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If you're a Gridrunner fan, then Quintic Warrior is the game is for you. It is one of the better ones of a fast-expanding clan.

You must defend a grid from a host of mutant invaders. Fortunately, the majority of these do not fire at you. However, in order to keep life more interesting and difficult, there are three laser bases which should be helping you but have gone wild, and are now taking shots at you!

You control the hero - 'Superman the Quintic Warrior' who stands alone against the sinister Crabmen and Mangled Mutants. And a pretty vicious bunch they are.

Initially you can choose your level of difficulty. You appear in the middle of the grid and the laser bases make an immediate bee-line for you. All three must hit you simultaneously to kill you, which they attempt relentlessly.

To destroy the mutant invaders you shoot them with your blaster or crash into them with the Quintic Warrior. Be warned - you lose one-tenth of a life each strike with the latter method which seems generous for such suicidal tactics.

The laser bases are annoying: you cannot, at any time, stay still or they will home in on you. After your destruction, when you reappear in exactly the same spot, the laser bases are still there waiting for you and unless you have your joystick set to move before your reincarnation you'll get shot at over and over again.

At the higher levels of difficulty, various new hazards appear on the grid. Zed bolts are the first and they are pretty lethal if you are not deft enough with the joystick.

Another mutant, this time a worm, appears at a later stage and is extremely difficult either to avoid or to destroy.

The game ends if you lose all your lives or one of the invading mutants reaches the top of the grid.

For help you are supposed to use your 'Quintic Factor'. This is your sixth sense but I seem to be sadly lacking anything like that: I found it hard enough to survive at the lower levels and only occasionally made the higher grades.

This Gridrunner-style game is quite good and the sound has been used reasonably effectively. the game is very fast and tricky and should keep even the most hardened player busy for a long time.

If you don't have a game of this ilk already you should consider this one as an addition to your software library.