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If you've already played Espionage, the board game, you'll know that it has rather tenuous connections with the aforementioned activity. Espionage to me means tape recorders that self-destruct, biros that transmit coded messages and wrinkled Ruskies with bad teeth and vays off making you tock. You'll find none of that in this game.

Nevertheless, it's pretty good in its own right, and if you've never come across Espionage, it's a mixture of chess and draughts with the added element of capturing something, i.e. microfilm, and getting it safely back to base. The game is played on a board divided symmetrically into squares, with each player allocated a team of twelve secret agents.

Anyway, here's a quick taste of what it's all about. The four players begin the game with their men assembled at the four sides of the board. Like chess, there are different types of piece, each able to move only in a specified way. The team is made up of six courier agents (which move only diagonally), four secret agents (which can move in any direction) and two surveillance agents (forward and back only).

The object of the game is to get the four microfilms at the centre of the board and bring them back. Only the secret agents and couriers can carry microfilm. On top of that, you must terminate as many of the opposition as you can.

Agents can take opponents out of the game by jumping over them. It's very similar to draughts and includes multiple taking and 'sanctioning' - you lose a piece by failing to take another when you could have. There's also a chess-like 'castle' option in which different agents on the same team can swap squares with each other.

That's enough explanation, how does it play as a computer game? Well as always, there are good points and bad points. The major flaw is that the board is too large to be displayed as a whole on the screen. You must scroll around it or zoom in and out. Neither method is wholly satisfactory. Without zooming, it's difficult to make out the icons for the three types of piece.

Bear in mind that you have 48 of them on the board if you choose the four-player option. Zooming in makes pieces clearer but denies you an overall view. And for some inexplicable reason, the icon for each piece changes. This takes some getting used to and may be frustrating if you've played Espionage as it was intended to be played - on a board!

The obvious good point is that you can play it by yourself against the computer which can take all the three other positions on the board. You'll learn something from the strategies employed.

I'm not a board game nut, but Espionage looks to me to be better than most. The computer version is well programmed and implemented but suffers drastically from the size of the board display. Apart from that, it's well worth it and you get a free sticker and poster in the box. Pity, I'd have rather had a vodka martini, shaken not stirred.