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Ok, before anyone else says it, 'Alien 8 is virtually identical to Knight Lore on the Amstrad machines', but that's the last time you'll ever hear me say it - because it simply isn't true. I'm sure there will be no end of correspondence to this and other magazines along the lines of 'I just shelled out another £9.95 on Alien 8 and when I got home I found it was Knight Lore with modern graphics'. You, the discerning reader, can sit at home and chuckle when you read this kind of uninformed comment - it is obvious that the author has not sat down and played the game for any length of time. I will concede that the graphical technique that Ultimate employ in the two games is similar, but the gameplay is quite different. Anyway, why give up on an idea that is so far ahead of any other games technology? I hope Ultimate have as much success with this game as they are already having with Knight Lore.

Propaganda over, on to describe the game... In Alien 8, you play the title role, cast as a cute robot who must go round a large space ship re-activating the sleeping cryonaughts before the ship drops out of hyper-drive and becomes open to attack or finally falls out of orbit and crashes into the planet that the ship has been travelling toward for aeons past. This rather flowery description is typical of Ultimate's slick packaging and as usual, leaves one wondering just exactly what it is you're supposed to be doing. The truth of the matter is that you must find the various shapes of 'thermolec valve' (domed, pyramidal, square and cheese shaped) and take these to plug them into the cryogenic sockets, each of which flashes the shape that it requires for activation and will not accept any other. There are 34 valves and 24 sockets, so it won't be necessary to pick up all the valves if you find any are particularly difficult to get. It is only possible to carry three at any one time, so it is sometimes wise to plan the order in which to reactivate various chambers so that you don't end up carrying an otherwise useless object from one end of the ship to another.

As in Knight Lore, the rooms are produced in two colours on black, which, with stippled shading, give far more depth to the rooms than has been produced on certain other machines. Most of the two colour combinations used consist of a pastel and a bright version of one particular colour, however, activating a chamber gives a very satisfying red./white colour screen that somehow seems to make all the work worthwhile. And some rooms do require a large amount of brain work before the seemingly obvious solution eventually presents itself.

There are a number of different hazards that may present themselves, the obvious ones are the dalek like mice, the clockwork mice and the sparkling blobs that just don't mind who they push around. More subtle are the blocks on which you may experience a magnetic effect that tries to pull you off towards a nearby hazard, or the blocks that explode on contact (similar to you know what) allowing you to fall onto whatever happens to be below. Static death traps include the alien egg shells, tubular spiky mats, deadly pyramids and unexploded mines that are often to be found in a room that also contains a 'Robodroid'. 'What's one of those?' I hear you ask, well, it's basically a second robot that you may take control of. In the rooms where they are to be found, there will also be a set of five blocks, four of which contain arrows pointing in the Cardinal directions, step on one of these arrows with Alien 8 causes the droid to move in the direction indicated. The droid is not killed by the mines, unlike you yourself, and can therefore be used as a sweeper to clear an exit, or access an object. If the mines are too high, then place an object on top of the droid before you begin to move him and he will clear both levels at, once.

On dropping the correct valve in a room containing a cryogenic socket, you find that the object is drawn towards it, this is often very useful. Sometimes you may be able to hitch a lift on top of it, to get you across a bed of spikes or the effect may be used to place an object in a socket when it seems that you can't just drop it while standing on the socket (because of limited headroom).

In several rooms, you may find a pile of blocks with chambered corners, these can usually be man-handled to your advantage - to provide a higher platform to cross some hazard or access one of the valves that would otherwise remain aloof. Some of the piles must be toppled across a flight of deadly stairs to access whatever is at the top. On screen, the display shows how many chambers have been successfully activated so far, the valves you are currently carrying, the number of lives left and a countdown of the number of light years left until the planet is reached, by which time all the chambers must be reactivated. For those of you who are impatient to see the final graphic effect of the game, a program to enable several pokes to be entered into the game is listed elsewhere in this issue. Personally, I think the effect that one sees after failing to complete the game is more interesting - under a screen euphemistically entitled 'Reprogramming' -your robot is beaten about the head and body with a walking stick and boxing gloves - truly brilliant.

Whether you complete the game or not, you are told the number of chambers that you managed to activate and also, the number that you didn't accompanied by the number of cryonaughts lost. A rating of 'poor', 'average', 'fair', 'good', 'excellent', 'marvellous', 'hero' or, the ultimate, 'adventurer' is also given.

If you already have Knight Lore, I still would not hesitate to recommend this game, if you don't, why not? - I suggest you hock the family silver and rush out to by a copy of Alien 8 immediately. If I had to pick one of the two games, I think I'd probably go for Alien 8, because I always find the transmogrification in Knight Lore to be a little unnerving, though I naturally have a copy with the effect POKEd out.

I don't think it would be wise to give star ratings for this game, there isn't room for enough of them, besides which, comparison with any other game on a basis of star rating is not really possible - these two programs leave absolutely everything else standing. Assessing this game on a basis of star rating is not really possible.