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It's good to see there are still a few decent people left in the world, even if they do have daft names like 'Athena'. Having returned from her first quest, she's off to save humanity again. This time we've all been enslaved by a race of evil demons, and she's coming to bust us out!

While the demon-infested world scrolls smoothly across the screen (yup, it's one of those!), you've got to dash to the end of each level and blow up the building you'll find there.

Naturally the demons don't take too kindly to all this, and they'll do their best to stop you. Sadly for them, all they seem to be capable of is wandering backwards and forwards hoping to bump into you, so they're fairly easy to pick off with your standard issue laser weapon.

As you've probably guessed by now, there's more to this than just shooting things. That's right, you can collect things too! Bombs come in quite handy. For some reason, once picked up they'll orbit around Athena like flies around a copy of Sinclair User, but then whizz off and blow things up when fired.

Graphically Psycho Soldier presents no problems. Everything is disgustingly slick 'n' smooth, with the sprites almost oozing around the screen. It's all monochrome, of course, as these days most programmers seem to have forgotten the Speccy works in colour too. So what's wrong with the odd attribute problem here and there?

I'd have liked a bit more sound too. All you get, in fact, is the odd PHLOORP noise when your gun goes off - not the sort of thing to keep you bopping through the night.

What you want to know, though, is how it plays. Happily Psycho Soldier's simple design pays off and other than the odd unfortunate moment (like the time I appeared in a wall and couldn't get out!) it's fun all the way. Nothing amazingly original, but a well-tried formula that'll keep the punters happy.

Yet another scrolling shooting job, but so what? It's fun fun fun! (Have you got the scrolls...?)