Under a Killing Moon - US Gold/Access RRP œ59.99
            (Multimedia adventure for PC CD-ROM)

                 Reviewed by Alex van Kaam
               Played on a 8Mb 486 DX2 66 Mhz

Yes here it is, another multimedia sensation, starring Russell
Means, Brian Keith, Margot Kidder and the voice of James Earl
Jones.  It comes on 4 CDs, yes FOUR, and all four of these CDs
are filled with over 600 MB of data.......

The minimum hardware required is stated as followed on the box:
CD-ROM Drive (150KB/sec), 386/25 DX MHZ CPU, SVGA display (VESA
compliant), Hard Drive with 10 MB available, 4 MB RAM, mouse,
sound board.

Well I think most of us can manage this, but here is the hardware
recommended:  Double spin CD-ROM (300KB/sec), 486 with SVGA VESA
Local Bus Display, Hard Drive with 10 MB available, 16 MB RAM, 16
bit sound board.

And believe it or not, in the manual they are already talking
about a Pentium.....

Anyway onto installation, I inserted CD 1 and typed Install, the
first message I got told me that the install program did not
support my graphics card ..... So I ran my VESA driver and tried
again and, yes, it worked.

The first thing to do was to select the hard drive and the path
name, after this the files were installed and I was returned to
the DOS prompt with a message to type 'moon'.

So I type 'moon' and I was greeted with a message that since I
only had less than 4 MB free not all the music and effect will be
played, so I quit back to DOS, added a new part to my
multi-config and autoexec file, after a new bootup I now had 6+MB
free, I typed Moon again and I was greeted with the sound setup,
to my great surprise it had the Gravis Max in the list, so I
choice that for my digital sound, after this I had to choose my
midi sound card, again the Gravis was there but I could not select
it, what now....  I again quit the program and started looking
for a readme file on the disk, I found one and in it I found that
I had to start with 'moongrav'.

So I did this, the patches were loaded and I was again greeted
with the sound setup, all went well this time, then I came to the
main setup screen, my graphics speed was calculated, my CD-ROM
speed and burst speed were tested and I could set some game
preferences, like the window size and rendering quality.

I just kept with the default options and started the game......

The above took me about an hour or so, but the main question is:
was it worth it? In one word the answer must be YES.

As soon as you start you are greeted by a nice ACCESS logo
floating in the air with some movie film around it.  After this
you have to select a new game and the real intro starts, first an
old movie news clip about WW2 and some cults, after that you see
yourself and the Brain Keith in a discussion, the film clip takes
from left to right the full screen and just like in a movie has a
black part on the top and at the bottom.  The animation is nice,
the two actors in a rendered screen, they move nicely and the only
thing you notice is that if one of them is speaking or moving the
other stops until it is his turn.

After the scene is set, you being a Marlow kind of PI, who also
has some Inspector Clouseau habits, and you being a 'norm' which
means that the effect of the radiation after WW3 have no effect on
you, those who it does affect are called 'mutants', the game
starts, you see your office in SVGA graphics and in a window that
is sized (if you kept the default option) 432*324. In the right
top there is your inventory, below that is a control panel and a
window which shows the object you have selected from your
inventory.  Below the large window is an area for the text from
conversations and some replies you can choose from in a
conversation.


Unlike the 7th Guest where you also have a nice SVGA rendered
display, here you can move around in it at your free will, so no
programmed routes, whilst moving the quality doesn't stay as good
but as soon as you stop it is updated, but it always stays nice,
the music on the background is very atmospheric, although it is a
bit dated for a game playing in 2042 after WW3, it does fit in
very nicely as do all the sound and music effects.

The games is made up of 7 days, at the start of the game or the
first day, you come to the conclusion that you want to make
something of your life, so you go out to find some PI work, across
the street there is a pawn shop, soon you find out it has been
burgled and the real action starts.

As long as you stay in one area or room there is no loading, but
when you leave a new area is loaded, this can take some time and
is often very frustrating when you quickly want to go from one
area, say the pawn shop, to your office, you then also have to
wait until the street is loaded, however there is a nice and handy

option called Travel, choosing this you get a map and you can go
to all the locations you know and have already visited.

So if you choose travel from the pawn shop to your office you get
a small movie clip of you crossing the street and your office is
loaded, if the location is further away you see yourself in your
flying car taking off and going to this building or area.  Also
notice that you cross the street or whatever from the right side,
so there is a clip for every choice.

Moving goes with the mouse, click on the middle button or press
the space bar and after that moving the mouse moves you, this is a
bit weird some times but it works okay, you can look up or down
with the cursor key or you can raise or lower your eye level with
the shift and ctrl keys.  Pressing the space bar again stops the
moving and returns cursor control to you, when you move the cursor
onto something it is changes into a magnifying glass, then pressing
left will look at it and if there are more option for that object
you can click right to choose on of these options.

What ever you do, you always get a good remark with it, one that
really fits with the PI you're playing, some even funny.  If you
do something that has a complicated effect the game takes over and
you see yourself in a movie doing whatever has to be done, again
with some funny moments.

And if you are really stuck there is a hint button, pushing it
however means that you lose points and you're not able to get the
perfect 1000 at the end of the game.  Even this section of the
game works nicely, only the hint you really need is given so you
don't see something you really shouldn't see, but it does spoil
the game.

All in all this -I think- is a good and fun game to play, at its
heart it is a normal adventure, get this, and this, use it on that
to get .... The graphics and movie scenes are nicely built around
it, but they don't take over, they add some extra depth into the
game, you really have to look in every corner of a room and spot
objects by yourself, sometimes this can be a bit hard but is
better than say a display that show all object in a room.  The
quality of the graphics and movie clips are great, the sound is
clear as are the voices, although sometimes you hear that
even though two persons who are talking to each other in the same
room the voices were taped at different locations.

Also the game crashed 3 times, I got a DOS 4/GW error and I had
to reset. In the readme file is says that instead of using version
1.95 of DOS 4/GW you should try version 1.97 which is on CD 1,
that made no change in my case.  But the good point is that when
the game has crashed and you re-boot and re-load you are greeted
with a message asking if you want to continue where you left off,
so nothing is lost in the end.







                              - o -