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The packaging for The Chernobyl Syndrome is pretty sensational: a silhouetted figure, lab coat flying, diving for cover as the nuclear power station in the background explodes into an inferno. On the back of the pack, the game is described as a (deep voice) "drama and challenge of chilling realism and awesome consequences".

Wow! This is obviously going to be one of those action-packed, suspense-filled jobs which puts you in the hot seat, struggling to save the world as the seconds tick inexorably towards meltdown.

And so, pulse racing, you load in the program, and while you're waiting for the fun to begin, you have a quick decko at the instructions. This is where you get your first shock: what you're looking at is over 10,000 words of text printed in a typeface so small it's going to do your eyes some serious damage.

Putting that to one side, you turn to the other sheet, the one that lists the command words and function keys that you need to play the game. This one doesn't look too awful; discounting the French and German translations, there probably aren't more than 2,000 words all told. These include 40 or so command words (though many of them duplicate each other), 14 sets of function keys, 30 library words, a 15-stage power-up procedure, a 16-stage shutdown procedure, the 21 nominal levels for the power gauges, and four lengthy emergency scenarios.

Sweating a bit by now, you decide to give it a whirl, and type in the command which puts nuclear power plant ON LINE. The black screen displays a sequence of mysterious computer-generated messages, but before you attempt to initiate the various stages of the power-up procedure, alarm bells are sounding, and the computer is requesting POWER LEVEL TO 100%. And it's now that you get your second shock: you don't know what the hell you're doing.

It looks like there's nothing else for it - you're going to have to do some homework. About a third of the text supplied is actually readable, describing the events preceding and following the Chernobyl disaster two years ago. It's the stuff of nightmares, but doesn't get you any closer to playing the game.

The rest, however, is heavy going, being a detailed explanation of how a nuclear plant actually works, right down to the nitty-gritty of zirconium tubes, sub-atomic particles, reactivity levels and neutron absorbers. It's all very fascinating, at about the level of a physics degree paper, but still lacks any immediate relevance to gameplay.

Somehow, carried away by his own enthusiasm for the subject, programmer Paul Norman (yes, it's that man again) has, either wilfully or accidentally, avoided any plain-talking instructions for playing The Chernobyl Syndrome. Even the list of power-up procedures is unhelpful: "Withdrawn control rods to x degree" it states. How? "Use generators to achieve approximate power output level requested". How?

The Chernobyl Syndrome is, quite possibly, an authentic simulation of what it is like to operate a nuclear power reactor, though it's unlikely that any of us will ever know for sure. What is certain, however, is that it is one of the most unfriendly and impenetrable programs you'll encounter. Its one saving grace is that it has almost no graphics, which, to judge from Norman's previous artistic efforts, has to be a Good Thing.

So, if you really want to save the world from a nuclear disaster, then give this one a miss and take out a subscription to Greenpeace instead. You know it makes sense.