We're all going to give up smoking for a start (er, not that any of us actually do, but it's the thought that counts), and we're going to do everything we can in the pages of AMIGA POWER to promote peace, love and global understanding. Most of all, though, this year, no more Magic Pockets gags. Never again will the office reverberate to lines like 'Did you hear about the man who played Magic Pockets with his Action Replay slow-motion device on and went back in time?', no more pointing at slugs in the car-park shrubbery and going 'Ooh look, the Bitmap Kid's shades have fallen off'.

Nope, apparently poor old Eric Bitmap's a bit of a nervous wreck and a shadow of his bright and breezy former self on account of our good-natured japery over the last 12 months or so, so we're going to be nice to the young chap in '93. And it's nice to see that, in the spirit of goodwill and reciprocal chummery, Eric and his Bitmap Boys have made things easy for us by releasing the kind of game that I honestly didn't think they had in them any more. Ladies and gentlemen, The Chaos Engine.

For almost certainly the highest-profile game programmers ever, the Bitmaps have been very quiet for a very long time. Since Gods, reviewed in our first issue there's only been Gods rewrite Magic Pockets, and we've already promised to stop making fun of that one. You'd hope, then, that they'd have spent all that time coming up with something pretty damn special. Usually in this business when you hope things like that you're only setting yourself up for horrible disappointment and disillusionment, but this time, blow me down if that isn't exactly what they've done. 1993's only weeks old, but if this isn't in my top ten come December you can be assured that we'll just have had Amiga software's best ever year. I like this game. Here's why.

It's fun.

We see a load of games here, and most of them are technically competent. Very many of them are technically 'good', some of them are nothing short of programming genius, in terms of what they make the Amiga do. If you want an extreme example then the Dragon's Lair series (number three is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) is the most obvious one, but there are dozens, hundreds even of less glaring cases. I'm thinking here of stuff like (just plucking a few names out of the air) Assassin, stuff like Nigel Mansell, stuff like Troddlers, stuff like Wolfchild (remember that? Thought not), stuff, indeed, like Gods and Magic Pockets (oops). You give 'em a play, you go 'Yes, yes that's all very nice', and you seize on the first possible opportunity to stop playing and go and do something else. Why? Because they're No Fun.

Then, of course, you get the stuff that isn't technically impressive (Asteroids, say, or Monster Business or Exile), but is great fun. None of it ever wins awards, of course, because your average punter goes 'Oh yeah, I remember that, it was great fun to play but it didn't sell as many copies as Street Fighter II so I can't possibly vote for it or people will laugh at me and I'll lose all my street credibility', but it's great fun all the same. And isn't that the idea? Isn't that what we're looking for? Entertainment? Fun? Blimey, everything looks really weird from up here on this horse.

The point I'm desperately trying to wrestle to the ground here, though, is that just occasionally, maybe half-a-dozen times a year if you're really lucky, you get a game that does both. The Chaos Engine (you remember) is one of those.

I won't bore you with the plot, since this The Chaos Engine's been 'on the way' for so long that you really ought to know it backwards by now. Besides which, it's the plot, it doesn't matter. Not mattering is its job. The only reason plots exist is to provide employment for down-on-their-luck writers desperate to earn a crust knocking out instruction manuals. So I say 'big nobs' to the plot ('cos I'm a crazy dangerous guy like that, and besides, plots can't hit you). You run about and you kill stuff, that's all you want to know.

Still, without going into the plot reasons for it, there's a pretty significant difference in the way that you run about and kill stuff in The Chaos Engine. It's not just you, y'see. In The Chaos Engine (have you noticed the fantastically subtle way I keep repeating the name of the game a lot, to burn it so indelibly into your brains that you won't be able to sleep until you've gone and bought a copy? Or is it just that I'm compensating for not mentioning it at all for the first page and a half of the review? Who can tell? Not me. I'm mad, I am. Gratuitous exclamation marks!!) you're accompanied on your stuff-killing antics by a second player.

'Hang on,' you cry, 'doesn't that mean I'm going to have to go and get my socially-challenged mate Spotty round to my house every time I feel like a quick go? He smells funny.' Well, no. The clever thing about The Chaos Engine (Are you being sponsored by The Chaos Engine? - Paul Merton) is that even when there's only one of you, there's still two of you. (You've been drinking at lunchtime again, haven't you? - Ed) This seemingly-unlikely state of affairs comes about because when you play The Chaos Engine in one-player mode, the computer controls a second team member (you select a two-man team from a party of six characters with varying attributes), using an artificial intelligence routine which is, well, Technically Impressive, to say the least.

The computer character is only allowed to do certain things (kill baddies, pick up treasure, shoot the nodes which open the level exits, but not use special abilities or collect the keys which reveal the various routes through each stage), but it does them is such a way as to be a pretty damn convincing substitute for another human being. In addition, in one-player mode the computer player brings added tactical depth to the game, as you can switch special abilities between the two characters and lots of other stuff that I'm not going to tediously shopping-list my way through now.

It's not only your companion who's an individual character, though - the bad guys have a real feel of intelligent malice about them. There's no wandering dumbly into the line of fire here - the enemies all behave differently, and it's not rare to see one poke round from behind a tree and take pot-shots at you without ever leaving himself open to your return fire. What this means is that you get a real satisfaction from offing the little bleeders, and a near-overwhelming sense of triumph from actually completing a level.

Which brings me to my only real gripe - as far as levels are concerned, there are only 16, divided into four worlds of (er, carry the seven...) four levels each. While there's a huge number of different routes you can take through them, and a huge number of secret rooms and hidden bonuses and so on to discover, I'm a little worried that your average player will finish the game (albeit only having played maybe 50% of it) inside a few days, especially since the password system it uses gives you infinite continues in all but name. But no, I don't really care, I'm only trying (unsuccessfully as usual) to create an illusion of critical balance. The bottom line is that, for a thousand tiny reasons which I haven't even begun to touch on in this review (partly because I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering them for yourself and going 'Wow!' and partly because I spent so much time at the start wibbling on incoherently about something else altogether), this is utterly excellent computer game entertainment. Yes, even better than Magic Pockets.

UPPERS Possibly the most atmospheric game I've played in the last 12 months. The two-man team idea works really well, too, and the all-important all-out action that was missing from Gods and Magic Pockets is present in spades.

DOWNERS I've got a nagging feeling that you won't get all that much lasting play out of this, although you could be going back and discovering new bits for months. And a two-fire-button option would have been a godsend. Oh, and it's still all a bit, er, metallic and blue, isn't it?

THE BOTTOM LINE Superb arcade adventuring antics from the Bitmaps, combining innovation, tried-and-tested ideas, technical achievement, but most importantly, a truckload of fun. A spectacular return to form, and an unmissable game.

89 PERCENT