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Nyyyow. Akka, akka, akka. Kerboom. Er, hello. Sorry, getting a bit carried away there. G-Loc is an aereal combat game which was a big hit in the arcades. Mainly because, in order to give some sustenance to the game's title (which stands for loss of consciousness due to gravity) the cabinet you sat in lurched around like it had a rottweiler in its pants. Which left you to either marvel at the technology used or bring up your lunch all over the first person to congratulate you on your performance (or both, possibly). The CPC version won't shake you around all over the place, of course. If it does, consult an electrician.

So what can we expect from an 8-bit conversion of a game that owed much of its appeal in the arcades to innovations not recreatable on a home computer? We can expect anything we want. What we end up with is a pretty good, yet majorly repetitive, shoot-'em-up. The screen shudders quite nicely though.

You're flying some sort of planey thing, and you've got to shoot down lots of other planes. First eight, then nine, then ten. You then move on to a cliffy thing, where you're flying down a narrow ravine, shooting more planes and then some strange grey bugs (possibly battleships?).

Good news: With a little practice you can handle the guns and missiles like a trooper (er, pilot). The slight shaking of the screen does bring a small part of the arcade game's raison d'etre into your home. There are a lot of waves of bad guys to face off against. There a three difficulty levels which, whilst not being any easier or more difficult than each other (!), do present an opportunity to vary the number and order of the enemies.

Bad news: The scrolling on the cliff sections is so jerky that it's almost sad. What are those bug-like things supposed to be? The "shoot eight enemies, then nine, etc" business hardly makes for what would be termed 'unrepetitive game-play'. The cliffs don't get bigger when you steer towards them. So you crash into them without any advance warning.

G-Loc is actually quite good fun. The sound is very good and the graphics reasonable (those flippin' beetles excepted). At the end of the day, though, it's just too samey to hold the attention for any considerable length of time. It's polished and professional, sure, but also totally uninspired.

It's very smooth and impressively programmed, but blimey - is this all there is? You can steer and shoot, but there's no real indication of altitude... in fact no flight sim elements at all.

200,000 points.

Graphics 78%
From the sublime to the ridiculous.

Sonics 89%
Loads of fab and different noises.

Grab Factor 82%
G-Loc is very easy indeed to get into...

Staying Power 61%
...just like the shallow end of your local pool.

Overall 68%
As aerial shooties go, this is passable. As CPC games go, it's passable but of little long-term interest.