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The Space Marine: a fearsome fully-trained fighting machine. Although only a small part of the "Legiones Astartes", each marine is trained from birth in the art of inter-galactic warfare and small arms combat, with some of the most devastating armament known to man. Fortunately, they're on our side.

Space Crusade is Gremlin's conversion of Games Workshop/Milton Bradley's best-selling sci-fi board game of the same name. Centring on small skirmishes aboard huge derelict spaceships, Space Crusade allows up to three players to command a squad of marines as they set about various missions in the name of the Emperor.

Their adversaries include orcs, Gretchen (small space-firing goblins), renegade marines, soul-sucking aliens (similar to those in the film Alien) and huge robotic dreadnoughts (which bear a passing resemblance to the ED-209s in Robocop). All of these foul beasts have just one thing on their collective minds... your death. Is your Plasma Gun up to the job?

Marines can arm themselves with Bolters (small deadly hand-guns), Assault Cannons (as in a modern attack helicopter), Plasma Guns (weapons that vaporise anything in their path) and Missile Launchers (really powerful explosives that damage whole areas).

Each marine can take one piece of equipment (allowing them to roll extra dice in combat; or replenish lost energy points), while the Commander takes one Order (allowing the marines to move or fire twice in one turn for example).

The 3D view is used mainly to display action (such as shooting aliens). It is also possible to take a look at the view from any point during the game, the only thing you can't do while here is issue orders or move around. It does look nice though.

The overhead view is where all your commands are issued from, and where all the movement takes place. Both the marines and the aliens move in set 'turns', during which time they are allowed to either move then fire, fire then move or just fire or move.

One of the other things a player can do during his turn is to use the scanner. This shows the positions of enemy troops, although it doesn't show their numbers or type. Until a visual identification is obtained, the aliens are represented by green blips on both the map and the 3D view.

Whenever somebody fires at or hits someone else, the view changes to an isometric look at the surroundings. Here you get to see the piece of alien slime get vaporised from the face of the... erm, spaceship, in all its animated glory.

To actually blast anything you have to issue the command via the overhead display. Select fire or attack and the possible targets are highlighted in yellow. For ranged weapons, the path of the bullets/rockets/lasers is shown.

The big advantage that Space Crusade has over Hero Quest is the use of teams instead of individuals for each player. This gives you a lot more to do and helps you feel a lot more involved with the action. It also allows you to develop a much more strategic approach to the scenarios (something which makes the game almost 100 per cent better than Hero Quest) and when you start playing with other humans and developing strategies, it just gets better.

There are faults to Space Crusade, the most notable of which is the lack of continued 3D action. While full 3D gameplay would have been most satisfactory, the quick 'action cuts' as they stand are balanced well with the use of the overhead view. Other cracks in the hull are the strange way everything (from aliens to piles of rubble) explodes when you hit it, either from laser fire or with a sword, the apparent ease with which some of the larger muthas can be killed (one of my Commanders destroyed an entire dreadnought with the mere flick of his wrist-sword) and a lack of decent congratulations when you complete a mission or a simple intro before you start one (just to set the scene).

These are challenged by atmospheric gameplay, very nice in-game animations and graphics and a faithful reproduction of the board game that loses none of its playability and competitive, enjoyable action. These pros (as far as I'm concerned) more than outweigh the cons and make Space Crusade a very worthwhile product, especially with the prospect of plenty of data disks to liven things up.

It could do with some Wing Commander-type story telling though, helping to tie everything together.