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Somewhere in Europe is a top secret training camp where the cream of the crop from the Action Services must spend a day in order to prepare for missions with the famous (?) Cobra Command.

Your training is divided into three sections - Physical, Risk and Combat. In the physical section you must prove your agiilty by jumping and dodging various obstacles. The risk section allows you to show off your prowess in handling explosives and, finally, the combat test is where you get to train on human opponents.

The three levels share several things in common - they are all very long, they all look extremely alike and they are all completely boring. Scrolling pixel perfect but very slow, making the levels seem even longer and even more boring. Any obstacles in the foreground must either be jumped over or crawled through. After a couple of goes, this proves to be no problem, the only hassle then is staying awake long enough to get to the end. On later levels you have grenades and humans thrown in for good measure; these provide a welcome break from the monotony of normal gameplay. Also included in the game is a construction kit for you to design your own long, boring levels. The best designs sent to Cobrasoft will be used in Action Service 2. There's going to be another one?

Action Service makes use of a fairly awkward control system. Although some functions are executed with a single move from the joystick, many others take two or three moves to get the required effect. More extensive use of the fire button may have improved matters.

Right, that's enough of the praise, onto the nitty gritty. The graphics are very limited, especially on the backdrops, adding to the repetitive feel of the game. The only place where graphics of any note make an appearance is on the video-wall type title screen. The sprite (there's only one) for your character is poorly defined but recognisable as a soldier. Animation for the different actions is quite smooth, but nothing awe inspiring.

Sound is pathetic, nothing more than a few whizzes and bangs and a looped title tune.

Due to awful presentation, graphics and gameplay you're probably not going to want to play Action Service for very long. Perhaps at a budget price, it would have been worth a look, but at ten quid I'd give this one a miss.

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Controlling the figure can all be done via the joystick, but it doesn't make the movement any easier in the 16-bit version. Sound and graphics are much improved, but still weak for the power of the machine.

There's a few digitised commands like "Go!" and "Stand Up" but it's all pretty unrewarding stuff. Action Service has been available a few weeks on the Amiga, and if you haven't got it yet, don't.