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That well-worn cliche, you'll either love it or hate it could well have been coined to describe the unique implementation of Novagen's Mercenary trilogy. What was true of the first two games (Mercenary and Damocles) is taken a stage further in this latest installment of Paul Woakes spacebound saga of political and military intrigue - Mercenary II looks all set to further polarize opinion.

For those unsure of what the whole Mercenary saga is about at all, it's your prime example of a role-playing, investigative, 3D shoot-'em-up trading game - quite enough to be going on with, I think you'll agree. The scenario is set in the Gamma solar system, in which you play a soldier of fortune with a mission to save civilisation from the designs of an aspirant despot - while at the same time making a fortune for yourself, of course. This mighty task is presented in a 'treasure hunt' fashion - it's up to you to travel the system looking for clues and the "materiel" (yes, materiel, not materials) with which to discharge your duty. The folk you meet on your travels can offer useful information and items can be bought and traded, taking you further towards victory.

There are plenty of planets and satellites to explore, and all manner of transport at your disposal, from buses and taxis to aeroplanes and spacecraft. You can fire or buy your wheels or wrings and do whatever tickles your fancy, but events have a nasty way of catching up on you in this open-ended adventure.

As for the plot, it's a continuation of Damocles. Many players fell foul of that game's only fatal trap, and found their characters faced with imprisonment but - banged up or not - everybody starts out with the same challenge ahead in Mercenary III. Time has passed in the Gamma system and the headline-grabbing character of the day is PC Bill - a rags-to-riches personality whose success in business investment during the system's earliest colonial days has proved meteoric. PC Bill is now standing for president of the entire planetary system. What's more, his candidacy is unopposed. However, you now have a chance to change all of that because somebody has just given you a Get Out Of Jail Free card - not only that, but you've received a personal invitation to meet PC Bill himself. Curioser and (as they say) curioser.

Imprisoned you may have been, but it seems you weren't kept completely in the dark. You're well aware of Bill's plan to mine the rural world of Dion North, a plan that's as sure to cripple that fragile world's eco-system as a delivery of Sellafield special brew. Your mission is clear - this power-hungry chappie has to be stopped, and you've been given the means to do it. Along with your freedom comes a bank balance in excess of 50 million credits - the worlds of the Gamma System are thus yours to explore (at least, until the point where your money runs out or PC Bill wins he election). And what worlds they are...

The first thing you notice is that the perspective applied to 3D objects is surreal. Buildings that look normally proportioned from a distance loom crazily in close-up and consist of massive rooms, wide and low, often with nothing in them.

Most of the time, the only thing that reminds you that you're playing this on an Amiga is the finely sculpted interface panel occupying the bottom inch of the display. Benson, as the interface is called, enables you to drive or fly vehicles, examine objects you come across and record conversations with the characters you meet. Meanwhile, you develop a good case of myopic vision as you take in a game world that looks not so much as though it belongs on another planet as in a museum.

It has to be said that the characters you actually meet are pretty crude-looking too. Rather than using the tried-and-tested 'still portrait and animated mouth' representation, with the occasional blink of an eyelid thrown in for good measure, each person you come across is constructed from filled polygons. As they talk, their drawn-on mouths and eyebrows wiggle furiously, as if living in the Gamma System induces every type of nervous tic going. Is there still a case for such primitive animation and 3D execution after being treated to the likes of Activision's Hunter, Image Works' The Killing Cloud, or any of last year's flight sim releases? I don't really think so.

Of course, getting across the planets and their moons in the system - 19 worlds in all, each with its own orbit and length of day and night - by foot is out of the question. To help you, then, you can hire or buy vehicles or take advantage of - yes! - public transport. The game gives you bus and taxi passes (and a timetable too, for that matter) - taxis, particularly, are only ever a keypress away, and the drivers all chat to you in a friendly enough manner. More than that, they have a system-wide habit of imparting useful snippets of information regarding Mr. Bill. While the driver keeps his eyes on the road, you can check out the scenery, most of which consists of offices (including a certain Future Publishing, though - of course - it's empty!) and can be quite distracting for a while.

Watch how many riders you take though - you might think that the cool 50 million you began the game with would cover any eventuality, but it only takes one taxi trip on Bacchus to work out that fares there are clocked up at an astronomical rate - it translates into a seven-figure sum just for getting your bum on to the back seat! Beware - the only tip you should consider is getting out of the vehicle altogether!

