Following the success of Apidya and Sim Ant, insect-related games are back in vogue, or so it would seem. And Palace's release is no exception, pitching you against hordes of insect-nasties in a deep-space moonbase, but it has a few other elements which make it something more than just another blast-em-up.

Hostile Breed combines all the excitement and action of a shoot-em-up with the strategy elements you'd expect to find in a simulation. The chief element of strategy centres on the base complex where you find yourself on the receiving end of a massive invasion. The whole complex requires careful controlling and programming or it just becomes a liability.

The eight-legged moonbase has just been through an earthquake which has cracked the walls. Insect aliens are pouring through these breaches by the dozen, heading towards the control room. If they get there, all hell will break loose, and your game will be over.

Shuttle service
You're provided with a nifty shuttle craft which you fly down the wings of the moonbase. You can attach it to a special monorail in the ceiling and whiz off down the corridor at high speed. The shuttle is armed, but at first it's not exactly bristling with hardware. You need to build this up later using the base's production facilities.

In the central command centre you have five departments under your control: the reactor, the production line, the hangar, the base-defense system and the computer terminal. The most important is the reactor, because it demands careful handling to prevent it exploding. It's down to you to balance the levels of power required around the base complex. If you overload it, you're history.

The production line is your only hope of restoring order. It creates a supply of robots which trundle along fixing holes, mending cables and putting new rails in the ceiling. You've got to decide how many robots to put in each wing, and sort out what jobs need doing most urgently. But it doesn't end there; robots get attacked by aliens, so you have to fly in and protect them.

In short, Hostile Breed is an eight level shoot-em-up, but it's laid out in such a way that you can get to any level whenever you like. The control centre is a vital piece of the jigsaw, and devoted shoot-em-up fans might at first find this a bit too much for them to handle. But the principle is pretty simple and it only takes a few minutes to suss out what you need to be doing.

A Breed apart
Apart from the redeveloped shoot-em-up idea there's not really much that sets Hostile Breed apart from hundreds of other shoot-em-ups. The 'in-between' scenes and the death-screen are pleasing, but not great, while the in-game sprites are vaguely cartoon-like.

The sound effects are raunchy enough, but there are quite as many as you'd probably like to give you the real atmosphere. This isn't quite made up for by the powerful intro music, which is a good deal better, but still not quite enough.

You have to hand it to Palace, Hostile Breed is not your ordinary shoot-em-up. However, it is questionable whether you'll get that much more out of it. If you want a bit of 'think' and your 'shoot' and you're opposed to mind violence (but not plain ol' everyday violence), go for it. You'll enjoy it.

Ahh, the joy of bugs. Not those of the programming variety. Oh no, I'm talking about the kind which have more than their fare share of legs, eyes and wings. The kind which flap around, wait until you're asleep, crawl up your nostrils, and lay eggs in your brain. You know.

Hostile Breed certainly has bugs in, lots of them, and they do some rather nastier things than that too. The plot is your usual Doctor Who scenario - we've got an eight-spoked research base located on the mysterious planet Genario, we've got a team of scientists happily ensconced inside, and we've got several thousand bio-mechanoid superbugs and horror-weeds lounging around outside, cursing their lack of welding equipment, and just waiting for their big break.

Said break comes with a handy dandy earthquake which smashes the research station's outer defenses to smithereens. Soon all eight spokes are overrun, with only the central control room located at the hub, remaining bug free. But the creatures are advancing down all eight corridors, and time is running out.

If you were one of those scientists, what would you do in this situation? That's right, one of you would get aboard the last remaining spacecraft left in dock, cockily announce to the rest of the crew that they should 'Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast, and jet off around the eight spokes, blasting the scummy space bugs. (Okay, okay, so I made the kippers bit up, but you get the gist).

So that's the customary silly (though for once, actually relevant) plot over with - now onto game mechanics. It's interesting to note that programmer Rob Stevens' original inspiration for this was Defender. Armed with the idea of updating the Williams classic, his first (and arguably most important) task was to create the hundreds of different alien types needed, each of which follows astoundingly realistic behavioural patterns.

Larvae hatch, fly off and lay eggs, the eggs hatch, and so the cycle continues, inexorably (I love that word) getting closer and closer to the control centre. Even the alien plants (including hero - as opposed to fly traps) follow a logical growth and reproduction model, and it all serves to complicate the game beyond the obvious shoot-'em-up basis.

In play then, it operates on several levels. First is the blaster - it's possible to venture down any of the eight space station spokes, blasting all and sundry, while stopping off at the landing pads littered around the corridors. Landing on one of these brings up a sub-game however - complication number one - where a security lock must be re-aligned.

Achieve this and a piece of cargo could the the prize. This could be some sort of extra armament (maybe napalm bombs, missiles and the like) or upgrades for the control centre (which I'll come back to in a moment).

While they may not be levels exactly, each of the eight spokes has its own individual look, and (just for added fun) it's own breeds of aggressor. And of course, because they're spokes, if any particular lot proves too tough to you, you can always turn around and fly back down the corridor towards the control centre again.

It's here, back at the base, we come across complications number two to 259. You see, in addition to jetting around and blasting stuff, the player must also control the reactor, the remaining robot production line, and the weapon systems. There are computer terminals littered around the place which can give you quite a lot of helpful information too, but that's already quite enough to worry about for the first time player.

I guess at this point it's about time for a few quick words on robot manufacturing. The first (and most essential) robots will patch up holes in the corridor walls (thus preventing any more aliens invading, though the existing ones will, of course, continue to breed), while other, hardly less essential types, repair wiring, landing pads (and other structural damage) and the rail system.

The weapons screen gives control of all auto-defences in each corridor (which unfortunately consume power faster than a two bar electric fire) and access to the cannon (heh heh). Requiring half the battery charge (otherwise your reactor goes critical), the cannon can be directed down any corridor and will blast the front line of aliens, giving you just that little bit extra time to play with.

So what do I make of it? Well, okay, it sounds like an impossibly complex hybrid of game styles, but surprisingly enough, I found the constant to-ing and fro-ing the most enjoyable aspect of the game (once I'd worked out what the hell I was doing). My main criticisms actually lie with the shoot-'em-up side of things.

The player's craft is too large and sluggish, the playing area too small and the speed of the bugs makes flying around a bit of a pain. It's incredibly hard to avoid crashing into the bugs half the time, while for a game based on Defender, Hostile Breed lacks fluid craft control.

An agile, slightly inertia-prone little space-ship would have worked a treat, but instead we get a leviathan of a thing which trundles around (thank goodness they included the speed rail!) picking off the bad guys in a ponderous, unenthusiastic kind of way.

However, when I say that the complications make the game, that's not to simply that they're all a good thing. The terminals are useful, for instance, but I can't see too many people bothering with them, while the inclusion of landing pad and electricity cable-eating bugs (and robots to repair them) is perhaps taking things just a bit too far. The fact remains though, it's the fight-and-flight stuff which lets the side down.

In the end then, this is something of a damn fine game - and a very addictive one - if flawed. Certainly, the core of the thing is fabulous (the doing-everything-at once concept recalls the Spectrum classics Worse Things Happen At Sea and Psytron), while the graphics are wonderfully atmospheric (full marks too for the intro and end sequence) and the sound surprisingly effective. And it makes such a refreshing change to play an action game which actually requires a modicum of intelligence.

It's just that I feel a little more attention should have been given to the arcade side of things. As it stands, Hostile Breed is a 'buy on the proviso that you want an utterly complex hybrid' kind of affair. Okay?