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Hmm. The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this one actually appears in The Bottom Line already - in fact, it was there last month. The reason for this is simple - our sister magazine Amiga Format reviewed it quite a few months ago, so we figured it must have been released around that time. How wrong can you be? In fact, Ziriax hasn't been on the shelves very long at all, which means Format jumped the gun a bit and the game's in fact ideal fodder for review this issue.

So what's Ziniax actually all about? Well, it's a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up isn't it, following as surely in the path of R-Type as it's possible to do. The opening seconds sees a very swish swirly scrolling credits effect - one that rather stunningly uses up the entire screen on our monitor - but unhappily things go downhill rather quickly after that. The in-game play area is of a much more normal size for a start, and the stuff that's presented there is pretty admittedly, but at the same time also pretty ordinary. It's also very hard - 'stupidly difficult', as The Bottom Line has it, and do you know, it's right. None of us can get anywhere very far at all.

Criticisms beyond this ludicrous difficulty and disappointing lack of originality are rather trickier to put your finger on however. It all scrolls very well, the graphics are quite complex and lovely looking, and if your weapons are singularly weedy and unimpressive then that's hardly cause to fling your arms up in horror. In actual fact, the chief argument against it is that so many far superior shoot-'em-ups are available at half the price (or less). There's the real R-Type for a start, but better than that are Silworm, Xenon and (this is the clincher) Xenon 2. The idea that you could possibly want to buy Ziriax when that is out at £10.99 is just too much to get your mind around, really.

Ridiculously easy until the end-of-level baddies, whereupon it becomes nigh on impossible. Ziriax would be fine at a budget price, but asking anything more for it is at least a little bit cheeky.