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Why do heroes bother, eh? It's obvious that no matter how thoroughly they defeat their arch-enemy, no matter how many anti-matter grenades are lodged in the villain's belt before he's blown out of the airlock, he's bound to return in the sequel.

Switch Blade II is no exception. Havoc, big cheese of the first round, has returned from the seemingly-dead to wreak - er, himself on the Cyberworld with his new gang of far nastier henchrobots. It's up to the only living descendent of the original hero, Hiro, to save the day. Again. In an extension of the first game, he has to explore the various levels of a vast subterranean base, fighting his way from room to room, battering down walls to move from section to section and taking on the very best of the very worst.

Well, it's a console game: lots of platforms, lots of power-ups and lots of shooting. They've retained the clever gimmick of the first game - that new rooms are hidden in darkness until you move into them, so you're never quite sure if that big black area of the screen is as innocent as it seems.

The difficulty level has been expertly pitched - you might find yourself progressing quite a way, then stumbling over several nasty booby traps mid-scoff. The various elements - rogue robots, hidden passages, wall-mounted lasers and bonus icons - have been shuffled and mixed to such an extent that the game's nearly always surprising. The whole thing's terribly playable and packed with chunky addictive goodness. Slick and smart.