ON the surface, you would think this was just another online role-playing game and for the most part you'd be right. As usual you can raise your skills, develop your character and then complete quests in teams, but there is a change in the face of the game.

Rather than the expected fantasy setting, Anarchy Online sets you up in a futuristic sci-fi world with all sorts of weapons from swords to guns, making it the only futuristic online game on the market.

Interestingly, the game also has a four-year cycle, over which time a huge story will unfold, with the players choosing which side they want to back. So in four years, there will be definite winners and definite losers.

The gaming world itself is immense. Once you have selected your character and profession, it's time to start advancing your skills. By killing monsters, you earn points which can later be used to raise skills of your choice dpending on which way you want to progress yourself.

Once you have developed enough, you can be assigned missions which is a great way of keeping yourself occupied when you get tired of constantly killing monsters that you come across.

The 3D environment of this game works well and the futuristic cities within the game are very impressive. The music is quite good, though the weapons sound effects can become annoying.

These sort of online role-playing games are usually best played in groups - after all that's the whole point of paying the extra cost to play online, but though you get to share experience points the game falls short on helping you to form teams.

The range of words you can type appears to be very limited, which makes conversations difficult at times. Also when forming groups, everyone is trying to find people of the same level, so they can get good gains from the monsters they attack, and this adds to the group problem.

When you find someone to talk to, they do not want to team up because it's not worth it to them when they are stronger than you, meaning new characters are often forced to work alone until they reach a lot higher levels.

If you do manage to form a team, this should make for a very good online role-playing game.

Graphics 4/5

Sound 4/5

Gameplay 3/5

Lastability 4/5

Overall 4/5

Specs: Pentium 300, 64MB Ram, 8MB Video Card, 700MB Free Hard Disk Space, internet connection