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That's OK but it would help if they got out of the habit of crawling between the desks...

If you're thinking that the US Navy have recruited small black, flippered amphibious mammals to their secret missions, think again. The heroes of the piece are SEALS - which stands for SEa Air and Land - the US equivalent of the SAS and SBS rolled into one elite and very tough bunch of guerrilla troops.

Five of these guys are called into the Middle East to rescue the crew of a downed helicopter from some anti-American fanatics or other. In the course of executing a daring rescue bid, they discover hidden caches of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, which the naughty Arabs shouldn't have - and this is where film and game plots part company.

The movie heroes defuse the missiles and trot off home, while the game goes striding off on an extended 'defuse the Stinger missiles' mission all of its own. The crack five-man team of Curran, Hawkins, Ramos, Rexer and Leary take it in turns (under your expert guidance of course) to stomp through five suitably Middle Eastern-looking scenes in order to find and render inoperative a set number of Stinger missiles. Each blokey walks, jumps, climbs, clambers, and monkey-swings his way through the screens filled with rampaging terrorist-types. The sprites are beautifully drawn and detailed, and the animation is just superb. Although the SEALs are extremely athletic, control is straightforward and comfortable - moves are all accessed by the joystick alone, and the SEAL adapts to the surroundings, automatically climbing over boxes when they're in front of him, for instance.

This leaves the fire button for activating the current weapon while on the two-button GS joystick, the second button pauses the game. Extra weapons can be found by blowing up the large trunks and collecting the hardware within. You can cop for a nice new rapid fire machine gun, a dead useful missile-launcher or - my fave - the flame thrower. In all cases, the status panel shows which weapon is in use, and how many rounds of ammo are left - so don't be too heavy on the old trigger finger. You don't want to resort to fists and harsh language now, do you?

Having successfully defused all the Stinger missiles on the first five scenes, the final scene is a Robocop-style shoot-out where your remaining men (should you have any!) have to blast their way through the streets of Beirut before making rendezvous with their sub and sailing back to the good of US of A.

Unless you've got limited vision you'll be able to tell from the multitude of screen shots just what a good-looker Navy SEALs is.

The C64 palette has been put to great use with lovely earthy colour schemes and wonderfully detailed backdrops. The screen smooth scrolls horizontally and each level is nice and large so you don't have to stick to one route every time you play and you can even map the sucker if you like.

In between levels there are static intermission screens which are simply brilliant (and bearing in mind that each bitmap screen is between 6 and 10K big, it's only thanks to the cartridge that these are here at all). Credit must also go to Matthew Cannon for laying down some thumping great soundtracks on the intro, during the game and on the high score table especially. The spot effects are all of a similarly high standard, so as far as audio-video goes, Navy SEALS delivers in bucket-loads!

The only notable drawbacks come in the playability: the game starts off hard and just keeps on going. This isn't necessarily a Bad Thing - it should keep you plugging away for ages - but if you're as incompetent as me, the first few goes will be frustratingly short.

Also, the gameplay on the first five levels doesn't really change an awful lot. If there was a bit more variety in the mission objectives, or it had a sub-game or something, then Navy SEALS would be an absolute stonker. As it stands, it only manages "very good!"

1. Repetitive gameplay across first five levels reduces the lasting interest
2. High difficulty level from the outset

1. Huge levels mean you aren't restricted to the same method of attack every time you play.
2. Background graphics are great - good colour schemes, plenty of detail and very moody.
3. Wealth and quality of animation on main sprites is amazing!
4. Simple, responsive controls make the mission painless
5. Ripping soundtracks and stonking spot effects.
6. Beautiful inter-level screens.
7. Shinobi-style gameplay is action-packed and addictive.
8. Friendly game design.