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Yes, it's time to explore the galaxy again, this time under the guise of Captain Blood, searching for five clones that have been scattered around the galaxy. How the clones came to be scattered around in the first place is explained in the short story supplied. I think.

Said story is a bit weird in places, but basically: "Blood" is the pseudonym of a famous arcade game programmer, now on Skid Row. In typical Iron tradition, he injects himself into a computergenerated existence to meet the threat of giant invading Pac-Men (told you it was weird).

Unfortunately, after escaping certain death from an attack of Space Invaders, he accidentally clones himself. This is a Bad Thing, and to have any chance of surviving, Blood must hunt down and destroy the clones and reclaim his vital fluid before he is completely replaced with artificial implants.

This is where you take over, piloting Bloods custom-built spaceship - the ARK. (Moves like a fish, steers like a fish, looks like an asteroid.)

You start your search for the clones in orbit around an inhabited planet, sort of leftish and up a bit from the centre of the galaxy. On the main screen, the planet spins before you.

You guide Blood's hand over the control panel with the keyboard or joystick, and press on the icons representing the possible options. The icons don't really look like anything except icons, so it's lucky the instructions explain what you can do.

One of the things you can do is launch a remotely-controlled Oorxx to land on the planet. The Oorxx is a bio-engineered life form developed from an extinct alien species, according to the story.

To land successfully you must guide it (that's guide the Oorxx, not the bio-engineered life form developed from an extinct alien species) through the fractal generated 3D mountains avoiding defence mechanisms in the cleverly done (and optional) flight sequence. At the end of a canyon you meet the inhabitant of the planet, who may be one of several species detailed in the instruction manual. Typical species include Tubular Brains, Robheads and Sinox.R.

To talk to the alien you must use the UPCOM (Universal Protocol COMmunication) device which converts both your own and the alien's speech into strings of icons.

Again, the icons could really represent anything, but an automatic dictionary will translate for you. Talking with aliens is a bit like talking with a Sun reader: It takes time to get the point across.

The purpose of taking truck with the aliens is to get information about the whereabouts of the clones, but it's not easy. Some want to walk about their unsuccessful love lives, some will spit nothing but numbers at you and swear - a degree in alien linguistics would be very helpful.

Aliens' can sometimes be persuaded to talk if you act as an interplanetary taxi service for them, although to teleport them you must first convince them that you won't do anything untoward once they are on board. You can't just lean out the window ind offer them some sweeties.

If you have managed to get the coordinates of another inhabited world from the alien you can plot your course on the galactic map and perform a quick hyperspace jump, which involves lots of sound and flashing stars.

Flying to places at random is a sure way to get very lost, because not all planets are inhabited, and space is a very big place. To quote the instructions: "... trusting your luck is a non-viable survival option".

The graphics are very pretty, especially the rotating planets and the weird talking aliens. Sound during the game is uninspiring, but the title screen has music written by none other than Jean-Michel Jarre.

Although the CPC's sound capabilities are not quite up to a Rendezvous Houston standard, the style is definitely Jean-Michel's, and not, thank goodness, just an Oxygene rip-off.

You are allowed to save your progress so far to disc, and it seems this is a good idea, since completing the game could take a long time. The disc version game needs to access the disc when talking to aliens, but even though I forgot to replace to game-disc, the program didn't crash - it just waited for me to put it back in, which is more than some other games I could mention would do.