It's nice when unexpected games drop through your letterbox. You can't always tell the quality, especially if it's a game you've never heard of before. Infestation proved to be a very pleasant surprise.

The basis of the game is simply to drive your futuristic buggy-type thing from point A to point B without dying, and shooting anything that attacks you along the way. From simple premises good, fun games can come, and in this case it's very true. Frontier Developments have taken the basic concept and wrapped some added extras around it, such as almost infinite terrain that yes, you can drive across, sounds effects that are suitably futuristics and at times very scary, and a soundtrack that suits the mood without becoming repetitively annoying. There are some obvious hazards along the way such as casms, rivers and lakes (and water will make your vehicle blow up), but you can earn various powerups that allow you to negotiate these hazards. The first you get (in the well designed training mission) is a set of huge tires, making your vehcile look like a futuristic monster truck. You can't drive across the surface of the water though (it only raises you above the ground a little, keeping your vehicle out of the water), but they're still fun. You can also earn a flight mode, allowing you to whizz about through the air. On top of that, collecting the mission marker tokens lets you build up the statistics of the various subsystems of your vehicle, making it's armour stronger, or it's cannons more accurate and so on.

The game looks stunning as well, with it's third-person control system, endless bouncy terrain, varied lighting and odd, alien plants and structures. For a game that owes a lot to consoles (it's available on the PlayStation as well), the control system is actually logical, utilising the 'accelerate, turn left/right, brake' model rather than the 'turn and accelerate according to the directional key I'm holding down' which most console games seem to favour. Moving about essentially involves driving in the direction you're facing and turning as and when necessary. A quick-turn function is also included (for those all important powerslide stops). Sometimes you can get stuck trying to get up a hill, but often a short run-up is all that's needed to throw you over the top. You can also earn a turbo thruster that is lots of fun unless you hit it at the wrong time - in which case you'll go flying across the map, often never to return...

The very first mission you undertake is a training mission that covers nearly all aspects of the game. I was a little lost without the manual at the very beginning though, missing an entire part of the game based around token and resource collecting. You can buy upgrades for your little buggy at the various factories dotted around the maps, and to make these work you have to collect the various coloured crystals, as well as the mission tokens that every map has. Not all maps have all three resources though, so collecting as you go is handy, although later in the game a portable mine is thrown into the mix, allowing to to mine resources on the fly rather than rely on naturally occurring crops, or the static mines set up on some worlds.

The game uses a non-linear mission type, which means that whislt you have set tasks to accomplish, you don't necessarily have to do them in any particular order (or in some cases do them at all), leaving you free to roam about shooting things if you want to. Level load times are remarkably quick for the amount of terrain included, and the various aliens and artifacts are very nice. Each level has a distinct feel about it, with some being dark and brooding, where a set of headlights (another powerup) can be very useful, and others are bright and sunny. One level, the first where you need to use your flight capabilities, also includes a scripted meteor shower on one part of the map, which is spun into the mission you are currently involved in. Often the missions are simply about destroying all the aliens on that particular world, although sometimes there are more complex puzzles to solve. There's nothing too taxing though, with this game firmly aimed towards the fun side of the market rather than the serious campaign style of gameplay that could have been implemented.

If I had one gripe about the preview I was given, it's that the enemies are too accurate. Since you have to kill all the aliens and destroy all their bases (or the human bases that have been taken over) you spend a lot of time shooting. The gun emplacements that are a pretty standard defensive weapon (and are used to great effect alongside the meteor shower) are reasonably easy to destroy with a couple of well-placed rockets, however they are extremely accurate. The aliens you encounter are also similarly accurate, meaning in some cases you find yourself suddenly beset by enemies from all sides and very quickly destroyed. There were also a couple of other small niggles that will hopefully be fixed by the final release, such as the radar jammer that doesn't :)

It's not all doom and gloom though. Frontier have taken the save point concept and put it in place in an extremely logical way. Not only do you have the option of saving every time you change maps - whether or not you've finished that mission - but there are 'save points' dotted around the map. These are generally in fairly safe areas, so you can complete part of the mission, come back and refuel (as it were), hit the save gem and head back into the fray.

Overall, Infestation is an interesting mix of racing, shooting, resource collecting and puzzle solving, all wrapped up in an easily accessable package. Also included are a number of multiplayer modes, but I've not been able to check those out yet - although I'll hopefully have a look once a couple of review copies fall through my letterbox :) I can see myself playing this game a little to much sometimes - just to see what the next world looks like, and what extra powerup I can get for my ickle buggy.