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One of the strangest imports from the USA has been the sinister pastime of groups of well-off people travelling to a remote area of the countryside, dividing themselves into teams and behaving in a military fashion by plotting against and shooting at their opponents with blobs of paint fired from pressurised aerosol guns.

According to its proponents, this absurd behaviour is the ideal way to escape from the rigours of business life.

Well, Go! don't think it's silly, because Lazer Tag is a variation on this theme - the clock has been moved forward to 3010 AD and the paint guns have been replaced by the ubiquitous laser.

You are placed in the middle of a vertically scrolling landscape and are attacked from all sides by "your fellow playmates". They try and shoot you: you try and shoot them.

If you are shot, you lose one of your six lives; if one of your friends is shot there is a loud pinging noise, he puts his hands up in the air and disappears, your score increases and another friend materialises out of thin air ready for you to take pot shots at.

There are other things to shoot at — deflector shields and other devices, when hit, turn one shot into four. Running over equipment gives you extra time or lives.

Once you have reached the end of the bonus level you get yet more points ard go on to the next level in which your friends are better shots and more trigger happy.

This sequence of events continues ad nauseum until you run out of time, are shot six times, or drop dead of old age.

This plays like the battle sequence in Beach Head - the one where your ship has to manoeuvre its way through a minefield while having strange linear missiles fired at it. The graphics are different, but the idea is the same.

Despite all the blurb about good clean fun and fellow playmates on the inlay, this game is still about shooting humans. Many people are concerned about the morality of such programs.

Lazer Tag should be consigned to the Chamber of Horrors along with fruit machine simulators and similar stuff. Liked the music though.