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What a strange game! Is it an arcade adventure or a shoot-'em-up? I'd go for arcade adventure, but then, who cares anyway?

Somewhere in the vastness of space (And that's quite vast!) lives a man, a very evil man. His name is Cyrus T. Gross. This man is the embodiment of all that is criminal, he lies, steals, murders and he even cheats at cards!

Now what about N.O.M.A.D.? Well he, or rather it, is a war droid which has been especially designed to seek out, and destroy Mr. Gross once and for all. You must guide this roid through the four sections of Gross's world, towards the hiding place of Cyrus T. himself. Your droid is equipped with the usual bumph, anti-grav pods, twin lasers and all that, so this should be easy. Wrong.

Being the cad he is, Gross has lots and lots of little toys that would just love to blow you away, and if you're too slow, careless or just plain unlucky, they will. Once started, you will find yourself on a pretty ordinary looking screen, in fact, all the screens in this game look the same, only with different colours.

Control of the droid is a bit tricky. They guy who programmed it to walk should be shot, if the droid hasn't done this already for being cursed with such strange movement. Pushing forward on the stuck will make your droid move forward, simple enough, but try to turn around and it's fun, fun, fun all the way.

You'll find that most locations are guarded extremely well, with lasers on the walls, homing missiles and other nasties. To progress further along, all you have to do is shoot anything that moves, and anything that doesn't come to that. Once you have shot all the things in a location, just follow the path.

Sometimes, you will find a gate which will need opening for you to proceed. All you have to do is look again at the locations you have been through and there should be a switch, you can't miss it really it's big enough! But just to make it harder, not every switch opens the gate you might think it does, thanks to the knackered maintenance droids.

This sector is quite bid and you will find that it takes some time before you master how to get past some of the wall lasers. But when you've sussed the movement, and can handle the lasers, just follow the path as before which isn't too difficult because there are no divisions in it, no forks, it's just one long road going to...

Sector two has a stunning resemblance to section one, only with Channel Four signs and the odd toe-tapping frog decorating the walls. This time you will see that the path now actually does split, into three different tracks and it's up to you to decide which one you'll take.

I decided to take the one going straight across, as going up or down is a risky business in this game. You may for example go up by pushing forward and then find yourself turning around and zooming into a nasty-looking pod firing energy bolts at you! Following the path, I kept on destroying everything that was thrown at me and just when I thought, "This game's a piece of cake" I was blasted by a horrible round thing that was sitting on the floor.

I found myself in one of the locations I had previously cleared, which means that this must be a marker location - better than going all the way back to the start. So I was soon back where I had left off and I took my revenge on that blob.

Suddenly, I had the distinct feeling that I was going round in circles, and I was right. I am a droid who is getting nowhere fast. This was getting rather frustrating, when the game sensed that I was confused and decided very kindly to bring in a couple of new features, magnetic walls and a blue football with blonde hair and glasses!

Magnetic walls pull you towards various lasers on the screen and should you get too close to one of them, POW, one life gone. The blue things just bounce around waiting for you to put them out of their misery. One thing that makes this game a bit difficult though is any contact with the enemy is instant death, no second chances.

But after the introduction of these two additions, it was back to the old shoot, flick the switch, and follow the path routine.

The surprises N.O.M.A.D. throws up just when you're getting bored gives this game some staying power, but it doesn't take long for things to get a bit repetitive, but if you stick with it, you may find some interesting surprises.

The graphics, although fairly simple are colourful nonetheless. The sound however is a wonderful tune to start with but it gets the volume control treatment after a few goes. There is a way to turn the music off, but that involves a fairly dodgy option control.

At first I thought this was more like "Oh No!". MAD but it does grow on you, if you play it long enough. It's reasonably addictive, frustrating and not too complex, but it offers no surprises or thrills for the seasoned gamer.