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No, no, no, no, no! Gorgeous graphics do not a good shoot-'em-up make - not on their own anyway. And these ones are particularly lonely...

It's gorgeous, isn't it? One glance at these pages and you could almost be forgiven for thinking this is Delphine's said-to-be spectacular graphic adventure version of The Godfather licence, but no - it's US Gold's action variant, pure and simple.

Still, wow, eh? Load this up and your immediate impression is of one very classy product - the sort of game that people walking past (if your computer happens to be in the sort of place people walk past, that is), stop and stare at. Lovely, slightly blurry looking, but smooth and atmospheric tableaus that would look great if they were static, but are truly spectacular because they actually move! Cars drive up and down the streets, people walk the pavements, flags flutter, and generally the impression of life is very ably created. This would have been a knock-down dead product only last year, and even now - competing as it is with the likes of Another World, Heimdall et al - it's spectacular. If we were giving individual graphic marks - pointless things though they are (we're reviewing games, not graphic demos) - this would be high 80s at least.

Those who understand the structure of Amiga Power reviews will realise we're going to come to a very big 'but' at this point, and here it is. The big 'but' is that lovely and sexy though it may look, the gameplay is actually a tedious scrolling shoot-'em-up of sub-NARC standards. (Actually, thinking about it, it's perhaps more like Ocean's first RoboCop game, but we'll get to that in due course.)

First, though, the structure of the game. You all know - at least by reputation - of the series of movies this is based on. Added together there's at least eight or nine hours of screen time, thirty major characters, three (and a half) generations and countless shootings, stabbings and other violent set pieces in the films. All a bit of a daunting task to try and fit into an action game really, which is why US Gold simply don't bother. Oh sure, we get the sense of the passage of time - levels start in the 1940s and move forward towards the present day - but individual characters, incidents and plot twists don't really come into it. You play whichever character happens to be Don Corleone (the Godfather of the clan Corleone) in each time period, on a mission to 'keep the bad guys at bay' (as the box has it). (What this presumably means is kill off the members of all rival gangs, as there's no real way you could be said to be on the side of the angels, but never mind...)

Following the intro - a well engineered pan shot taking you through the New York of 1946 which even Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola would approve of - you enter the frandioso world of organised crime. A spinning newspaper device headlining mob massacre tells you whether we're in 1946, 1957, 1961, 1965 or 1981 - it's neat enough, but unfortunately here's where any similarity between the game and the films effectively ends.

This isn't where disappointment sets in, however. First impressions are of a well animated, historically set game in which stylish cars zoom by and illuminated trains rattle along in the distance, while in the foreground there's you, shooting dead every crook you come across as you walk these mean streets - and these mean streets are crawling with hoods. Avoiding policemen and mothers-with-prams is a good idea - if you shoot too many you'll be disowned by the Corleone family and lose the game, killing policemen obviously not looked upon as a Good Thing.

This is very straight point-and-shoot blasting stuff, the odd fire escape to climb or RoboCop-style angled shot at an upstairs window being about as exciting as it gets. As in Navy SEALS, the characters you've shot remain lying in the places they've fallen, satisfying for the bloodthirsty, and a definite Neat Touch.

So far, so fair (but pedestrian) and, it has to be said, so hard. Not only are there your fast-failing energy and family credibility values to conserve, there're also the particularly lousy instructions to cope with. Where, for instance, does it tell you that many of the cars speeding past in the foreground of the screen contain machine-gunners who'll take pot shots at you? Until you realise this, and how to defend yourself against them (crouch down and you'll fire out of the screen), you'll find your energy level dropping with seemingly reasonless rapidity.

And so it goes. Occasional single screen Operation Wolf-style sub levels - there are two in the first level - break up the action, but haven't we seen these before? Indeed, they're exactly the sort of keeping-the-interest-going trick used in countless Ocean film games, and they've worn a bit thin by now. The graphics may be superb, and the initial sense of atmosphere strong, but there's no way they can stand in for decent gameplay.

You're in for a bit of a mightly big list here, I'm afraid. The lack of imagination shown in the structuring of the game is bad enough, but the execution of the actual gameplay elements chosen is diabolical too. Disk swapping - there are six (!), and each time you lose the game you have to load in the end-of-game sequence - is a real pain too, especially as the game refuses to recognise a second disk drive.

The worst thing, though, is the pace - it's painfully slow in every way, presumably hampered by the detail of the graphics. Dodging bullets is almost an impossibility - realistic, but not good for a game - and shooting old-dears-with-prams (and thus risking family dishonour) is all too often the only way out of a tight fix.

The shoot-'em-up element demands next-to-zero need for hand-to-eye co-ordination either - 90 percent of the basic game, as it turns out, is an attempt to get your man into a position where his upward angled gun can pick off the marksmen in the windows above. Master that, and you've mastered the game. (Not really much challenge for 30 quid.)

And there's more. Though there's plenty of visual variety, the new gameplay elements later levels introduce - chiefly a gunman across the street opposite, who appears as a gun barrel at the bottom of the screen, and effectively reverses the positions of Operation Wolf so the player's firing out of the screen at himself - fail to add enough to keep you interested. File with either 'interesting failures' or 'more crap film licences', depending on how generous you're feeling at the time.

Uppers: Lovely to look at - a graphically superb game, with plenty of good animation and some rather lovely sound effects too. One to impress your friends with alright.

Downers: Oh dear, oh dear... beneath it all, it's a tedious old RoboCop clone - monotonous, lacking in variety, inefficiently programmed (we must only assume) and providing precious little gameplay for £30.

US Gold take the surely-very-boring-by-now Ocean approach to a film game - those nifty graphics can't fool us! Unfortunately, gametesting doesn't seem to have been a priority here - the finished result is slack and dull and lacking in challenge. Avoid.