Travelling between the worlds is a more complex matter, involving chartering a spaceship. Typically, they are built with transparent hulls, giving you another chance to see what this game has going for it in the visuals department. Once in space, the worlds of the Gamma System appear as variously coloured crescents, as though lit by their sun from the far side. You can see the same effect from some planets' surfaces as moons carve their particular arcs across the sky. Unfortunately though, it sounds good it's not actually that impressive - you might want to travel to different planets for a number of reasons, but checking out the scenery isn't one of them.

So far, so prosaic. Where's the adventure, the excitement, the really wild things? Good question. Playing this game is about as exciting as trying to find the beans in a deserted supermarket. You can spend hours planet-hopping without being put in peril by a single polygon. This wouldn't be so disappointing if there were a few more layers of intrigue to peel away, but there aren't. Mercenary III has open-ended play and exploration alright, but you get the feeling there isn't really much point to it all. All the effort seems to have been directed at the off-beat astronomy - the technicalities of simply creating such a large playing space - with relatively little put into ensuring an involving storyline.

Being impressive from a programming point of view is all very well, but it doesn't in itself do very much for the creation of atmosphere, and nothing whatsoever for enjoyable gameplay.

The best thing about Mercenary III is the fact that there are six ways to complete it, five of which are outlined in hint sheets included in the package (don't read Five Different Ways To Play if you don't want any clues). The sixth is left a mystery, to give you something to puzzle out. You don't get a lot else to mull over in this game - though you go get a lot of time (spent travelling) that'd be ideal for mulling - so I guess not having one possible solution out of six is a kind of bonus.

That said though, the concept of alternative solutions isn't really that much of an innovation - a thought that just about sums up the game as a whole. Surely after five or six years living with the Mercenary concept and two previous stabs at executing it, they could have come up with a better game than this?

I can imagine that some people will get fun out of Mercenary III, but for me life's far too short and precious - I'm tempted to file it along with the Midwinter games and various others, under 'Yes, it's big and impressive, but *where's the game*?'

Actually, I've got a better idea. You know what I'm gonna do? I think I'll load it up one more time. I'll go to the casino and blow every credit left in my pocket except for the fare back to the planet Mentis. Then I'll walk (yep, walk) back to the jail.

And, if nobody minds, I'll have my old cell back. Thanks.

If you've been through the first two adventures in the Mercenary trilogy, don't read this bit. It's a round-up of hints for beginners on how to complete the game. There are five ways to go about it:

1. Beat Bill at his own game
   You too can run for election. It's a free world (just). You nominate yourself as a candidate easily enough, but how do you convert Bill's votes into yours? If you know anything about politics you'll know it takes TV companies, ad agencies and the like to get your message across. This can have some unusual results, especially when billboards with your face on start being posted on the roadsides! This approach can work - once you have supreme executive power, you can put the lid on Bill's anti-environmentalist activities for good. It's a bit boring though...
2. Bankrupt PC Bill
   Among your adversary's businesses is a casino. In the casino there's both a fruit machine and a wheel of fortune. But, as any gambler knows, you can't guarantee to win unless you cheat... Should you clean the place out, Bill won't be able to come up with the money for all that digging equipment - JCBs don't come cheap - but be warned, this approach can easily bankrupt you if things go wrong.
3. Blow everything up!
   Isaac Asimov once wrote that violence was the last resort of the incompetent - but that was before computer games! Enough explosive is scattered across the system to blow Bill's big ideas to kingdom come. The only thing is, you have to find it...
4. Put him in jail
   You don't think a guy with Bill's ambition could be honest, do you? Of course not, he's a crook. The problem is, if you're going to have him locked up, you need to find the proof. And if that isn't enough, you have to have a jail built that's strong enough to keep Bill rehabilitating. And if that isn't enough, you have to catch him yourself. Doesn't anyone else do anything around here? (Hello?)
5. Shoot-'em-up!
   Of course, there has to be at least one opportunity for mega-violence, and this is it. Stellar Factors, a shipbuilding company, has just the job - a ship, bristling with weaponry. It requires only one minor modification: your opponents are going to shoot back, so you need a shield!

Uppers: There are six different solutions, lots of places to explore and plenty of time near the beginning of the game to take a back seat and allow the plot to unfold. If you're impressed by big things you'll be impressed by this.

Downers: The 3D graphics couldn't look much more dated, and the gameplay is thinner than the atmosphere of an inconsequential asteroid. There's simply very little to do, and even less to justify doing it.

A rather average game, both in play and, considering the capabilities of the Amiga, in looks. But, if you were hooked by Mercenary and Damocles, it'd be churlish not to go for the set.