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Dark Side is the second release from Incentive to feature Freescape, the revolutionary new system featuring a solid three-dimensional environment. Freescape was unleashed on an undeserving public in January this year in the form of Driller, which received a less than warm reception from Gary Penn. So either Incentive think Freescape is the business (and, let's face it, they would, wouldn't they?), or they've spent so much time and money on it, they've got to plug it for all it's worth.

Dark Side is set, amazingly enough, on the same world as Driller, 200 years into the future. Some people can't seem to avoid planetary disaster no matter how hard they try. This time it's Evath's other moon, Tricuspid (What is this morbid dental obsession?) that's the cause of the trouble. The Ketras - a criminal sub-class - are constructing a giant weapon on Tricuspid with which they intend to blow the planet Evath and its inhabitants to bits. They have built a network of Energy Collection Devices (ECDs) around the moon to collect solar energy and power the death weapon - Zephyr One [built from an old Ford saloon? - Ed].

Your job is of course to prevent the dastardly deed from succeeding.

The Darkside landscape bears an unremarkable resemblance to its Freescape predecessor Driller. A three-dimensional world sparsely populated with three-dimensional geometric shapes and buildings.

This time you are in a space suit looking out on the planet surface through your helmet visor. You can move around by taking steps forward and back and turning left and right. Similarly you can look around by tilting your head up and down. Further mobility is provided by the jet pack which enables you soar to great heights, pitch and roll and view the panorama below. The jet pack is essential for hopping over walls and buildings as well as aerial reconnaissance, but judicious use of it is necessary to avoid running out of fuel.

Once you've become mobile, the primary objective is to disable as many of the ECDs as you can. They are diamond-shaped crystals located at the top of tall columns and can be disabled with a short blast on your laser canon. ECDs connect up to the main power matrix and if a particular ECD is connected between two other active ECDs it will regenerate as soon as you have blasted it. So the trick is to get the 'supporting' ECDs at the end of the line and work your way along. Ultimately you must disable every ECD including the final one next to Zephyr One on the Dark Side. Unless you keep the ECDs out of action, the power level will reach critical - indicated by an LED meter at the side of your helmet - and Zephyr One will destroy the planet Evath.

There are other ways to get around in addition to walking and jetpacking it. Powerporters will instantly teleport you to a distant sector. The telepod will take you to restricted areas, but you must first find the telepod crystals to activate it. On the nasty side, tank-like plexors fire laser bolts at you if you inadvertently wander within range. They can be disabled in the usual way, but they soon regenerate, so it's best to just save your shields and steer clear.

Inevitably Dark Side suffers from the same drawbacks as Driller i.e. Freescape. From my explorations there was nothing to suggest that the landscape, though different in detail, has grown from its original eighteen sector size. Screen update is laboriously slow with each move taking about a second to register and that causes joystick overkill - you're still moving when you let go.

Incentive will hopefully do now what they should have done after Driller - drop Freescape and come up with something that's capable of moving faster.