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THE TOMB OF THE ancient Greek Gods has been opened and the Gods are angry at being imprisoned for 2,000 years. Endowed with the powers of Prometheus you play Will Rock, who along with your mentor Dr. Headstrong have been tricked into opening the tomb by a mysterious group of religious fanatics. They want to see a return of the Gods, however on opening the tomb Zeus appears and takes off with the virgin daughter of the good Doctor, and who also just happens to be your love! If this plot sounds as thin as the CD it came on then you'd be right. But what the hey, it's the game we are interested in.

Will Rock is a standard FPS that sees you playing through levels from the 'Tomb of the Ancients' to rescue your love from Zeus. Along the way you are confronted by various monsters from Greek mythology as well as plenty of varied puzzles set up to prevent you progressing to your final goal.

Gameplay itself is fast and furious, and this would be our first gripe about the game. Right off the bat as soon as you enter the game you are confronted by minotaurs that chuck fire axes at you. Once killed they regenerate into two smaller versions of themselves. They appear out of the floor in what feels like an unending stream. Armed only with a pistol and your trusty shovel at this stage in the game it takes a fair bit of skill and fast movement to progress past this point. Something a new player may find impossible to achieve.

Once past this point you soon meet the skeletons who seem to be on speed. They charge at you in a sort of high stepping dance with very little time to react. The best policy at this stage is to arm yourself with your shovel and swing it constantly until you no longer hear the clatter of their bony footsteps. It all becomes a bit easier once you acquire the shotgun, which thankfully isn't too long into the game.

The puzzles in Will Rock are the usual type of 'push this, wind that, reveal the door' variety. They appear reasonably often and can be quite frustrating. Often you will find yourself charging all over the place trying to find out what a particular button or lever just did. The logic of some of them is hard to fathom.

There is quite an eclectic bunch of weapons at your disposal. As mentioned you have the shovel and the basic pistol and shotgun. As you progress however you can pick up a Lewis gun (World War 1 vintage), crossbow with explosive rounds, fireball launcher and a sort of gunge thrower, a medusa gun, mini gun and grenades. What they are doing all lying around inside a Greek tomb that has not been opened for 2,000 years remains a mystery. The gunge chucker and fireball launcher are quite cool but there seems to be a small problem when using ballistic weapons such as a shotgun. A shot at the leg of an enemy with the shotgun will knock it back as if it were a body shot while sometimes a well aimed head shot offers no result at all.

As you progress forward you also pick up gold coins that can be exchanged at alters for various power ups. These include immortality, increased damage and time slow - all of which are handy when the going gets too hectic.

Controls are what you'd expect from a standard FPS with a layout familiar to most players of the genre. We did however find it necessary to turn the mouse sensitivity right down on our demo machine as the slightest mouse movement even at low settings saw the viewing area swing wildly.

The graphics can only be considered average at best. Although there has been a lot effort to design environments around the Ancient Greek theme the graphic engines limitations mean these have come across quite bland and uninspiring. With today's technology you would have expected more from such a recent release.

One saving grace for us was the use of a Twisted Sister number for the theme song and some pretty good sound effects. You soon learn to dread the clatter of the skeletons footsteps.

The game ships with a full multiplayer mode and this has got some reasonable arenas to blatt away in. You can choose some interesting avatars with our favourite being the bull fighter. Dig the threads dude!

Overall we'd have to say that Will Rock is an average FPS that will hold some appeal for hardened fans of the genre but its difficulty and lack lustre graphics ultimately let it down. Newbies to FPS games will be better off checking out some more mainstream offerings.