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Now for a history lesson. It is the year 2086 (History?). The Earth is slowly being destroyed by mankind, in a vast nuclear war. To protect their armies, scientists set to work on a suit, a suit of armour which would make the user indestructible and allow them to conquer anything with ease.

Unfortunately, a couple of days after they invented the thing, all human life had been destroyed, and everything was quiet. Apart from an Amiga which was displaying "One on One" in demo mode.

Centuries passed, and from the chaos emerged a new race of humans. These people led a simple life running around with no clothes on, until earth was invaded by aliens. [The plot thickens - Ed]

Men were enslaved by the prudish aliens and some hid underground to avoid capture. The elders of this race decided to do something about these aliens and gave a task to a strong, young man called Tal. His task was to find the Antiriad armour, which they had read so much about in the books from the past, and use it to destroy the aliens' base. So begins your task...

You, as Tal, must discover the sacred armour. Then, after you have found it, you must equip it with various bits and bobs (lasers, anti-grav boots, etc) and locate the alien base. There you must set an implosion mine, which will destroy the base. Be warned, it's not as easy as it sounds.

First you must move Tal around a maze of screens, which are infested with horrific creatures: things like bats, trolls, wolves and maybe the odd bank manager. Each one of these will drain energy from our hero and some will kill him on contact.

Once found, the armour must be activated by putting it on and flicking the switch. When you do this, you get a very good "Star Trek" effect, as you teleport into the armour. When you see it, you'll know what I mean.

Now try to take off. You can't. Why? Well, because you need the Anti-grav boots which are located somewhere on the planet. Once you have these, flight is possible. Also, your armour needs energy, and you will find plenty of pods in the forests.

The first thing you will notice when you activate your armour is the large dashboard at the bottom of the screen. It will come alive. This board indicates stuff like score, radiation level (things can get too tough, even for this armour) and tactical display. Don't worry, it's all quite simple really.

Once you have collected energy, lasers, gravity boots, particle negators and the implosion mine, you may set about blasting things and searching for the enemy base. You'll love having lasers, as Tal's only means of defence without the armour is throwing stones, which your local hero will tell you is not very helpful.

What happens when you destroy the alien base? Well, that would be telling and besides, the fact that I don't know prevents me from revealing all. I'm sure someone will complete the game and tell you in 'Play to Win' soon.

Now to the graphics, which are really good. Tal, is well animated and runs about in his jockey shorts very well indeed. He can also jump, duck, and throw rocks which makes him a pretty active kind of guy.

The creatures, on the other hand, are not as well animated but pleasing to watch nonetheless. The backgrounds are bare but for a few trees, which have twisted faces on them.

Sound comes in the form of a nice title tune and various meaty sound effects which liven the game up from time to time. But I must say that the stone sound is a bit feeble.

Other than that, all I can say is this game deserves to do well, it has a good plot, and beautiful graphics.

If any software company can claim to be hand made cars equivalent of computer games it must surely be Palace. The games take months to manufacture with the company only releasing about three new titles a year.

Compared to other companies that churn the games out with production line-like efficiency this makes Palace truly unique in the UK. They have an expert in every department - graphics, game design, music and sound.

The only possible criticism you can level at the Palace team is the samey-ness of their designs. We are tiring just a bit of arcade adventures. It would be really interesting to see this talented team take a crack at something else. Note: Player with Game Killer can use it to good effect on this game. [Cheat! - Ed]