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Remember the game with the Zircons? Now there's number two in the series that makes the Establishment blush; The Final Matrix. It stars Nimrod, a Biopton, who has been picked to rescue his buddies from the Cratons.

Fed up with floating in tasteless soup in tasteless yuppie restaurants, the Cratons have zapped down, snatched a few Bioptons and locked 'em away in matrices scattered through the galaxy. Nimrod's job: Scout and scour

First he picks his matrix from the five-sided TV set on your spaceship. Matrices are displayed as round blobs against a starry planet on the TV screen. This also tells you the matrix defensive strength. Then it's straight into a fairly standard 3D maze chase, picking up weapons, fi nding stuff and dodging those things without your best interest at heart.

For the Nimrodian cause stand the TV system, which let the lone Biopton scan the matrix he finds himself in; blocks of concrete which he can put together to box in enemies or form steps, and various weapons which have slightly more effect than the tap-on-the-shoulder blaster he's been given.

Against are the standard issue wandering guards with energy-sapping missiles, disruptors that spin and push our hero off course, black ice areas that drain his batteries and 'wireframed antagonists'. Presumably some Gremlin miff at not having written Elite?

Nimmy skims about, finds his fellow baby Bioptron and whistles back to the launch site, from where he returns to the ship to pick another matrix. He must try to get the hostage from a particular matrix first time, otherwise the matrix defensive strength goes up the next time he returns.

The matrices have walls which Nimrod can sometimes jump on, if he can find a trampoline (tum te tum), or even better a thruster pad. But the walls don't have much in the way of tops, and it's easy to fall off into deepest nothingness. Not a good way to rescue your hostages.

Energy can be replenished from replenishment squares. We call them bars of chocolate, but the effect is similar apart from Nimrod's teeth not falling out afterwards. Of course, one cannot be sure that he's got teeth in the first place, or that alien physiology is close enough to ours for the old sugar-to-dentures cycle to work.

Back at the matrices without number, the time limit imposed by the Cratons is 99 Aeons, or just over 90 minutes if you convert at he rate of one Aeon = one minute. The usual rate of an Aeon being an infinite stretch of time does not apply. It only seems that way.

The titular final matrix refers to that felicitous event where Nimrod completes his quest, picks up the last hostage and returns to the ship to a reward unspecified.

If you can imagine no greater thrill than wandering around a seemingly infinite collection of seemingly identical three-dee mazes, engaging in firefights with a large number of robot guards who can easily outgun and outrun you and bouncing off walls while your one and only life trickles out then get The Final Matrix. Otherwise don't. In other words, it's not very good. Oscar Wilde could have been talking about this game when he said 'How boring'.

Ahh ha! (says Piglet), I thought when I saw the title screen, shoot-em-ups in space live on. A very clever loading routine tells you what's what while you wait - 'tho you can't nip downstairs for a quick Mr Juicy while the datacorder struts its 1200 bauds.

When the game proper starts you realise that the good bit is over. I had little control over Nimrod and soon flailed to regret that - I gave up.

Gremlin is an odd company, it produces wonderful cutesy games like Jack The Nipper and Thing On A Spring, yet when it tries to be serious it's like watching a Star Trek return, amusing but hard to believe. Once you've cut through all the plot, perhaps because of it The Final Matrix seems tres ordinare.