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It's only 40 minutes since the crew left the Mobile Tactical Operations Bay, and already four are dead. Burke and Gorman were killed by the aliens, Vasquez was impregnated by a face-hugger and Hicks walked into some acid blood. He boiled instantly.

Ripley and the android Bishop are advancing eastwards, through corridors choked with bio-mechanical growth, making their way towards the Control Room. And then... the lights go out.

In the darkness, pierced only by pinpricks of light, Bishop panics, and fires. In the brief flash from the Smart gun, he sees the humped outline of an alien coming straight at him. He fires again, and the last thing he sees is the opening of multiple jaws, filling his sight.

Ripley is more fortunate. She never even sees her assistant. The screen blanks out in a haze of static...

The game succeeeds because, like the film, it relies on the principle of the sudden shock when you least expect it. And, as that shock so often comes from behind, you spend much of the game looking over your shoulder.

You control Ripley and her team via the Mobile Tactical Operations Bay - a monitor screen which displays the portrait of the crew member you are currently controlling, together with his bio-functions trace (recording heart rate), and the ammunition level. To left and right of this are the names of six personnel, the number of the room that each is in, and status bars which tell you whether each is healthy, exhausted, impregnated or dead.

Above these icons is the large video screen. This receives the signal from the video camera strapped to the helmet of the selected crew member, and consequently you only see what that crew member is seeing. Moving across the screen are the sights of his Smart gun, and by sweeping to left or right with the sights you can pan the camera through 360 degrees.

The first time you play you'll be tempted to move individual crew members haphazardly through the warren of the colony base, going through doors at random until you've got all six hopelessly lost. By now the aliens will have started attacking; a name will be highlighted on the monitor screen, you'll hurriedly key in this code letter, and as his portrait flashes up, you'll hear the rising siren of his Proximity Meter. Something inhuman is in the same room.

You hit the joystick and scan the room at speed until you find the hunched alien coming into vision. Aim the Smart gunsights at its head, and if you're lucky it'll explode into fragments. If you're unlucky, you might not get a second chance. One dead - or impregnated - crew member.

It's better, though, to move all six humans forward as a team, so that they can always come to each other's aid. Using the map which is thoughtfully provided in the package, you can program each crew member to move up to nine rooms ahead in one go, assuming they don't run up against acid pools, locked doors or dead ends.

In this way you can strategically guide your task force towards the armoury (where they can replenish spent ammunition), and then go on to the Control and Generating Rooms, hoping to get there before the lights go out. Much further on is the Queen's Egg Chamber, the breeding ground of the alien occupation, and the object of your doomed mission.

But however you plan your tactics, you don't stand a monkey's. All the time you're advancing, the rooms behind and ahead are filling up with bio-mechanical growth, and soon you'll be stumbling across alien eggs, scampering face-huggers and wave upon wave of alien warriors. You can try to halt the spreading growth by clearing it from the walls with Smart gun blasts, but it's a thankless task and ammunition is precious.

And eventually the lights will fail. Your team is as good as dead now, unable to see enemy or exits, and unless you can get them to an illuminated sector quickly, one by one their video screens will shut down and their ID portraits will display alien forms.

Effective graphics, uncomplicated gameplay, superb atmosphere... Aliens is good, solid, unpretentious entertainment. Just like the film, in fact. It's only let down by the complete absence of music and the very limited spot effects, but then you can't have everything [Why not? - Ed].

Oh, and by the way, watch out for a little girl who appears at odd moments in the game. She's friendly.

I think.