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Strap yourself in, grab the joystick and clear the skies of the Red menace.

Strap yourself into the cockpit of the latest airborne piece of hardware to ever kick Russian ass. Take to the skies from a US airfield and feed them red suckers some lead. Clear out a sector and, instead of a rest, you get reassigned to another sector, and a chance to gun for some more Rusky.

Yes, well, not exactly the deepest game I've ever reviewed, and unfortunately not the best either. MiG Busters is set in true Afterburner fashion, 3D from behind the plane so that you can't see properly because the bottom of your plane is in front of you. Lots of planes, and tanks on the ground, a horizon which rises and falls, and the odd helicopter growing bigger in a blobby fashion. The planes and choppers are armed with machine guns which are pretty innocuous, and missiles, which are quite unpleasant.

Well, I've always found a missile up the jacksie quite unpleasant anyway.

Initial armament in this mindless exercise is the old machine gun, but after a successful mission further weaponry becomes available. Sidewinders, heavy duty cannons and other instruments of moderate-sized destruction come into play automatically. You aren't even given credit for having enough skill to change between weapons. If you have an extra weapon fitted, as soon as an enemy vehicle comes within range of a wobbling sight, whoosh, or ratatatata. Killing by proxy.

Naturally you need to replenish your bullet supply during a mission, otherwise you'll be hurling curses and scant else. Littered around the ground are crates of ammunition, which also blow up if you shoot them. Simply fly at the minimum height and run into the crates. Strange, but I've never seen this happen at Biggin Hill.

You can't actually fly into the ground, and there isn't any scenery to run into. Obviously this is a mission out in the endless brown plains, and then the endless white plains, and then the... You get the idea, it's all pretty endless.

Neither can you fly high enough to reach cloud level. You don't land or take-off yourself, it's all automatic, and shooting is a matter of guesswork and moving around a lot. In other words there's not a lot of scenery, and not a lot of gameplay.

MiG Busters bears a horrible resemblance to a Codemasters release, MiG 29, which had much better graphics, weapons, scenery and gameplay. And it was a budget release as well, so go buy that rather than this piece of terminally dull blob blasting.