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What a disaster! The Spy Who Loved Me was pretty poor on the Amiga, and the cut-down version on the C64 is even worse.

In this vertical shoot-'em-up, Bond must save the world by blasting his way through four levels of bad scrolling. Starting in the water with a high-powered speedboat, if he dodges the mines and blasts the baddies successfully he can race his way through Level Two in his Lotus 3 - the graphics change but the gameplay doesn't. Power-ups are collected from a helicopter flying overhead and a huge articulated lorry which lowers ramps for you to drive up, depositing you back on the track a few hundred yards further on.

Sound familiar? It should do - what we have here is a blatant rip-off of Sega's ageing classic, Spy Hunter! There's no point releasing such an obvious clone unless you can improve on the original, but The Spy Who Loved Me lacks the charm and character of its illustrious predecessor, and adds nothing new - at least the Amiga version ripped off two classic games by adding three Operation Wolf-ish levels.

The graphics are okayish, some of the big baddies in Level Three are especially nice, though the smaller sprites are bland and disappointing. The sound is as cruddy as hell - a boring rendition of the James Bond theme and putrid FX make you want to turn the volume off and listen to Radio 3 chamber music while you play! What really kills it off, though, is the gameplay - scuzzy scrolling and samey levels finally extinguish and samey levels finally extinguish any spark of excitement that might have remained.

Scoring 38% in Issue 69, it's not really worth any more as a budget offering. As Bond licences go, this'll make you want to 'smersh' your tape in frustration.