Hell, I'm probably being a bit too picky. It's just that when I see a game that can't even really get its own name right, I begin to worry a little about the rest of it. In such a way, I worried a little about G-LOC. This was a mistake. Had I worried by the correct amount, I'd be writing this review from the security of a padlocked crate inside a darkened coal cellar 300 feet below the seediest no-questions-asked bar in Rio De Janeiro. And the reason I'd be doing that is that it'd be the only place in the world I'd feel safe from having to play a game as appalling as this ever again.

To help you understand why G-LOC is so gut-wrenchingly awful, it'd be useful to explain the game properly to you. It goes a bit like this. You are a fighter pilot. You begin the game on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Well, a sort of slab of grey, anyway. After taking off from the aircraft carrier, you find yourself in a landscape consisting of two slabs of blue in different shades. Into this landscape will occasionally fly two or three enemy aircraft. There are now three courses of action available to you.

PLAN A

Plan A involves doing nothing at all. Faced with such a fiendish tactic, the enemy planes will almost certainly fly away, shortly to be replaced by another little squadron. This continues until, eventually, some enemy planes attack from in front of you. They will be armed either with machine-guns (in which case they will invariably shoot harmlessly over your head), or homing missiles, in which case you'll probably be shot down. Try not to let this worry you too much, as it doesn't really matter, for reasons I'll explain shortly. After this has gone on for a while, your mission time will run out and your game will be over. Clearly, then, Plan A is a bit of a non-starter.

PLAN B

Plan B is a bit trickier. It's similar to Plan A, except that when the enemy planes appear, you have to move your plane round very slightly so that the enemies appear inside a large square box in the middle of the screen. Having done this, you now wait for a second or two until your missile sight homes in on the enemy planes, at which point it will 'lock on', a red target will appear, and a voice will say 'Fire!' (or it could be 'Target!', the speech is a bit on the muffled side). Now, press button 'B' on your joypad (or whichever button you have chosen as the 'fire missile' control). A homing missile will zip out from your plane and, without fail or further intervention on your part, destroy the enemy. Repeat this procedure until you have downed the number of enemies stated at the start of the mission. Move onto the next mission. It will be exactly the same.

PLAN C

Again, Plan C is quite a lot like Plan B. However, when the enemies appear onscreen, you should fly around until they're in your sights and shoot them down with your machine-gun (press button 'A'). This is a bit more difficult than Plan B, but luckily the huge supply of homing missiles you get for each mission should ensure that it's completely unnecessary. Phew.

It's important that you realise I'm not exaggerating for dramatic effect here. That's really all you do. For the vast majority of the game, it's completely unnecessary to use any controls whatsoever except the 'fire missile' button. Very occasionally you'll have to manouevre a tiny little bit to avoid a missile or a canyon wall (once or twice per level you get a mission that consists of blowing up ground targets or ships in a canyon with dangerous walls rather than shooting down planes, but it's a wide canyon (and it's always the same canyon) so there's still very little dodging to do, and otherwise the gameplay is identical - wait for the sight to pick up a target, fire a missile at it.

The reason that getting killed doesn't really matter is that you have a limitless supply of lives, save for the fact that getting blown up costs you five seconds of mission time. If you don't blow up the required number of targets within the time limit, you fail the mission and the game's over (except for your two continues), but that's the only way you can bite the dust in G-LOC. In fact, getting your plane blown up has a positive side to it as well - if you're out of homing missiles, your replacement plane will come with a handy supply of its own.Of course, you can make things more complicated if you like. You can fly around a bit to get the enemies in your sights a fraction sooner (although more often than not all the jiggling around just makes things harder).

You can buy armour so that you can survive a couple of hits (but so what? You've got infinite planes). You can buy heavy bullets so that your machine-gun kills bad guys quicker, if you ever use it. But why bother? If you want to make life harder for yourself, why not just play the game blindfold? That's not such a stupid idea, either - by just hitting the missile button every time you hear 'fire', you'll sail through the first, six-mission, level. On the hardest difficulty setting. I know - I tried it. And Sega are asking for 40 quid - 40 QUID! Think about how much money that really is! - for this? If you buy G-LOC, you're not being conned, you're being robbed, simple as that.

GRAPHICS 1

SOUND 7

GAMEPLAY 1

GAME SIZE 1

ADDICTION 1

Not only the worst Mega Drive game I've ever played, but the worst game of any kind I think the world's ever seen. Anyone who takes any money for it should be prosecuted for theft.