Let's be careful out there

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Cops is available on all Acorn disc formats but I'm going to concentrate on the Archimedes version which has the added facility of using the mouse and Desktop features of that machine.

The screen is divided into two windows, the main one containing the text and any illustrations and the smaller one containing 26 icons for the mouse. All the main directions are available - including IN and OUT together with such basic commands as TAKE, WEAR and INV. I liked this set-up very much indeed.

Another feature that deserves particular mention is the way that words from the screen text can be picked out via the mouse and made part of the command input. This means quite precise instructions can be given, although there are drawbacks.

So there you are, fresh out of Police Academy, on your first roll call at the Hall Street precinct house. The Police Chief has been kidnapped and some villain has been stealing money from local school children.

You and your partner Rob O'Cop are assigned to the theft case and the rest of the officers to the kidnapping. From here on life gets increasingly complicated as you find your way around the initial locations.

Cops isn't what I'd call beginners' fare: It's a challenge for the moderately experienced adventurer who has acquired that degree of patience and pragmatism that means dying fairly frequently in the initial stages of a game.

Providing you have managed to memorise a location or two - which involves some careful work at the initial location - there comes a point where you have access to a patrol car. I took an age trying to get out of the car park: I'd started the engine - no problems there! - but every time I entered the command DRIVE SOUTH (or whatever), back came the response "I need more information".

It took me an age to realise that I needed to enter DRIVE TO (location) and that there were only two locations I could drive to anyway! If you've done the right thing at the beginning you should be able to work out what these two locations are.

In the early stages I found a number of ways to end my career nastily and also found that my buddy Rob provided a much-needed extra pair of hands. I also discovered it is possible to run out of petrol, that if one eats a bowl of extra-hot chilli disaster striks unless you are near a loo, and that a policeman can be mugged.

One of favourite SF stories is by Fritz Leiber Gonna Roll Them Bones where a character shoots craps against Old Nick himself, and I soon discovered that a useful function key setting was one that had the dice a-rolling.

Cops is a pretty good adventure and worth buying, but there are a couple of minor drawbacks to the parser. At times it is rather finicky, and you can have a situation where the location description includes (say) a desk, but when you try to open it, you are told there isn't one!

The pictures aren't quite up to the standards set by the Magnetic Scrolls adventures, but they are more than adequate and provide material clues to solving the adventure at times as well as enhancing the atmosphere. It's a good adventure: Buy it.

Mad Hatter