For fans of space-based military hardware of the 63rd Century, this is a little gem. No detail of (made up, of course) weapons or ships is deemed too trivial for this cuddle with a muddle of intergalactic sqadrons, weird aliens and pompous planetary alliances - it's ideal stuff for sci-fi train spotters and the sort of people who buy those manuals of blueprints to the Starship Enterprise.

For the rest of us, however, this is a bit of a dog. The main problem is a severe lack of action. What happens is this: you are presented with an 'empty' squadron of space fighters and given a mission. Your first task is obviously to 'fill them up' by choosing pilots, picking ships (from a list of 30!) and loading them up with weapons. (It is possible to design your own ships, but it soon becomes clear that this is a waste of time.) Once all the fiddle-faddling around with hardware and pilots is over, the game proper begins, much of which involves getting yourself embroiled in some epic space battle or other.

So how does this bit work then? Well, battle commences on a grid divided into loads of hexagonal shapes. Your guys are facing the other guys, and the first thing to do is move your ships into a good battle order to get into good firing positions. It's best described as the pencil and paper game Battleships on the move, and yes, it really is that simple. Just pick an enemy, aim and fire. He'll be doing the same to you of course, but hopefully not as well.

The trouble with this is that no amount of careful picking among the vast selection of sophisticated kit is going to make any real difference at all - most of the time you're going to win anyway. The action sequences are ugly and easy, the bad guys are amazingly stupid, and it's all over very quickly.

If you manage to retain your interest, things develop a bit as the game goes on. Pilots gain experience, building up credits which allow you to buy bigger, better ships, and fit nastier weapons. All very well, but it's a bit vacant and pointless really when the dodgy kit you started off with is perfectly capable of doing exactly the same job within minutes?

So what should we make of it? Well, the programmers have clearly had a whale of a time designing battle cruisers, inventing alien races, and dreaming up heavy duty sci-fi scenarios, but in all their excitement they forgot to do very much with the actual game.

If you're the sort of person who enjoys leafing through technical manuals of starships that won't exist for another millennium or two, then this is, just possibly, what you've been looking for. Otherwise, it's a terrible waste of time. It's hard to believe that this is the same publisher that came up with Eye Of The Beholder.

Lots of impressive sci-fi hardware, but precious little opportunity to use any of it. One for the sci-fi nuts, rather than those after a game. One meg only.