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Since U.S. Gold flooded these offices with literature on their new label Go! they have failed to live up to what we all expected of them. Clearly Go! hope this will be the game to change that...

If I were not in such a kind mood, I would say that this plot is about as interesting as watching Holiday On Ice outside a branch of Radio Rentals in Walthamstow whilst it's snowing. I'm pretty sick of all this "Fly your X352.6 Mark 3 warp speed mega-galactic cruiser... only you can save the Andromeda interstellar universal freedom fighters..." type waffle. Why can't they just live with the fact that all they have produced is another shoot-'em-up and just write nothing at all. I could live with it.

Now that's understood, it's time to take your ship and waste some extra-terrestrials. The Aliens come down in formations of around ten. Although they are rather easy to dodge if you're in the right place, once you get caught on the wrong side of the screen, well, that's it. Your ship can move in any of the eight compass points, and fires a rather mundane-looking laser. But dodging the ships that fly at you (without firing any missiles at you whatsoever!) is by no means the only problem you have. There are guns, and plenty of them lining each of the seventeen spaceships' surface; these guns fire repeatedly at you, and some of them will even revolve and follow you. Homing bullets are probably the hardest enemy on the levels that you will have to deal with; these simply appear from nowhere and come hurtling toward you, aiming to destroy one of your three lives.

One of the game's most infuriating aspects is its control. You can move in all directions, but when you move sideways you seem to go a lot faster than you do when you go backwards or forwards, which does not do you much good when you're trying to dodge an army of spaceships.

At the end of many of the levels there is a little yellow circle with the letter 't' on it; touching this will send you into what must be one of the most fun bonus stages that I've seen for some time. Your ship is transported in to what can only be described as a mega-galactic pinball table. You must fly through the pinball table and try to keep a ball bouncing for as long as possible. If you do lose the ball, you can shoot the bumpers and tokens yourself. If the ball should hit you, you will then be transported to the level which you were previously on. If you survive the pinball wave, you will then go on to the next level, and be awarded a hefty bonus.

After every four levels, you will encounter a mothership... a very big mothership indeed. These are very, very tricky to kill, as they can only be killed when their eyes are fully open. Killing these ships will earn you another hefty bonus, and give you temporary invincibility.

The graphics aren't exactly pioneering but they are a competent version of those seen in most vertically scrolling shoot-'em-ups, with realistic 3D effects, and, a rarity nowadays, smooth scrolling. The sound is rather average, the gameplay can hardly be described as original, but it is a reasonable shoot-'em-up. The cute little pinball bonus game makes the package just about worth it.