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Critical Mass has that look about it that suggests it might be quite good. Looks, of course, can be deceptive.

The action is set on an asteroid where an advanced anti-matter conversion plant has been occupied by aliens after a surprise attack. Your mission is to fly in and disable the plant before the aliens can destroy it and cause an enormous black hole. OK, it's just the plot.

You do this by flying east in your craft, avoiding rock masses, alien defences and mines, penetrating the plant wall and taking out the guard posts. Sounds like a super fast shoot-out, eh? Well, it's not. The reason for this being that control of the craft is so finicky - the one direction stuff like in the old asteroids - that you have to proceed at a snail's pace to avoid hitting the obstacles. This however also makes you a sitting duck for the enemy forces. Swinging the ship round to line up a target is a laborious struggle.

Should you lose your craft you have the chance to get another, by flying off in a jet pack in search of a replacement pod. The controls here are even more difficult, and for some reason you become a delicacy for worms which pop up from the ground. You certainly have to master this if you want to get any further with it, because your ships disappear like nobody's business and the fact that you cannot blow up obstacles exactly make this fast trigger stuff either.

Graphics are clear if a little on the small side, but the sound is poor. Bad sound effects and lousy tune. It mightn't look so duff if it weren't for the fact that I'd been playing Uridium constantly before I got round to this. There again, maybe it would.

If you want a really tough challenge then this will give you one, but I don't like games which substitute imagination for niggly controls.