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Parallax looks like it ought to be a shoot-'em-up. Check the insert illustration with a fighter blasting its way out of the box at you and a first screen with lots of activity going on all around. Your first impulse is to get off the ground and start shooting anything that moves. Don't. Go away and read the instructions.

If you haven't got your own set, here's the lowdown. A space probe has dropped you and four buddy astronauts onto the surface of an artificial world. Everything seems okeydokey until you stumble across some particularly disturbing information. The inhabitants intend to attack the earth. Yike! You must contact your mates, spread across the four zones of the artificial world and destroy the controlling intelligence - a computer.

Still sounds a shoot-'em-up, doesn't it? Well, you rarely need to use your firepower. The main thing is to stop energy loss from destroying you as various ships and blips drain it away or you do the job yourself by bouncing off the zone walls.

To reach each of your fellow astronauts you must work your way through the zones consecutively. This is done by a process of first collecting ID cards and then breaking a code to move on using it at a teleport point.

The cards, or 'kards' (the game is full of bad or corrupted spellings) are found by exploring the hangars dotted around the surface. Fly your ship IBIS around the zone and land at points adjacent to the hangars.

Inside each hangar you'll find a computer bank, a computer shop and a CIU or Central Intelligence Unit. In many, you'll also find a white-coated scientist wandering around. Shoot him once to stun him and then walk over him to obtain credits, items from the shop and a letter of the password which will take you onto the next level. All assuming that the card (you can only carry two) you use is valid.

To visit each of the consoles contained in the hangar simply stand in the correct place before each one. Take care though in some hangars because occasionally robots inhabit them.

Landing the ship and making your way past the multi-coloured blips is one of the most atmospheric parts of the game. It's difficult to resist the urge to explore large areas on foot. Unfortunately, many routes are impassable this way which is a pity because it would have been good fun having to get back to the ship.

The hangars are spread all over the zone, and your only means of visiting all is in IBIS. A few points here. Remember to put your landing gear up and down each time you take off and land. Trying to land with it up causes you to wobble around all over the place and incur unnecessary damage. Putting up your shields is pretty important as well, even though they drain your fuel more quickly.

What we have here is a sort of graphic Mercenary. There are no similarities in terms of style but the basic idea is consistent with the escape from Targ theme. Graphically of course it's different, although equally pleasant, to look at. The only real flaw is that the screen is a bit busy. All the alien ships and drifting blips give it a flashy effect which can prove a bit confusing - deliberately so, no doubt.

The game's one great gimmick is its 3D sense of depth, not just simply depicted with a shadow effect, but actually allowing you to fly beneath the gridwork (this acts as land in each zone) at one moment, and then out and above the next. You're reasonably safe underneath, but that's the only real use I can find for doing it. I felt that maybe a bit more could have been made of this impressive trick. Nevertheless, it's such good fun that you'll find it difficult to resist when you first get stuck into the game.

Other effects include black holes which suck you in and chuck you out a bit further along the way. Hyperspace ports do the same thing, but they spit you out further away to some random location.

Sound is up to the usual Ocean standards, with a particularly nice tune that plays inside each hangar. Must be a tannoy linking them I guess. It's about time the powers at Ocean let Martin Galway stick some new loading music on a game though.

The opening section features some pretty eye-squinting graphic effects and another hypnotic little tune.

Parallax is cleverly deceptive. I feel it looks and plays a lot better than it really is. What at first seems to be a game of screen star potential turns into a very standard arcade adventure when you strip away the graphic gimmicks that it's wrapped up in. I found myself tiring of the explore-land-enter-hangar-and-collect-card-leave nature of the game. Maybe a bit more of that blasting which the cover hints at would have made it a better combination.