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Traxxion is billed as a follow-up to Tau Ceti, the action supposedly taking place on a space platform high above the planet's surface. Any resemblance to that old classic ends in the packaging.

The story behind the game is that a comet has struck the space station, overloading the nuclear reactor. This will explode in the not too distant future, i.e. about an hour from now and you must escape by travelling along 'the track' in your Robocar until you find 'the Exit', avoiding the numerous hazards along the way. These range from the simple out-of-control Robocars, which can be shot and destroyed, to the ridiculously dangerous crossroads and sliding sections of road, which tend to kill you with monotonous regularity.

The gameplay consists of your Robocar travelling along a fixed road, unable to stop or leave its predetermined route, shooting at various objects. You are able, by hitting specific objects, to delay the reactor's meltdown, change the track ahead of you, destroy other cars, and teleport nearer to the finish. It is at this point, when you start playing, that the game really begins to get on your nerves.

The most aggravating part of actually playing is that of firing, which is achieved using the rotating turret mounted on top of your car. Unfortunately, the rotating is performed by pushing the joystick left or right to move the turret clockwise or anticlockwise, rather than by aiming it absolutely using the joystick. This means that if you are trying to hit one particular target, such as a teleport, you usually find that just as the fun has rotated into position, the car changes direction, as it has just entered a bend or such like, and the gun, with the car, is now pointing somewhere completely different.

Next on the list of annoyances is the general display. Yuk. The track glows with a putrid fluorescence designed to make your eyes pop, and the whole style of display looks about four years old. Possibly the worst aspect, though, is the variety of extremely similar-looking parts of the landscape which all have different purposes, clearly defined in multiple shades of grey for ease of identification.

The game also suffers from a common ailment amongst recent games - that of keyboard and joystick control; contrary to programmers' beliefs, it is actually not particularly enjoyable to have to whip your hand off the joystick, whack the key in question and get your hand back on the joystick again fast enough so as not to be destroyed. In this case, you must do this to turn the Robocar around - a frequent operation as you often find yourself heading for a dead-end, having taken a wrong turn at the last fork in the road.

The game does have some useful little bits, however, such as the ability to save your position. Whilst not all that original, it is unusual to see this feature on what is basically a shoot-'em-up, and had the game been better would probably have lured me into playing it for some time.

Overall, though, this game is bad. Its gameplay reminds me of an ancient Alligata game called Hypercircuit, although that was actually more fun, and the feeling in a lot of the game is that of not being in control - when you've just been plunged into a dead-end alley by a randomly changing crossroads for the hundredth time.

Traxxion is just the latest of many games to fall into the "naff follow-up" category that seems to be growing all the time. CRL, the hit-and-miss company who have definitely missed this time, must realise that you can't disguise a bad game, but are probably hoping that you can sell one.