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'Life in the fast lane,' claims the box. Myself, I live life more in the bus lane, but in the interests of higher living I thought I might as well give this a go. It's a horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up which owes more to Defender than it does to R-Type, at least in as much as the action scrolls in two directions.

You hurtle at high speed through a sparse landscape until an arrow points you in the direction of a cluster of aliens. Shoot them and you win a power-up, then another arrow points you at the next lot. Lose all your energy or run out of time and the game's up. The other revolutionary feature of the game is that you can choose to have the score information take up about a quarter of the screen - novel, if pointless.

So, to the action. Frankly, this is a bit of a chore to play. Your spaceship is so sensitive to joystick movement that the slighest touch sends it flying off uncontrollably into enemies and walls. Being unable to fly your ship through unobstructed passageways simply because the game deems you not to have got that far yet is annoying and illogical, and the background graphics are too featureless to give any impression of progress. If there's a mitigating factor it's the sound, which comprises a solid and arcade-like rock soundtrack and some pleasingly illegible speech, but if you're looking for gameplay you should be looking someplace else. I'd like to say that the makers of this game should be arrested (Cardiaxx - arrested - geddit?), but it's not quite that bad. Then again, it's not that good either. Its heart is in the right place, but its playability hasn't turned up to the party.

Frustrating and limited gameplay makes it a bad deal for your £26. For obsessive speed junkies only.