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Fish-faced special agent James Pond once again goes head-up with the infamous Dr Maybe, who has infiltrated a crucial, top-secret installation at the North Pole. This base is the key to world peace, harmony and tranquillity - and Maybe is out to turn it against us. And just what is this all-important installation? A launch site for nuclear missiles? A big underground base like the one you always find at the end of the real Bond movies, just before it gets torched? Nope. It's far more important than any of those - it's a huge toy factory owned and operated by a mad philanthropic recluse known as Santa Claus.

But it doesn't end there. The warped and twisted Dr Maybe has sabotaged an unknown number of toy penguins by wiring them up with explosives. If you're not able to locate and defuse all the penguins before they're shipped out for the festive season, then Christmas Eve is going to look like Fireworks Night. Responsibility-city, or what?

It was this time last year that Millennium surprised everyone with the forerunner to this - off-the-wall cutesy James Pond: Underwater Agent. For a corny idea, it turned out rather well, providing a much-needed boost to the flagging idea of platform games. In the best Cubby Broccoli conventions, Millennium have gone for the sequel - Codename Robocod. Sounds even fishier than last time, but prepare to be surprised once again.

Robocod starts with a short animated sequence showing Dr Maybe's arrival at the North Pole, and a group of bewildered penguins fretting over this fact. Needless to say, they call upon you as their only hope. When you hit the Fire button on your joystick, you appear as the legendary James Pond. Behind you is the giant toy factory where the mad doctor is holed up.

A quick wander around the building shows that it really is pretty huge - ginormously, incredibly huge, in fact. Using your special stretchability - a method of elastically extending yourself to immense heights known only to a secret group of fictitious fish - you can pull yourself right up to the top of the tallest towers of the factory.

This stunning feat is carried out with nothing more than a simple Fire button click - the longer you hold it down, the higher you stretch. It's a simple trick, but a good one. Once you release the Fire button, your top half shoots downwards at lightning speed to the floor. It meets your bottom half with a shuddering crash and you're ready to waddle off on your fins again.

Once you've used the stretch a bit, you find it has a side effect which can come in very useful. On your stretch upwards, you may come up against platforms and ledges that prevent you from going higher. Instead of just banging his head against the bottom of the ledge, Pond reaches up and grabs it. Let go of the Fire button and his lower half rockets up and he pulls himself together. Now you're hanging from the ledge, where you can sidle along with a hand-over-hand monkey climb by moving the stick sideways.

Another simple trick, but one that adds a new twist to the platform game genre and really opens up the gameplay possibilities.

Once you've got used to controlling Pond, you can start your mission in earnest. There are nine main missions plus an unknown number of secret missions and bonus quests that you can tackle. The main missions are easy to find - you just work your way up the toy factory and enter each door in turn. To complete each mission, all you need to do is find the explosive penguins and run into them to defuse the explosives. It sounds simple, but it's usually a lot more complex. Each mission features its own playfields - generally at least three per mission - and they're as mind-numbingly huge as the toy factory.

On your way, you meet all sorts of problems - fin-pecking birds, Bertie Bassets with attitudes, and strange Rubber Glove-men who walk on their fingers. But these are just the nasties - there are loads of other problems too. Much of the time, you're looking for a way around the precariously-built platforms and ledges. More often than not, you need to jump into nowhere and hope for a nearby platform to steer yourself onto - a real blind leap of faith. Falling off is scary - the long drop passes by very quickly and can really make your stomach flip if you weren't expecting it.

Robocod is full of neat little bonuses and hidden surprises. Every level is stuffed full of pick-ups: umbrellas for floating down slowly, extra power for your steel Robocod suit, extra lives and even a pair of wings. If you search hard enough, you may even find a complete aeroplane which you can fly around the entire playfield in.

Protecting your weak, fish-like exterior is something you really need to master very early on. Your Robocod suit is heavy and solid, and it can withstand the greatest of tumbles. It has more of a problem with the monsters. When you're attacked by one of Dr Maybe's evil creatures, your suit takes the impact, but not indefinitely. Each attack knocks off one of the green power bars that the fish-head in the corner of the screen is holding. When they're all used up, you're down to just your own scales for protection - next hit and you're dead! To re-boost your suit, you've got to find the special stars which are scattered around each level.

The suit has a second mode which you can use for more offensive manoeuvres. Just leap up by pushing the joystick into the diagonals and, while you're still airborne, compress yourself into a little power-ball by pulling back on the stick. If you make contact with any monsters on the way down, you're as safe as houses - but the monster is usually dead meat. Once you've mastered the technique, this method of attack really helps to prolong your life as well as safeguard you through each massive level.

Robocod is proof that there's life in the old platforms-and-ladders dog yet. Its simple control method can be mastered in seconds, but it's loads more interesting than almost any other platform game. Millennium's neat stretch-mode idea makes the job of hunting for ladders a thing of the past - you can go up wherever you want. But the thing is, Millennium have had to ramp up the gameplay to accommodate your new abilities - you could complete Gods in seconds if you could just heave yourself up to the top of the playfield as easily as you can in Robocod.

Each mission has been designed well, with an emphasis on making you think before you leap. Your skill and dexterity are just as important as they ever were, but now you've got to explore much more, just so that you can figure out the way to the imminently exploding penguins. Exits and bonus rooms are scattered far and wide, sometimes even hidden completely, so you can spend hours just mapping out each level to find all the special bits. There's no shortage of things to do - and you can return to the same bits time and time again, only to find something new.

So get out there and get flapping fish-face, 'cos this game's got the lot - tench-ion, secret plaices and perches galore - it's rudd-y amazing.

1. Runs on all STs and STEs with double-sided drives
2. Makes Rainbow Islands look like a game for wimps - Robocod is full of dynamic action and dangerous stunts
3. If you liked James Pond: Underwater Agent, then you'll love this to bits - it's bigger, better, faster and funnier
4. Huge playfields and backdrops, and loads of them - it's even bigger than Gods
5. Simple graphics and ST sound don't detract from the main event - the gameplay. It's better than any other platform game you've seen before.