Gearheads

Like a 3-year-old's bedroom, this war of the wind-up toys starts out in orderly fashion but quickly devolves into total chaos. The game involves launching funky playthings (''disasteroids,'' ''deadheads'') across a playing field, where they either overwhelm your enemy's opposing pieces — or are flattened by them. Although Gearheads looks and sounds great, the action moves too quickly to control easily using the keyboard. Still, it's convenient that the game runs directly from the CD-ROM drive, and it's even nicer that you can play it in a small, relatively unobtrusive window on your desktop. B-