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Help Luc Devreux fulfil his wish to be that little man from Turrican, then guide him through the eleven various platform levels to win the game. Collect power-ups along the way.

If God has intended us to fly, he'd have given us wings. More importantly, if the Almighty felt we should soldier on after death then... then we'd all do just that. Yet we don't! It comes as no surprise to find any attempt to turn this wish into reality is met with absolute disaster. Somewhere along these lines lies the plot to the film Universal Soldier. Inhabiting the same universe fluctuates the plot of this new game from Accolade.

You're Luc Devreux, a Vietnam soldier brought back from the dead by the Government to be the ultimate, mindless, killing machine. Unfortunately, a technical cock-up brings back your memory and that's where the trouble starts. You must escape the clutches of the psychotic Sergeant Scott who you killed in the war to stop him wiping out an entire village. Just your luck, the Sarge gets resurrected as well and remembers who was responsible for his untimely demise - he's out to get your and this platform romp around a selection of pitfalled, hazard-laden landscapes is you doing just that. Before it's too late.

A soldier and his gun are inseparable. The Universal Soldier is no exception. Throughout the game Luc discovers many power-ups and changes of artillery to help him in his mission. Each weapon's capable of being powered up to four times its basic strength. These are:

1. Three Way/Five Way
   Basically these power-up the standard shot weapon to a wide spray of either three or five way firing spray of bullets. Not too powerful, but wide-ranged.
2. Electro-Blaster
   Provides Luc with an energy-bolt firing gun that shatters into smaller, bouncing, balls of light.
3. The Laser
   Replaces Luc's inadequate weapon for a much better light-powered beast of a machine.

As well as the obligatory weapon power-ups Luc can uncover a small selection of other items to help him, UniSoldier on:

1. Health Pod
   If Luc's vitality looks like giving up the ghost then grab one of these pods to restore his health back to fine, fighting fettle.
2. Smart Bomb
   A bomb so powerful it obliterates all enemies on screen.
3. Defence Shield
   Unsurprisingly, this is a defence shield which lasts for about twelve seconds.
4. The Bloody L
   A red letter L that increases the length of Luc's Rapid Fire Cannon (lucky sod!) and widens its destructive range.

Luc is quite an extraordinary kind of guy! As well as being as strong as an ox on steroids, he can create havoc as he turns into a spinning buzz saw, impervious to the attempts of the killer bees etc trying to do him in, roll under tiny gaps in walls. And drop bombs in the process.

C-rash! Another film licence hits terrafirma with a resounding crunch and wobbles off unceremoniously into the shadows of the greats.

There's simply no hope for software houses that turn out stuff like this. Not that it's entirely bad because an extremely similar game named Turrican enjoyed some success. The point is, Turrican happened three years ago. This is now!

Universal Soldier tries to fob us off with the same dated gameplay and even retains the ridiculous transformation into a spinning buzz saw routine. It may work fine in the context of a cybernetic fighting machine but with a re-animated human being...?

Besides, which, the rest of the gameplay is so stried and dated you can almost hear the cogs creaking as they churn out the monotony. Drear oh drear.

Lumme, Ballistic learn their lesson with YTS trainee programmers. Universal Soldier is a shocking shambles of a Turrican clone, inept in the extreme. What gets my goat is the extreme mutton-dressing that attempts to promote this game as anything connected with the film, which is bound to sell copies of this undeserving mess.

Okay, they paid their money for the licence, but it's a bit dishonest. What's next, Winter Challenge packaged as Scott Of The Antarctic? Even judging the graphics and gameplay on their own they're awful: indistinct, ill-conceived and laughably incongruous - check out the giant bouncing Dolph Lundgren, and Sol's 'buzz saw' party trick.

This isn't even Turrican 2, it's basically large chunks of code from Turrican 1 with a tart's makeover. There just isn't a place for such badly-written games on the Megadrive at this stage.

Maybe Ballistic should take their next film licence from the 'Carry On' series, since I found myself laughing at Universal Soldier on more than one occasion!

Presentation 48%
P. Universal Soldier offers the most wasted facility on an option screen ever! Where it says CREDITS it says "Produced by Chris Bankston" on the screen. Useless or what? D'oh!

Graphics 60%
P. The character representing Luc is well animated and looks pretty good in spite of the similarities to Turrican (i.e. the rickety legs). N. Everything else is poor beyond belief! You name it, it's bad!

Sound 82%
P. The music exceeds the standard of the game and the sound effects aren't bad either.

Playability 56%
P. Very straightforward, easy to get into and a good enough blast while it lasts...

N. ...until you realise that you've literally seen it all before.

Lastability 42%
N. The Easy and Hard difficulty options mean the game's completed in an hour or a day. There's little inspiration to carry on and see the next level. The whole thing is so-oo disappointing.

Overall 47%
A particularly good example of an awful game. There are dozens of games of a similar ilk available that are far superior.