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The cassette cover depicts battle scenes from the Second World War. Spitfires and Messerschmidts fight it out over the channel, U-Boats stalk frigates, tanks roll relentlessly onwards and men in uniform look tough, all of which is very strange, because the game has nothing whatsoever to do with WWII.

There are these two oil companies you see. Both of them are after the last deposits of oil in the North Sea, I guess the game is set in the future - next year sometime perhaps. Oil being what it is, these guys are pretty keen to get hold of as much as they can, which means doing some serious damage to the opposition.

The serious damage entails the use of warships, submarines, helicopters, planes, rockets, guns, torpedoes and depth charges. The general idea is to blow the opposition out of the water so you can have the oil all to yourself - a suitably realistic political scenario.

If I was unkind, I might say this was like battleships only not as good. It's like battleships only not as good. The screen shows a map with the positions of your four oil rigs and the military hardware at your disposal - four ships, two subs, a plane and a helicopter. Enemy positions are also shown - you can play a friend (an enemy?) or the computer.

There are two phases to the game: input and action. During the input phase, with the aid of some fairly crude and difficult-to-understand icons, you enter all your move information. This includes details for each ship, sub, plane and helicopter. Where you want it to go and whether you want it to fire at anything are the two most important factors. When both players have input all their moves the game moves to the action phase where the commands are carried out.

This is nothing spectacular. The screen is updated - everything moves one square in whatever direction you told it to. Any firing instructions are carried out and if anything is hit it is removed from the screen. A window at the bottom plays out a little animated scene of a helicopter, plane or whatever getting it in the neck whenever a direct hit is scored.

Battle is not a bad game, but it is certainly a bit tame. It needs something to liven up the action a bit, I found myself nodding off after about half an hour. If you play battleships in the free time between building Airfix kits, you'll think it's brilliant, otherwise it's a bit of a downer.

I can think of two ways of improving it. Playing with a friend rather than the computer is definitely the thing to do. It's also more fun if you try to destroy your own oil rigs and blow up your own ships. The winner could be the first person to achieve total self-annihilation.