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It's about time we saw another adventure from the fertile minds at Interceptor Software. Judging from the letters I get, Interceptor adventures are played across the greater part of Europe. They are renowned for their graphics and although the text is great in quantity, it supplies just enough interest to maintain most players' enthusiasm.

After Shock is at the least very topical. You are part of a team that designed the nuclear reactor that supplies power to your city. There is a fault in the backup cooling system but the primary system is functioning perfectly. No problem, you just put things in motion to investigate and rectify the failure.

In an underground test site deep in the desert to the east, the military test its latest nuclear warhead. This sets off a series of earth tremors, The city has expected an earthquake for years, as it is built over a fault line and no one is concerned at first as these tremors are on a very low scale.

You are one of the few who may be able to repair the unit before it runs wild... Can you get there in time?

This is where the adventure starts. You are in your office and must get out of the destruction all around you and reach the plant. The stairs are impassable with fires licking up from below and with the electricity supplies cut off the lift is a death trap. The action hots up as you escape from the building but find there is no direct way out of the city. Perhaps you could make your way through the sewers or find a submarine to take you down the flooded underground railway tunnels. You may even think of riding one of the elephants from the zoo.

Whatever you do, you will find plenty of objects lying around that may be of use to you. There are a number of locations where death is the next step, so save fairly regularly. There is no ram save but the tape is quick - use it.

There are lots of locations to explore and yet another of Interceptor's awkward multi-location mazes. Just keep your head and draw careful maps.

Graphics are not displayed at every location but when they do appear they are superb. Some of them contain an element of animation that adds greatly to what are surely Interceptor's best yet. The clutching hand extending up from a pile of debris and the oil pouring out of a stricken tanker are just two to look forward to.

In general the operating system is slightly quicker in action than in previous games, especially in displaying the graphics. It also seems to understand a greater number of words than before.

Sadly its use of the English language, in an adventurer's sense, is frustrating at times. In the instructions they talk about giving commands and the need to be grammatically correct. By this they deplore such inputs as GO BOAT and insist on CLIMB INTO BOAT.

This is all very well, but only if the range of phrases understood is great enough not to hold up play. It's more than frustrating if you can't get the computer to understand or carry out an action you know to be right.

The problem areas in After Shock are not that many but when you meet them they certainly cause a time lapse in gameplay. Two that held me up for a while were 'climb out of lift' and 'lubricate the mechanism'.

If you have liked previous adventures from Interceptor you will like this one. If you are new to adventuring there are games that are more userfriendly, if not easier.