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Return To Atlantis puts you in the lead boots of a newly recruited agent of the Marine Foundation, a sort of aquatic A-Team. The Foundation has been commissioned to complete a series of watery missions, and this is where you come in.

After the film-like opening credits, you are asked to input your name and decide what sort of personality you're going to have by putting six personal attributes into order of priority. Your alter ego is then saved to disk (a blank is required) and you are given your mission briefing by a holographic representation of the Foundation President, accompanied by some dodgy digitised speech.

You can now leave Foundation HQ and proceed to the seedy Sea-Thief Cafe, where you interrogate the locals for some clues concerning your mission. All of the five characters, ranging from a cantankerous old biddy to a millionaire Arab Sheikh are exquisitely drawn and animated, and their facial expressions and tone of voice (more speech here) show what kind of mood they're in. A small list of options is used to converse with the locals, including the ability to bribe and threaten.

When you've gleaned the necessary info, you can leave the Cafe and board your command vessel, the Viceroy, and set off for your mission location. While in flight a world map is displayed with a snaking red line to indicate the Viceroy's flight path (Indiana Jones style). When you reach your destination, the Viceroy is shown side-on bobbing up and down in the water with a cutaway section in the hull to allow you to see inside. From here you can move around the ship to access facilities such as the Gear Room where you can equip yourself with tools, the Medical beam where you can restore any health points lost and ART, the invaluable shipboard computer that enables you to communicate with base, view your current status and most importantly, plan your dive using the 'scan' feature.

And, at last it's time to get your feet wet. The view changes to show your diver underwater. The diver sprite here is huge, and very well animated as he swims in and out of the screen as well as left and right. The ocean floor is depicted similarly to the ancient Rescue On Fractalus i.e. fast but jerkily updated.

The aquatic life is lovely too. Even the baiter lights on the Angler fish glow!

The main grief under the water comes from the crab-bots who aren't, contrary to popular belief, a scabby posterior, but are in fact metallic crustaceans who won't hesitate to drop their depth charges on you. Luckily, you can fight back with a laser that's targeted using a set of cross-hairs.

Also on your side is RUF, a robotic mini-sub which can be programmed to locate the items you're looking for, as well as to venture into the more dangerous locations before you do. When you finally locate what you're looking for, you can beam it up to the Viceroy and, if necessary, beam it back down to a more suitable location.

You don't get all day to complete the mission though. All the missions carry a time limit, your air runs out at an alarming rate, and constant visits to the Viceroy are needed to replenish your supplies.

On completing a mission, your personal attributes take a short jump upwards and you are given the next mission. The missions themselves (there are 14), range from recovering the treasure from a sunken Spanish galleon and saving marooned scientists from asphyxiation, to finding the lost city of Atlantis itself.

Return To Atlantis is a brilliant, original piece of software. The different game elements have been combined very well, and as such it should appeal to arcade gamers and strategists alike. Aesthetically it's impressive, with excellent graphics all round and sound. This, along with the great presentation, both in the game and in the packaging makes Return To Atlantis another class game from EA for the Amiga. If you want a game with real depth (ouch) that you'll come back to time after time, you can't do much better than this.