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Any resemblance between Sun Star, a strategic shoot-'em-up from CRL, and Mutants, a strategic shoot-'em-up from Ocean, is, of course, purely coincidental.

Mutants features highly-manoeuvrable spaceship zooming around the sixteen zones of the Survivor Zero Corporation, collecting self-destruct components and avoiding the destructive zone walls. Whereas Sun Star features a highly manoeuvrable spaceship zooming around the sixteen grids of the Xxarion Star Corporation, collecting energy crystals and avoiding the destructive grid walls.

Mutants features limited, abstract graphics, which are more than compensated for by a variety of gameplay, whereas Sun Star features extremely limited, abstract graphics not compensated for at all.

Of the two, Sun Star should have been the more enthralling, because instead of giving a distanced, overhead view of the action, it puts you right there in the cockpit, down where all the action is, looking out on all these disrupter pulses and obstruction pulses rushing towards you.

But the disrupter pulses aren't terrifically exciting to look at. To be blunt, they're only coloured squares on a large grid which recedes into the distance. Glenn Cassim, the programmer, didn't exactly bust a gut over this graphical depiction of these energy-giving solar crystals, orbiting round the runs of the 22nd century.

The aim of Sun Star is to fly between the walls (blue squares) and obstructions pulses (yellow squares) of the solar energy grid, chasing the fast-moving disrupter pulses (white squares). When these are zapped, they shoot off to some other part of the grid, leaving behind a mobile energy crystal (green square) and sometimes a deadly energy pulse (red square). The green squares are to be collected as soon as possible, the red squares - like the blue and yellow ones - to be avoided.

If you succeed in collecting ten green crystals before your energy banks are empty, then there's the fearsome task of passing through the revolving warp gate to contend with, followed by a quick zap at the hyperwarp cell (which is - wait for it - an orange square). This will transport your craft to the next exciting grid where, presumably, you can do the whole thing all over again.

As if getting the hang of all the different coloured pulses wasn't enough, the screen layout has been designed to maximise frustration. The 3D display across the top, which alters with every move of the joystick, shows only the view ahead, while the overall grid scanner to bottom right gives a bird's eye view of the entire area. To bottom left is a short range scanner for nearby targets. So at any one moment you've got three scanners to watch, each with a differing viewpoint, all of them grouped as far apart as possible.

The icing on the cake is the data instrumentation panel which is positioned between the two lower screens, cunningly constructed so that very little is legible at a glance. Once deciphered, it tells you how many crystals have been collected, how little energy remains, and what the previous high score was. It tells you other things too but those aren't important.

Sun Star is an absolute bitch to play at first, though after an hour or two it is, surprisingly, fairly playable. It's just not sufficiently interesting to reward such efforts.

Dodgy graphics, boring sound effects consisting largely of roaring noises, irritating gameplay and no variation at all - Sun Star is off-target all the way.