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It's nice to have a black guy as the hero for a change, even if he is a cybernetic organism - Cyborg for short.

In CRL's atmospheric space yarn, Cyborg has been called upon to find the seven missing astronauts who were exploring the asteroid Avernus, which is on a collision course with Earth. And that's the sum total of the information given at the start of the mission. This is clearly going to be an uphill task, even for a Cyborg.

Beneath the action screen, which forms less than the top third of the display, is the Cyborg control panel and, to the left, the VDU. Using the control examine objects immediately in front of him, and view his location from overhead. There are further options for classifying lifeforms, checking shield and power unit levels, reloading weapons, and saving to tape.

Cyborg's mission begins inside his Gal-Corp spacecraft, parked on the asteroid surface. Descending from the craft, he starts to explore the pockmarked terrain. Striding left - his footsteps sounding like bullets hitting steel-plated armour - he soon comes to an adrupt halt over a crevasse; striding right he passes his spaceship and then, 50 yards further on, he passes it again. Either he's stomping round in circles or... he's found the ship abandoned by the lost astronauts.

Inside, the computer terminal reveals the awful truth; *Imperative not asteroid spaceship aliens hostile code is 1512 damn they're here god help us...* Stirring stuff.

Further exploration of the bleak landscape eventually rewards Cyborg with the discovery of an elevator shaft descending into the bowls of the asteroid spaceship. Punching a button at random takes him onto one of three subterranean levels. He exits the lieft and all hell breaks loose.

There are aliens swimming all over the shop - space-suited humanoids, floating hamburgers, walking beachballs and mobile top hats. All of them are less than friendly to poor Cy, who's soon caught in a crossfire, his shields appear from nowhere to vacuum up the remains. One tough of this and it's bye-byes for Cy.

Somewhere in the maze is a laser rifle, and should Cyborg find this then the odds might be weighted more in his favour. But after a frustrating hour or three, my Cyborg had only got as far as scouting out the third and lowest level, usually dying before discovering anything very useful. A diabolical bug didn't help matters much, causing the scenery to throw up rooms which didn't exist. Entering one of these would result in a spectacular crash.

At other times, mistyping an entry into a terminal would prevent any exit from the program, so the only thing to do would be to pull the plug. Ebullient Clem Chambers at CRL swears that these minor problems will now be removed from the product ("but thanks very much for pointing them out to us"). Let us know if he's kept his word.

Bugs aside, Cyborg has bags of potential. The plot and its presentation keeps up the suspense, and the game is full of nice little tuches, like the Hoovermatic (C) alien. Graphically it's no great shakes, and if you're looking for loads of action, you might find the adventure elements of the game tedious. At times Cyborg becomes almost a text adventure, as you try every possible command you can think of to get the computer terminals to part with their precious information.

Hmm. Strange, but interesting. Another oddity from CRL.