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A program from CRL, that is best classed as "only pick me up if you have a whole weekend spare". As Elite, it is a genuine epic, no way are you going to blast your way through this in an evening.

It looks fairly innocuous in its little black box, all snuggled up with its instruction leaflet. But what a surprise you get when you load it (and it will load, no fancy funny loaders, and fully 664/6128 compatible). You have a bit of a graphic adventure, screens of the interior of your hangars, a bit of a text down the bottom, re-definable keys, a veritable arsenal that makes a Tornado jet look tame and a little story to set. the scene.

As someone once said, "I'm gonna tell you a story". In 2050, it says here, four close stars were colonised, including (where have you seen this name before) Tau Ceti. Fifty cities were started up on the third planet and then a plague hit, followed by a meteor, followed by a robot. take-over bid. Everybody got the message and legged it at. warp factor 9 to laze in the sun on the beaches of Santraginus V, and get over it all with the aid of a few Pan-galactic Gargle Blasters. One hundred years later, some mug (you) decides to have a crack at re-colonising the planet, despite it haying been taken over by robots who think they can do better without humans.

Gal-Corp. central (the same people who have written "No user serviceable parts - refer to qualified personel" on your airlock) have issued a few guidelines to you on how to use the jump pads, how to use an airlock, to look out for killer fleas and a stern warning not to blast up too many non-offensive buildings as they do really want to colonise the place when you've finished with it.

The rest of the leaflet has some piccys of what the graphics are supposed to look like for the buildings. Places that can restore and repair are shown but not all the buildings are listed, neither are the fleas (sand hoppers, they call them), mines or robot crawlers. You just have to find out from experience. Good job you can save the game isn't it?

Once you have rejigged the controls to work with a joystick you tell it to launch, and have a nose around at the outside world. Mostly tall buildings, with the odd dome and an occasional thingy shooting at you, a bit like London really. The outside world is displayed in an area about one quarter the size of the screen in the top left corner. The way that the airlock door smoothly slides up and down in this area is beautiful to watch. There is a real-time clock in the top right corner, and outside a sun is shining. It don't shine for long though, the day is only one hour long and you'll soon use that up in this game. As you get closer to sunset, the surroundings become more and more heavily shadowed, until they are only visible because of the chunks they take out of the horizon. This change is really gradual, not something that happens in a flash.

The whole 3Dness of the view is very well done. Shadows form on the right, sides of the buildings, and as you fly round them while looking out of the side viewport the shadow shrinks and grows. Things get bigger and smaller as dictated by perspective and explosions seem less severe when you are a long way off.

To brighten the night up a little - so you can see who's shooting at you clearly - you can drop a flare. You only get eight of these and they don't last long, so you can use an infra-red night sight. This has a very persistent and blurre image as per your real night sight, everything leaves a bit of a trail.

Your lasers leap about a bit but the missiles (all eight of them) are great, they lock on to the target with no messing about and multiple launches are allowed. It gets fairly sneaky as both you and the enemy have missiles and anti-missile missiles. A double shot nearly always gets 'em though. There is a comprehensive map of the jump pad network allowing you to zoom in or out, scroll sideways, and to ask for information on any city on it. The info tells you how big the city is, what its defences are, and what jump pad links it has.

By now you will have cottoned on that this is a complex game. To help out with the complexities, there is a save game feature (tape or disc) and a notepad built in to the game for your notes. Very thoughtful of them is that.

The eventual aim of the game is to mix 'n' match the pieces of reactor cooling rods that you find in sub-stations (a puzzle in itself) so that you can do for the main reactor and shut down all the robots without Gal-Corp having to wipe everything off the planet. Mind you, after I've finished blasting around out there it might have been a little tidier.

This game beats ordinary shoot-em-ups into a cocked hat. I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone fancying a bit of a challenge without having to learn about the life and times of J.R.R. Tolkein (which, as we all know, is hobbit forming). When you're finished with the tape Ed...