Murders in Venice - Cobrasoft/Infogrames RRP œ29.99
       (Graphic icon-driven adventure, no text input)

Venice! A beautiful city, visited by many tourists each year. A
city of canals, piazzas, gondolas, famous bridges, dead bodies
and terrorists.....

Yes, Venice is having its problems. A group of terrorists has
threatened to detonate a bomb in the city. Meanwhile a hysterical
woman swears that she has shot someone, but there's no body to be
found and a young man has had his flat robbed. The police don't
seem to have any idea what to do, so it's up to you to work out
what's going on, find the bomb and disarm it and work out who the
criminals are. Easy? Read on....!

Murders in Venice is a beautifully presented adventure, as we
have come to expect from Infogrames. The main screen is divided
into two sections. The top part shows a picture of the part of
Venice you're currently in and this section will scroll left and
right as you visit locations along the Grand Canal, meeting
possible suspects and searching for clues.  A map of this area is
provided in the packaging with some (but not all) of the
locations you can visit marked on it.

Clicking the mouse on a building that contains an important
character brings up their digitized picture. Your picture,
looking suspiciously like Humphrey Bogart (though you can
change it if you wish) is displayed in the bottom section of
the screen. Click on your head (!) and a "thought bubble" will
appear giving options to frisk the person or search their room.
Click in the thought bubble and you will see the results of
your actions.

You can also question the characters by clicking on your mouth.
Several options will be given and these will change as you
continue your investigations. In this way, you can meet a wide
collection of individuals, get their alibis and form your
conclusions about their guilt or innocence.


The packaging is impressive, even beyond the standard of the old
Infocom games as there are loads of bits and bobs enclosed. These
can be linked up with the characters in the game as you'll be
told when an object in the package is discovered when you frisk
someone or search a room. The objects include a pair of scissors,
some buttons, a safety pin and roll of film.

There is also a poster-size sheet of tickets, membership cards,
postcards, some negatives and many other items which you are
advised to cut out to make it easier to connect these with the
suspects as these "paper clues" will also be discovered during
the course of the game.

Every attempt has been made to give realism to the game. The
clock ticks away as you play so there is a feeling of suspense as
you try to beat the terrorists' deadline. There are several icons
on the bottom of the screen which allow you to photograph the
individuals and put their pictures in an album which you can then
show to other characters to see if they recognise them. As you
start to collect people's names, you can start to fill in an
investigation file which gives pages from A to Z, one of which
can be devoted to each person and can contain information about
them including their photo.  A notebook, also available from an
icon, will give 9 pages of notes which can be copied direct from
the main screen.

If you want to find out how far you've got with the game, you can
call up a test where you'll be asked several questions about the
game. You can also practise defusing the bomb just in case you
get that far in your investigation!

Murders in Venice is an excellent game which will, no doubt, take
a long time to complete. Marvellous graphics, good sound effects
(including a lovely "splash" when you click the mouse on the
canal by mistake) and lots and lots of detail, both within the
packaging and in the game itself. I'm not normally a fan of
detective games but I'll make an exception for this one.

                                               Sue