The 3D world of Shadow Company is impressive but far from perfect. The price paid for the powerful 'all-angles, all-views' camera system is a flighty control system that, at first, is downright irksome. With practice, though, you learn to work around its problems and use the ability to zoom down to ground level or watch from overhead to maximum advantage.

The game's little buildings and roadways are perfect for the movie-mode combat. Sneaking down alleyways on their belly or kneeling to throw a grenade, the troopers behave just how toy soldiers always did in your head. The explosions and gunfire are a little lame, but the situations are so beguiling you swiftly cease to care; you're too busy concentrating on your little portraits to see who's been spotted or caught a bullet to bother about the pyrotechnics.

Importantly, for a game inspired by war movies, reality remains subservient to gameplay. Cars prove to be far more effective weapons than any sub-machine gun, the guards are necessarily dumb and first aid kits can instantly heal even the most horrific of bullet wounds. Shadow Company is a game and not a life simulator. Who'd go to war if it really was that dangerous?

The neatly honed difficulty curve matches your increasing mastery of the controls and each new mission introduces enough new toys - such as the first-person-view sniper rifle - to keep you plugging away. And as the skill set widens, what initially appears a scant set of controls prove surprisingly flexible and more than enough for the job in hand.

Just as with the little plastic Airfix troops, Shadow Company calls for a fair amount of imagination, but those of us who loved the Afrika Korps or German Paratrooper sets as kids will have no problems. With long, involved and varied mission goals, it eats hours with 'one more try' and 'I'll just have a look at the next mission' gunplay.