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Do you believe in the North-South divide? Why don't you take a leap into the future to find out if it exists? Rob Mead did, and didn't like what he saw...

It's the end of the 21st Century and you're in a world riven in two by another cold war. This time the hostilities are divided along the Equator - North vs South. For too long Third World countries in the South have felt exploited by their fellow humans in the affluent North, so they decided to do something about it. The South now represents a mighty superpower with highly sophisticated weaponry at its disposal. Welcome to Psygnosis's latest release, Air Support in which you have to ensure the North doesn't fall under the onslaught of the South's might.

The weird thing is, there are no real wars in the future. Well, not the conventional kind with humans slugging it out on a blood-spattered battlefield anyway. These days powerful computers run huge defence complexes with automated weaponry - before you can get your hands on this lot though, you have to undergo an intensive period of training on the Air Support Battle Simulation (ASBS).

The battle simulator consists of 20 increasingly complicated missions based on a strategic map view screen and a 3D arcade game. On the map view you place waypoints for your vehicles to move to, while the 3D arcade section enables you to pilot vehicles individually and attack the bad guys. Successfully complete all 20 missions and you're rewarded with another 40 missions and a real defence complex to control. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Well, it's not.

The strategy side of the game proves to be challenging as you try to shelter your fledgling defence complex from the attacking hordes. Effective use of radar, missiles and carefully-laid mines is crucial if your power generation and factory facilities aren't going to be wiped out with the first enemy onslaught. The major drawback is that you have to overcome equally strong defences when you launch an attack on your enemy's positions.

The problems really start when you delve into the arcade side of the game - it consists entirely of badly-drawn wireframe graphics, last seen in the coin-op version of Battlezone. To make matters worse, the gameplay is incredibly slow and you jerk along a dodgy landscape like a slug with hiccups. It's crap. Just thank your lucky stars there's an Autopilot so you can let your ST do the flying for you. Even more bizarre is the pair of 3D specs you get with the game - select the Stereo option and all the wireframe lines split into two so you can view the game in true 3D perspective. It doesn't work... and you look like a pratt. The sound effects consist of pure chip rubbish - all pings and meaningless thunks, although you do get garbled robotic speech if you have an STE.

Getting around in the game is not simple. The sub-menus are confusing and you have to use different combinations of mouse, keyboard and joystick depending which part of the game you're in. It's no good running to the manual for help 'cos its layout and writing make it difficult to understand.

Let's be honest. Air Support is hardly the most stimulating game in the world. The challenging strategic element is sadly let down by the arcade bits - the wireframe graphics and sluggish controls make all the flying sequences totally farcical.

The strategy side of Air Support can be quite challenging.

Wireframe graphics and unimaginative gameplay makes this game one big snooze.