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To Hell And Back is the best CRL games we've seen in a while. Yes, I know that's not saying much, but after the gobble of turkeys they have recently foisted upon an unsuspecting software market, this is like a little glimpse of light at the end of the dark and dreary CRL tunnel. It's only a little glimpse, mind you: by any other standards this is till a very uninspired piece of gamemaking.

Apparently, things have been getting pretty decadent in programmer Andy Jervis's vision of heaven. Not only has Satan been allowed to just wander in and filch the Ten Commandments, but the angel sent down to the 'other place' to retrieve them is definitely on the porky side: he'd give Chubby Gristle a waddle for his money!

He does however come equipped with a handy-dandy boomerang halo with which to zap your attackers and supposedly 'transform them into angels and send them to heaven' though what the vicious currs have quite done to deserve such generous treatment I'm sure I don't know.

The various levels scroll smoothly and are dotted with platforms and lava pits a la Ghosts And Goblins, though it must be said that where you actually can stand and where it looks as if you should be able to stand aren't always that close.

Critters ranging from your bog-standard ghosties that just queue up to be knocked down through to immensely annoying jumping rodent things all too eager to knock you off your perch litter the caverns, making movement a bit, well, 'hellish'. Hitting any of monsters can not only knock you into the soup and so waste one of your eight lives, but also saps your energy.

Luckily bibles appears to build up your energy, and after bouncing through a level with angel-like ease, Bertram, for such is his name, gets to recover one of the Commandments. Last of all, you face the devil himself, protected by wolves, snakes and other nasties, to rescue your horn - whatever that may be - which has also gone missing. Though the sprites are all quite blocky and dull and hardly animated at all, the general feel of the game isn't too bad with the backdrops occasionally looking reasonably pretty and suitably sombre. There is generally no problem with the flat-ground moments in the game, where the tubby one's halo proves fairly devastating weapon, but the main difficulty in the game comes in the jumping moments, when the rodent things mentioned earlier - apparently meant to be gophers! - knock you off with monotonous regularity.

There is a fairly boppy theme tune accompanying the proceedings, and quite a generous provision of lives allowing you to get further into it than you would at first imagine, but despite the fact that it isn't unplayable, it is hard to recommend such a generally lacklustre copy of an already much imitated game.

On the B-side, if you will, CRL has presented us with a game totally unmentioend on packaging cassette or press release: it is Moon Crystals, Andy Jarvis' first game ever. A very simple, very blocky and very old looking thing in the Moon Lander thing in the Moon Lander mould. Imagine guiding your Oids spaceship through some tunnels while squinting your eyes and you've got it. Still, whatever its shortcomings, which are hardly surprising considering its age, it's a nice icea to present a freebie like this and it certainly helps to make To Hell And Back look good.