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Well, I never did agree with those scenarios included in games packaging that cast one as a sleazy spaced out Marlowe-cum hired gun. It doesn't fire my imagination or encourage me to play. Otherwise Xadom is an attractive mix of 3D (well almost) arcade maze and the traditional room adventure.

The game starts in the briefing room where you can assume any name and must surrender your weapons. The Empire which commands you to find the 'Artifact' (their secret ultra-device) isn't too innovative. You must search through 20 rooms with a variety of aliens, objects and traps to encounter.

The game provides lists of aliens and their relevant anti-objects, but it pays to sprint for the nearest door rather than to stay and battle it out. Incidentally, it also gives you one of those cards to place over the controlling keys of the Spectrum, even if you do have to trim a bit off the lower edge to fit it.

Once in room 20, you'll find a teleport, which if, artifact in hand, you enter you'll be treated to a neat little graphics display and a promotion.

'U' (as the game likes to put it) are standing on a perspectival grid with a number of obstacles in front of you and three doors at the top left, centre and right. As you go through the rooms numbers appear on the tops of the doors, indicating the rooms that you've been through before.

Dotted along your way are traps that form mazes. You can go through some but they drain power; others are total barriers. Pick up the flashing objects and you can conquer them and the truly nasty aliens that lurk in every other room. You don't have much time to think. Once a Wattdog or a Vampbat has you the others join in, and it's like being eaten by several man-sized insects... you wander about blindly, a mass of writhing pixels, and it takes such a long time to die!

This is a good, if slightly predictable, cross between Space Invaders, Pac-man and... well, whatever game that is typified by the line, "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike". I wouldn't call it 3D, since it would appear to be two dimensions once the grid is removed.

It's not hard to get through skill level 1, and the pace doesn't really increase with levels 2 and 3, just the number of rooms and nasties. I think Xadom is pretty good value from all aspects, except it's a touch slow and repetitive.