Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Presents
                       The Detective
                      (on Disk 1160 PC)

 Tested on a 286, 486 and P200MMX (and I still couldn't get
                the sounds working properly)

                  Reviewed by Nick Edmunds

The Detective is apparently an updated version of an old game in
which you play the role of, bizarrely enough, a Detective, who has
to track down a killer.  The game has a lot of flaws, most of
which are pointed out as you go along, by a bunch of irritating
robots who comment on the action throughout.  Initially, I didn't
understand this.  My reasoning being: if you know the mistakes are
there why not rectify them?  The answer soon became apparent:
because the game would then just be bad, as it stands it's an old,
bad game being subjected to ridicule.  The robots while incredibly
annoying are probably the best thing about this game, as at times
their comments can sum up your feelings very well.

When I first started playing this game I made a list of flaws in
the programming and gameplay, eg. ejected to the dos prompt on
entering some locations (I presume these are the locations that
you automatically die on entering, as mentioned by the irritating
robots at the end of the game) and the man that stays there after
being shot, but these hardly seem relevant when there is no game
here to speak of and most of the mistakes are pointed out by the
robots as they occur anyway.

While AGT isn't my favourite games writing system by a long way,
any AGT flaws are not part of the equation here.  The game is just
badly thought out and poorly tested and the system the game was
written with can't be blamed for that.

There are no puzzles or problems of any sort in this game.  There
is even very little free choice and as such I completed this game
in 60 moves, only two of which weren't directional commands.  A
personal best in game completion it may be, fun it wasn't and I
could not in all conscience recommend this game to anyone.

The instructions, which offer nothing of any practical use, claim
that the detective will make you wish you'd never heard of text
adventures, not strictly true although, it will make almost any
other text adventure game look good in comparison.














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