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If this is to be the last Hewson game, a very sad swan song it makes, too. Those of you who remember CRL's Hell Hole should be able to imagine what Rubicon is like. The action scrolls left to right in a frustrating stop-start fashion that does the gameplay no favours whatsoever. On the good looks front, however, the sprites do their best to make something of a spectacle out of the whole thing and they're helped considerably by some decent background scenery that consists of peaks scrolling in smooth parallax.

That's what it looks like. So what does it play like? There's a line from The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, in which Ford Prefect attempts to describe an impractical spaceship to Zaphod Beeblebrox. Ford says, "Looks like a fish! Moves fike a fish! Steers like a cow..." and I'd like to borrow that sentiment here. While you can jump, duck, run and shoot, you're faced with the onslaught of a mindless menagerie of floating eyeballs, airborne jelyfish, blue bomber birds, the noxious nasal emissions of more than one dragon, enemy air support from a ludicrously oversized helicopter and much more. To combat these you only have one reasonably fastfiring weapon. Fight exceptionally well and you'll meet occasional reward in the form of a jet-pack on level one, a riding creature similar to a Golden Axe dragon in level two, and so on. But the whole game is just a walkthrough, albeit a toughy, and anything as useful as a smart bomb seems to exist strictly in the realm of pipe dreams. And thanks to the crazy stop-start scrolling, you walk into half the stuff you're supposed to kill before you can see it. What a palaver.

You lose all your colour when your energy runs low. To underline the sad situation, when your last vitamin vapourises you are shredded to the bone and crumble into a little pile of doggie treats. Not nice, huh?

Then the end-of-level kiljoys vary in interest value, the most impressive being fifteen tons of floor pounding Sumo. Background scenery, parallax aside, doesn't do much to liven up this lacklustre lightweight sither. That just leaves the sound effects. These are sharp and painful sounding.

A continue option starts you from the beginning of the level you're on, giving you another crack at a nut that's too tough by far. But there's only one continue per game which, given a game this hard, isn't enough. And once the Game Over message rolls on you have to let the whole shebang reload.

This is annoying even for disk drive owners - tape users will be mega-irked. No doubt Rubicon's programmers are clever enough to make the C64 sing and dance. But they haven't gone to any lengths to enable the likes of you and me to join in the fun. Walk on.

1. Gameplay suffers from a lack of variety and being too difficult too soon.
2. Stop-start scrolling is awkward and costly, making it hard to progress.
3. Only one continue per game.
4. Time-consuming reload after every 'game over'.

1. Spotless presentation proves the programmers can do their stuff.
2. Imaginative end-of-level type sprites loom over the whole screen.
3. Some succinct scenics, including parallax peaks and crystal landscapes.
4. Sound effects so sharp they make you wince.
5. Never lets up on the pace.