You have three chances to crack each mission, after which, rather kindly, you're offered the option to skip it and go on to the next. Instructions are made via a pop-up icon thingy, and include attacking a certain bug, defending a specified area, throwing an explosive device at somebody, and suchlike attractions. It helps that you can stop the action at any point to give different orders to your insects, at which point the clock also stops. Usually it's quite a generous one -especially in my case: I found no trouble getting annihilated long before the time was up. There's a time limit for you to achieve these goals. The one-player mode pits you against the wily old computer in a series of missions that generally come into one of two categories: taking over or defending certain items of food in the area, or beating the enemy forces into the dirt (the latter, you'll be pleased to learn, also helps considerably in the pursuit of the former). Put aside your boots, though, and come with me into the fascinating world of insect war. With most people, it's insects with me, it's insects and small children. Maybe it doesn't affect you personally in this way, but there are definitely two categories of life form - those that get stamped on, and those that don't. Is it their body language? That strange, hunched walk most of them seem to affect? Whatever it is, it makes one automatically raise the Boot Of Doom. In the meantime, you might like to ponder exactly what it is about insects that makes them such victims. You'll realise eventually that it harms the monitor rather than the insects, and that the insects are only pictures, but it might take a while. One of the first things you have to do when you load it is learn to resist the temptation to keep stamping on the screen.

The first time I saw Battle Bugs I thought I was watching one of those nature programmes -except they weren't stripping the flesh from a living cameraman while his comrades filmed it, they were just standing about in funny outfits.

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