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Xenophones of the world unite! We've a hot spot of off-world alien activity to encounter, this time brought to us by Gremlin Graphics. Space Crusade, based on the popular Milton Bradley board game of the same name, offers humankind the challenge of blowing various shades out of those despicable, non-specific creatures we've never even met, but suspect are lurking somewhere out in the vacuum of space.

Given half the chance they'd be down here - taking our women, taking our jobs, running amok with reverse-phase Plasmoquod Gigablasters and generally acting like they do on telly. "We come in peace"? Hah! Blow 'em to pieces on their home turf - that's your task here, as you control a marine chapter commander and his men, all armed to the teeth with some damn heavy-duty weaponry and intent on alien annihilation.

Based on similar lines to Gremlin's fantasy board-game conversion Hero Quest, the computerised Space Crusade sets itself quite a task in trying to improve on the thrills and strategic depth of its physical forebear. That game system's popularity stems from its dispensing with clutter - the sort found in the more anally-retentive role-playing games - to create a faster-paced adventure. But can the Amiga version match and improve on the Alien-esque suspense created so successfully by the board game?

Up to three players can take part, with the computer looking after the aliens, or you can control up to three chapters of marines by yourself. The missions, should you decide to accept them (a complete waste of £25.99 if you don't!) are twelve in number and involve such tasks as wiping out every living creature in an alien craft, rescuing hostages and destroying thoroughly irresponsible devices created to tear apart the space-time continuum and bring chaos to the universe. (Whoever gave those tentacled alien toe-rags the technology to rip up space needs a severe talking to!)

The aim is to collect honour badges for successful missions and to trade the badges for increases in your commanders' ranks. And the higher a commander's rank, the more equipment can be carried and the more orders can be given during a mission. So, with all that in mind, let's be off to the barracks, find out what orders we can give and get ouot three, five-man chapters kitted out.

The arming procedure is fairly simple, if a little tedious, but bounces along to a rather neat, Jan Hammer-like soundtrack which gets those adrenalin glands dribbling as your salivary glands slaver over the weaponry on show. Each commander gets to choose from various close-combat devices and his charges have a choice of one item of such heavy-duty stuff as rocket launchers and plasma cannon - mean-looking bits of kit to match the 'Darth Vader on steroids'-style battle armour in which they're all togged up.

Sadly, there's nothing in the way of statistics to tell you just how efficacious each weapon is, so it's a case of trial, error and hoping you're not going into battle with the techno-warrior equivalent of a fruit knife. It's also wise at this point to check on what extra goodies can be picked up.

A junior commander will have access to one piece of extra equipment - a medical kit or bionic arm or whatever - and one order, such as telling his men to fire twice during one turn in a sortie. As you go up in rank, more extras become available and can certainly turn the tables in tougher missions.

Once armed, it's off to the docking claw, where the main playscreen pops up to show the layout of the spacecraft in which you'll be fighting. The whole scenario is shown in miniature on a sub-screen while a close-up tactical screen gives a top-down view of your immediate surroundings. But beware - aliens lurk round every corner and will only show when they're in visual range or if you scan for them. And there's a whole bunch of nasties to be encountered, each with individual means of attack.

Moving out of the claw, the initial feeling is that the gameplay plods along, and could easily become tedious - each member of each team has to be moved in turn, after all. Cast such thoughts aside though - it soon becomes apparent that this is meant to play like a board game, step by step, and will soon have your brain out of blast-'em-up mode and into something more pondering and strategic.

It's now that the relevance of the different weapon types become apparent. Each type has different firing characteristics and each member of the chapter has a different range of movement which depends on the weight of equipment he's lugging around. This, combined with the welter of different alien types, adds greatly to the game's strategic depth.

Care must be taken when getting your men into the best attacking position, lest you end up blowing members of your own chapter away by having them stand too near a rocket strike. This really pummels the grey matter, which justifies the slow pace of the gameplay as you'll spend more time racking your brains than charging around willy-nilly.

The controls are intuitive to use - click on 'move' and the movement range of that marine will show up on the screen, all you have to do is click on the destination square - and, like the board game, dice rolls take care of combat when you end up within range of an alien. There's also an option for hand-to-hand fighting, which takes offensive and defensive dice rolls into account and, on occasion, you can re-roll to try to improve your score.

Where the game really works is with its use of graphics. When fighting an alien, the screen flips to an isometric view in which you can see your marine shoot and, if the dice roll is high enough, the alien explode in a burst of animated flame, accompanied by jolly little 'boosh'.

After scrabbling your way through to the mission's objective, with hassle all the way from those heavy alien bozos, the chapter has to return to the docking claw before the number of turns allowed runs out of they'll all die. Panic? You betcha. A cool head is needed if you're going to get your commander back for his de-briefing. It's all too easy to get the marines strung out all over the place, easy prey for the green and slimies.

Once home and safe, you're told how well, or badly, it all went and given honour badges based on the points scored for the mission. Each commander can be saved to disk ready for another mission too. Gremlin says there will be data disks available - adding to the twelve missions already included - which makes this a game that will grow and grow.

In all, Space Crusade retains much of the original feel of the board game, but the computer format adds some great touches you'd be hard pressed to imitate physically, short of tipping lighter fluid over the board characters and lighting them as they get blown away. As was the point in the original game system, the emphasis is on simple strategy and on not getting bogged down by a multitude of tedious irrelevancies (roll die to save against poison gas/tripping up/whatever). Each mission can be approached in a completely different way and you can use just one or two chapters to make things that much more tricky. Also, the prospect of more missions is a great plus.

My only gripe is that you don't get the opportunity to play the aliens, but then, if you can beat 'em, why join 'em?

Uppers: The level of strategy is deep with a capital EEP and there's enough fun in the graphics department to cater for those who would rather watch aliens explode than spend time trying to get their brains into gear.

Downers: The sound effects aren't up to much - aside from explosions, all you're treated to is the occasional alien growl. It would be nice if the on-screen figures could point in the direction they're shooting.

A great board game conversion. It'll have your alien-hating tendencies thoroughly tickled for hours and hours.