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You may find it hard to believe, but being an ex-member of the elite Special Forces can leave you cold. It's unbearably boring when you're not killing and maiming.

Such is life for Bret Conrad, a man too conspicuous for the CIA and too messy for the FBI. He's your alter ego and he's pretty mixed up, bored and just spoiling for a fight.

Life takes a twist when you find a framed pin-up of a sexy centrefold. Avoiding the temptation to dribble all over it, you decide to re-frame it. Imagine your surprise when, behind the soggy cardboard backing, you find a genuine Spanish treasure map!

It seems an ancient tomb-robber-cum-quaint-explorer found the resting place of an Aztec god (with lots of buried dosh). He disappeared for two years before returning (empty-handed) and dying of fever. But he did have time to make the map you now have in your hand.

In a crazed flashback, you decide that the call of the wild (and the cash) is too great and you blag an airlift to the jungle from a flyboy mate of yours.

Things get off to a bad start when you appear hanging from a tree, with the parachute wrapped around your neck. Desperately cutting the webbing (by hitting the fire-button) frees you and you drop to the ground.

Before you have time to get your bearings, a pygmy arrives, wielding a blow-pipe. Push right on the joystick and you walk past him: if you're quick you can get there before he fires; too slow and you either get shot or a massive elephant tramples you.

You can somersault objects by using the upper diagonals while on the move and most importantly, you can shoot. A click on the fire button gets your weapon out and you can aim it with the joystick. Bullets fly as you lay waste to the rainforest inhabitants. When you're done shooting, another click pops the gun back in its holster and you can carry on strolling.

On the way to the treasure, you encounter hordes or small people, animals, vultures and snapping flowers. These pale into insignificance when compared to the devilish traps that are set for you in the Aztec tombs: collapsing bridges; hidden bows and arrows; falling rocks and punji stakes in pits. Not nice - any of it, especially considering that it's a one-shot-and-you're-dead situation. Fluff it and you're back to the start.

Graphics and sound are high-standard to start with, but deteriorate once you're in the game itself. Bret's animation makes him a candidate for the Ministry of Silly Walks and working the gun is an intensely annoying affair (you can't walk with your gun out!).

Musically, it's not an instant-switch-off-job like some, but it doesn't push your ST even close to its limits.

Early levels are frustrating, joystick-throwing travesties of the idea of gameplay. The major problem of an over-complicated gun control and an over-difficult first level mean you're unlikely to see the later levels, where the excellent tricky logic puzzles live. If you can make it past the early bits, the remainder of the game actually becomes less reflex-orientated, more strategic and, thankfully, a lot more rewarding. Stay with it long enough and it comes close to being good fun.