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Following in the footsteps of their two previous attempts at a 16-bit racing game, the reasonable Crazy Cars and the completely awful Fire And Forget, comes Offshore Warrior from French software house Titus. Although neither of their previous releases made any real impact on the charts, Titus have yet again tried to prove that they can produce a decent race game. Sadly, Offshore Warrior still isn't it.

At least it scores a few points for offering a slightly different approach. No cars, bikes or trucks here. Instead, the whole thing takes place in the water. The year is 2050 (snooze) and the hippest, trendiest and most entertaining sport of the time is driving power boats loaded with heat-seeking missiles around large aquatic arenas. What we have here is exactly the same game as Fire And Forget, though if anything it's more limited (if you can imagine that!).

The object of the game is simple; finish the race in first or second position so you can qualify for the next, using fair means (racing as fast as you can to beat everyone else) or foul (blast everything in sight). Actually the latter method isn't quite as exciting as it may sound, especially when you consider that you only get two (!) missiles to start off with, so if you want to plough along raking everything you find Road Blasters-style, forget it.

Like last month's zoom-bang effort Space Racer, it's sometimes difficult to see exactly which way you're meant to be going, as the course is only marked out by a series of bollards on either side of you that can become unclear and indistinct when racing at high speed.

Aside from this, Offshore Warrior is rather unfortunate in quite a lot of other respects as well. Shooting an opponent boat (or getting killed yourself) results in the most pathetic attempt at an explosion I've seen in an Amiga game. Also, the impression of speed is not very well put across. The badly-defined water (which is just a series of different shades of blue in a row) seems to be scrolling the wrong way so it actually looks like you're going backwards! Also, all of the objects in the water such as the rocks and the bollards move at a different speed to the water, giving the impression that they aren't actually in the water at all. These faults all manage to wreck a game that otherwise could have been very good indeed. If any machine can produce a red-hot race game, it's the Amiga, and Titus, being the race merchants that they are, should have delivered the goods by now.