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The universe of the twenty-fifth century is a place fraught with danger for mankind. However, one man is destined to rise through the many disasters and deadly invasions to survive, prosper and lead humanity to a brave new dawn of civilisation. Unfortunately, you are not that man. You are in fact in command of a party of understudies for the man known as Buck Rogers, performing dangerous missions in the name of freedom in this new role playing game from Electronic Arts.

You play a party of new recruits into NEO, an organisation devoted to ridding the galaxy of the last vestiges of the mega-powerful RAM faction. These twisted beings are the previous tyrannical rulers of the solar system who enforced their iron-fisted law with genetic mutant warriors! Your first mission sees you repelling a minor invasion of mutant Terrines at your Earth headquarters, before advancing to the orbital command base where you are assigned to save civilisation in a number of different missions.

Ship-based combat is fought in much the same way as its ground-based cousin. As each character comes into play, their actions are selected using a cursor. Should you wish to fight, you select which weapon to fire from a choice of K-cannon, missiles or beam lasers, which are then aimed at the unfortunate enemy ship pictured in your scanners.

If this approach seems a little warlike, you can always try talking to your enemies. The trouble is, all this softie approach tends to yield nothing more than severe laser burns.

Combat in Buck Rogers is a little more involved than in most RPGs. The process is carried out in rounds, with each of your characters coming under your control in turn.

Once you take charge you may elect for your person to move around, attack, wait, carry out first aid on your fellows or pass completely. Alternatively, you could just leave combat to the computer using the "quick combat" option where each member of your party acts in the best interest of the others (although it often ends with more casualties than manual combat).

Should you elect to fight manually, you are able to choose your target with a set of crosshairs. Positioning these sights over an enemy will display their rank, energy and your chance of hitting them, allowing you to select the target both weakest and easiest to hit.

As your characters progress through their escapades, they learn new things. This is represented in Buck Rogers through the acquisition of experience points. These are awarded for solving puzzles, winning in combat and acting heroically in desperate situations.

Each time one of your characters gains a certain number of these points they go up a level, which bestows new advantages upon them, such as weapon bonuses and new skills.

Your party contains up to six hardened space warriors. Before embarking on your adventures you may choose to take either the pre-generated computer party or create your own.

Six major statistics are used as guidelines to your characters' abilities. These are strength, dexterity, constitution, charisma and technical ability. Then, a race is selected from Human, Desert Runner (a genetic hybrid of man and animal) and Tinkers (a cross between humans and gibbons who make excellent medics!).

On top of this a character class must be chosen for each character. The classes dictate each person's ability in certain fields. The four available are Warrior (an all-purpose fighting character), Rocket Jock (a Han Solo-type pilot/adventurer), Rogue (a stealthy criminal type) and Medic (essential healer). After this is done, points are allocated to specific skills such as demolition, zero-gravity manoeuvres and computer programming. When you think you've got enough heroes, name the lot of them and off you go.

The missions you are assigned are certainly varied. Level one sees you saving the NEO base from an enemy missile-launch attempt, whereas later levels see you resucing kidnapped children, saving the databanks of an abandoned ship while at the same time seeking a cure for the deadly parasites which have infected you and even helping Buck Rogers himself defeat an evil pirate king!

Like Starflight, this certainly takes a lot of getting into. Creating your characters is a long and boring task which does not bode well for the game itself. However, give the game a chance and you can't help but get drawn into it.

Okay, so the graphics look spartan to say the least, but this doesn't affect the quality of the game and the sheer atmosphere it manages to generate is quite remarkable.

There are just so many missions (with all of their objectives) that you definitely get your money's worth. Even completing the first few levels takes a few hours to accomplish, and there are plenty more where that came from!

I can see action-fans not getting on very well with this, but if you want a cart that offers an enjoyable, long-lasting challenge, give Buck Rogers a whirl.

At first play, Buck Rogers doesn't exactly ooze excitement. Although the character creation is quite fun, making six different characters does get a little tedious and the first mission is particularly simplistic.

The weak graphics and sound do nothing but heighten the despondent atmosphere. Get past these small hurdles however and you'll find an involving and rewarding game. There's lots to do in each of the subsequent missions, with clues being sought and a real sense of tension as time starts to run out and there's still an objective to be achieved.

The combat system can be slightly annoying, although it's ten times better than any other RPG system, and you can always stick to quick combat in less-than-desperate situations. Size is nother thing Buck Rogers has going for it. There are loads of assignments and they get very hard after the first couple of missions, making the battery back-up essential.

Buck Rogers is definitely one for anyone after some RPG excitement or just a long-lasting, challenging game.

Presentation 87%
Lots of presentation screens and they're quite well done too.

Graphics 68%
Small and weedy sprites with little animation. The backgrounds are quite repetitive too.

Sound 63%
The tune is empty and the effects are as poor as poor can be.

Playability 90%
The control system makes things easy and there's certainly a lot to do. It'll tax more than your reflexes, so thickies beware.

Lastability 95%
There are more missions that you can shake a stick at and they're progressively more difficult to complete.

Overall 91%
A challenging and refreshing RPG which makes up for graphical deficiencies with an abundance of playability.