Oh buggery, it's yet another tale involving a big baddy taking over the kingdom, and the only weapon that can defeat him has shattered into several squillion pieces and been scattered to the four winds! If these weapons are so flippin' good, why do they keep breaking? And once they have, what possible use could they be? Switchblade offers no answers to these perennial problems, but it's a pretty good game.

The big baddy in this case is Havok. the weapon is the Fireblade, and you are Hiro, last of the Bladeknight warriors. Your task is to find the sixteen pieces of the sword, glue it together with string and sticky tape, then show Havok that having a name that looks like a typing error really doesn't pay.

Switchblade features gameplay as unoriginal as its storyline - a mixture of hack-'em-up action and platforms-and-ladders exploration set in a huge underground labyrinth. The one novel feature is its combat system, at the bottom of the screen there's a status bar which rises as you hold down fire. Depending on when you release the button, you execute a punch, high kick or low sweeping kick. Sounds complex, but it works!

Needless to say, Switchblade also features a host of objects to collect. Power-ups are found inside destructible stones, and include fireball missiles, speed-ups and invulnerability. Collecting the letters BONUS and EXTRA earns 10,000 points and another life respectively.

So what's it like then? I must confess I liked it. OK, it features a tacky plot and unoriginal gameplay, but it's really atmospheric and it works - I love the way each portion of the map is only displayed as it's entered! I liked it far more than Stu, who gave it 67% in issue 76 - it might get repetitive after a while but mappers will love it.