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Hark and Kren are two perfectly normal 18 year old brothers. They spend their spare time building high performance lasers and defence mechanisms in order to pass their Hitech Control and Laser Technology exams. One fateful day, after returning home from trying out their new Skywalk Jet Bikes, Hark and Kren find their family murdered.

Kren recalls the old Indian ritual whereby blood is drawn from two peoples' wrists, then the inclusions are pushed together and the people are declared blood brothers. Needless to say, Hark and Kren make this pact.

The brothers deduce that their parents were murdered by a band of space pirates called the Scorpions, whose favourite pastime is to raid soft, rich planets. Over the past few years they have stolen vast amounts of gems which have been transported back to their base on the planet Scorpia.

Hark and Kren commenced work on transforming their Jet bikes, equipping them with homemade lasers and defence equipment. Thrust packs were made to help the brothers negotiate the difficult terrain of the mines - the bases of the pirates - and finally the brothers were ready.

Blood Brothers is a two player game, hindered by the rare fault of no single player option. The best tactic tends to be to fly one of the brothers to another mine area - that way you don't have to worry about toggling between joysticks or fumbling around hectically on the keyboard.

Blood Brothers only has two sections to it: The mines and the jet bikes. In the mines, the best policy is to stay above ground with the jet packs, as acid pools and a rather nasty energy draining system adorn most of the ground. The lasers Hark and Kren are equipped with leave them at a rather large disadvantage owing to their tremendous recoil. This has no difficulty in forcing the person firing off-screen, and when it takes six shots to kill the average nasty, this proves a rather frustrating task.

Lying scattered around are extra energy pods for the jet packs and lasers, and gems which are there to be collected. These play an important part in the game as at the end you're told how many were collected. Bomb-like structures are the key to progress in Blood Brothers: when these are shot, they open up dead ends to more fiendish part of the mines.

The Jet bike section is nothing special: guide the bike around obstacles until you reach the entrance to another mine section. Sadly, the shortest section of the game, but easily the most enjoyable which says a lot about the standard of the mines.

The graphics on the whole qualify for average, the backdrops being dull and repetitive, and the main sprites either small and neat or large and chunky, with no real inbetween. The sound is fair; the title screen tune is nice, but it's hardly Jean Michel Jarre.

The gameplay is slow, mainly because of the trouble involved in letting off a decent shot with the laser. I did find myself going back once or twice just to see if it was me not getting anywhere or the game itself. I was right (as usual): my perfect skill could not possibly work with a game where something as natural in the computer world as killing aliens was as frustrating and tiresome as this.