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The sales hype on the Gun Law pack starts off: "Four months of bloody alien attacks have taken their toll..."

However, anyone buying this game and expecting to see aliens is going to be in for a surprise and possibly a disappointment.

There you are in your smart blue army uniform at the bottom of the screen, brandishing your machine gun, ready to sort out the invaders from outer space. But hold on, those are soldiers shooting at you. In fact, they are identical to you in every respect, but for the fact they are wearing green instead of blue. Whatever happened to the aliens? I certainly never saw any.

Anyway, the aim is to run up the screen with the background scrolling vertically downwards, fending off your attackers.

Various objects can be used as cover from enemy fire, such as trees, fences, rocks and buildings.

Due to some programming laziness, grass, ponds and small pebbles will also stop speeding bullets.

Once you reach the end of the zone (no easy feat) you must negotiate a flashing electric fence and then go through the same exercise in the next zone. Naturally, your enemies are better armed and there are more hazards to contend with. So it goes on until you reach the fifth and final level.

The graphics in Gun Law are adequate, though they do have some oddities.

For example, an alien walking in front of your Rambo-id character is masked out as if it had gone behind.

The animation of the figures is minimal and movement is limited to up, down, left and right. The game would have been improved by the inclusion of diagonal movement.

With the high standards attained by many of the budget games around these days, I had expected a little more from this game.

It has nothing to particularly recommend it, but neither does it have any serious faults.

Gun Law is a no-frills budget shoot-'em-up and as such still represents fair value at under £2.