The Westock-Waadam Warfare Workstation has one purpose: to manage and expedite the war between two planets. Or so it says in the manual. When you first boot up When Two Worlds War you are immediately thrown into a full scale simulation of mechanised warfare in the far future.

The arena of combat is separated into three areas: your planet, the enemy planet and all the space in between the two.

You are placed in control of the entire war machine. You have to make the decisions as to which Military Units (MUs) you want to develop and how they are deployed once they are built. The options for new kinds of military hardware include tanks, jets, spaceships, submarines and satellites, and once you have got a set built, your units are organised into squads with a base on your home planet.

The game is easy enough to control: each unit can be ordered to perform various functions in each of the three arenas, from simple patrols to direct engagements. Units can also be ordered to whiz out on seek-and-destroy missions.

Into the bargain, for your money you actually get the game in both standard and AGA form, on two separate sets of disks.

When Two Worlds War benefits from having an exploration as well as a warfare element. As your units invade the enemy space your radar reveals more and more to you.

The graphics are neat and clear, although some of the icons are a little confusing. The gameplay is reasonably intriguing, and as you and your enemy develop new units and increase in strength, the escalation of the war gives you a definite feeling of tension.

The essential skills required to succeed at When Two Worlds War are good management of your resources and production facilities, combined with strategic forethought.

When Two Worlds War is neither simplistic nor shallow. It is an intriguing war game that will absorb you for some time.

Utopia in everything but name but without the fun. Design your own world, build labs, food farms and power stations, then tanks, subs and spaceships. Once you've built a sizeable army send it off to the other planet for some good old-fashioned all-out war. That's about it really.

In theory it should be as good a game as Utopia ever was but with added strategy. There's much more scope for military planning here. For instance, you can plan patrol routes for the defensive forces and set up complex attack waves.

Also, the game starts with the other planet completely unexplored, so you don't know how it concentrates its resources or what weapons are in development. This adds some spice as you send off scout ships to explore the surface.

Somewhere along the way though, this fun theory became a stark, slow, colourless reality. W2WW runs so slowly it is in danger of being overtaken by the Victorian era. Even the pop up menus on the A1200 specific version don't so much pop up as take a peek out from under the duvet then decide to have another five minutes in bed.

Don't bother with this game unless you're a serious strategy addict.