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Shout loud and look mean. If you don't like spiders then get outa here! While some people are playing with toys, some people are playing with fire.

In the mean, tough, dangerous, precarious, violent, unsavoury, pitiless, tough, ruff, horrible, nasty, nasty, horrible world of Crack Down, you don't get scared and you've never heard of cotton wool.

Ben and Andy are two unassuming, muscle-bound blobs on the screen, fighting for freedom against the evil forces of Dr. K. Freedom from what and from whom? Dr. K There is no other. But our two heroes must, guided by your very hands, search the Replicants barracks, pick up keys and set the bombs marked by a big red cross.

The cross is in fact so big that orange blobs, which happen to be King-Fu guards, could find the alien explosives and defuse them. But this is not the real world. This is Crack Down.

The screen is divided into two halves, one half for Ben and one half for Andy. Crack Down is a two player game. But it's more than a mere shoot-'em-up as the race is against time. The clock is always ticking. The bells are always chiming and there are sixteen levels to compete with.

As well as the all-kicking, all punching Kung-Fu orange guards, crackshot green guards also stalk the area. As you cross the roads and pass the trucks more guards pop out to confront you and give you a good kicking. This may not seem a problem at first, but once you have set all the bombs on the level you have to make a quick dash for the exit to the next level before the barracks are totally destroyed.

Ben and Andy now find themselves in some underground caverns leading to the rest of Dr. K's fortress. The guards are still on your trail but just to make things more difficult, more guards arrive on the scene wearing bulletproof kit and wielding machine guns. Trap doors are just another hazard to break the sweat.

The levels continue into the refinery where flame-throwers make an unwanted appearance and the crackshots are firing more frequently. With this complete, Dr.Ks fortress and 13 more levels roll out before our faithful freedom fighters.

Control of the game is very simple, with a super bomb (if the fire button is held down for two seconds) to destroy everything in sight and get you out of those awkward situations.

Graphically, Crack Down is not a great offering but it's a game people may know through the arcades. Its 16 levels become progressively more difficult to complete and each level has certain obstacles to master such as the trap door. Nothing is easy when you're fighting for freedom.

Crack Down is the sort of game that will hold interest long enough for the players to complete the challenge. The fact that it is a simultaneous two player game is to its advantage as sharing an interest can make things more appealing. But if you haven't any friends, you'd better have a lot of fingers.