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It was on a day such as this, in a time long ago, that some doddery old scientist in a faraway dimension called Blurbland accidentally stumbled on the concept of warp space. This is a region beyond the ken of mankind, where Chaos holds dominion and travellers are at the mercy of time whirlpools and eddies, presumably Waring and Ricketts.

The one good thing about warp space is that it enables you to leap from one part of the universe to another, while neatly bypassing the larger parts in between, so cheap interstellar travel for the common joe became a reality. The doddery old scientist was slapped on the back, given a large pension, courted by the world's chat-show hosts and finally assassinated by the military who had already discovered warp space and didn't take to kindly to people shimmering through on day-trips to the planet Oomian when they were trying to use it to conquer the universe on the quiet. It's not too difficult to guess what you're using this twilight zone for in Space Crusade but, just as a hint, you're not shimmering through on a day-trip to the planet Oomian.

You are, in fact, the commander of a chapter of marines so tough that they can defeat the dreaded needle-toothed nightmare beast of Cronius V using only a stick and crack walnuts with their cleft chins as an encore. Your aim in life is to ascend the anti-gravity chute of success, from humble beginnings as Sergeant to the heady heights and large salary of Captain Supremus. To accomplish this, you have to take on a variety of unpleasant and shockingly dangerous tasks, all of which revolve around the central theme of clumping through a spaceship and shooting things.

However, before you can get to business, you have to kit out your crew. First, you choose which of the three battle-hardened chapters you want to command. If you've got a couple of friends lying around, rope them in to take over the others. Alternatively, just pretend and give yourself another chapter for good luck. The possibilities are, quite literally, extremely small. Once you've done this, it's time for a quick shufti around the weapon shop and a short stop at the special equipment emporium to see the hi-tech equivalents of "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards, before entering into the fray.

This involves making your way around a suspiciously maze-like ship, zapping any aliens you come across, achieving your mission objective then legging it back to your docking claw. There are twelve missions to choose from, ranging from those where you plod around and shoot some tremendously sad opponents, right up to the full-scale assault scenario where you have to snatch a top-secret weapon from under the noses of creatures that would more than slightly distress the alien from Alien. Moving, firing, hand-to-hand combat and so on are all controlled by clicking on the appropriate icon, then on the equally appropriate marine.

The game is played on a crisp 'n clear 2D plan map, with the combat sequences shown in impressively big, but poorly-animated, isometric 3D. You can swith permanently to this mode, but it makes for one hell of a cluttered screen!

In this kind of game sound hardly matters which, luckily, is exactly the excuse that the programmers were looking for.

Space Crusade looks like it might be fun... right up until the point at which you start to play it. The main problem is, everything in the game is totally random. It's all very well to strategically deploy your marines in a manner guaranteed to draw admiring gasps from Uncle George Who Was In The War You Know, but when it actually comes down to taking on the bad guys, everything's decided on the roll of a die.

Why on earth didn't Gremlin take the opportunity to add a "proper" combat sequence to the game? Watching some numbers spin round, then a short 3D sequence where your marine fires a spectacularly horrible weapon at an alien from point-black range and misses (!) is not my idea of fun. In addition, if you survive such encounters, you can thrill to the equally random chance of one of your men beight seduced by the forces of Chaos, or walking into a door, or something. Addictive qualities? Lasting appeal? Pah!

Terminal boredom is staved off by the fact you can play with or against your friends - the best scenario has you pitted against each other - but then there's little point in not buying the board game instead. Plus, with that, you can play the aliens. On the whole, a tepid and unsatisfying little number.

1. Looks good and has the appearance of great depth and cunning, but the gameplay is sadly lacking.
2. You can only save your commander's status in between missions - not the state of play itself!
3. A bad run of luck could mean the game's over in minutes!
4. Does the job of a plastic die slightly less efficiently.