remember Taskset as being a particularly refreshing software house that produced great and original software for the Commodore 64.

Super Pipeline for the C64 was great. Super Pipeline II for the C64 was also quite good, thought it was only a variation on Super Pipeline, however Super Pipeline II for the Amstrad is nowhere near Taskset's usual standards.

The gameplay remains similar to the Commodore version, but it is the graphics that let the whole thing down. The Amstrad has marginally inferior stationary graphics to the C64 and of course no sprites. To get the movement right you have to move around chunks of the stationary graphics screen to produce the right movement effect. On some Amstrad games this has been done very well indeed, but it is the Taskset moving graphics that let down Super Pipeline II.

The main problem is when the moving characters collide with the background - they disappear! This can be quite a problem as a lot of the action revolves around ducking in and out of the pipes to fix leaks and shoot nasties. This gets very difficult when you start to collide with nasties that you can't even see because you're behind the pipe.

This aside (though you can't really thrust it aside that easily) there is a lot less wrong with it than most games purely because the gameplay is so good. The idea behind the game is that you are Foreman Fred in charge of a workman keeping a set of water pipes in good shape. The water flows through the pipe and down into a set of barrels at the bottom of the screen.

All is not that simple though (Is it ever?), various types of nasties are running around trying to kill you and are drilling holes in the pipes letting the water out. You must take your workman down to thehole and have him repair it. You are also armed with a sort of laser pistol that can eliminate most of the types of nasties.

Between screens you are treated to an 'interlude' of animated graphics which are really quite good - look out for the C5. Each screen has a different pattern to it, and the number of barrels gradually increase. The different patterns of pipes present a different tactical problem for the pipes' defence.

As I mentioned before, the graphics leave something to be desired, but that may not deter some people as much as it did me. The gameplay is quite good.

Usually it's a case of 'nice graphics, shame about the game'. This time though it's a nice game, shame about the graphics.