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This game was originally released a few years ago by a company called Program Techniques at an asking price of £7.95. Now Mastertronic has brought the copyright and re-released it. This not only makes the game excellent value but will be one off the best budget games of the year.

When you take out the cover to have a look at the instructions you will wonder why there is so much. But you will need to read them all to get the idea of the game before you start playing. Included with the instructions is a very informative background to the game.

The game has that nice basic ingredient of shoot anything that you want to, but you cannot destroy the trees. You also have a hit/miss ratio so your aiming has to be spot on. On most of the planets that you visit immaculate control of the spaceship is required, to get you through some very tight spots. If a sentinel base is on the planet that you are visiting, and are good enough, you will see it blow up at the end of the playing area.

There are over 300 planets for you to discover (that save option will come in handy after all), this is spread over 100 systems. Some of the planets may seem similar, as some are mirror images of earlier planets. Out of these 300 planets you have to locate the 30 sentinel planets and destroy them. So this turns out to be a very big search operation and you will have a one in ten chance of finding a planet. The map option will certainly come in handy to show what you are in store for. When you decide to send a probe down to the planet use the "P" key instead of the stated "O" key.

The graphics may be a little dated but beats much of the software that is just being released. The scrolling is very smooth in all parts of the program, especially the landscape and map screen.

On the main screen, the planet of your choice is seen rotating. Occasionally an alien message may decide to appear on the screen, which will take a lot of decoding to be able to understand it. No sound has been included in the game so you will have to make your own explosion sounds.

On the whole Xcel is a game that is well worth the asking price, and will keep you amused for a few weeks at least. Shame about those that bought it when it was first released, they are missing the bargain of the year.