... A way of life

The adventure Corruption begins where Hampstead ended - in scenario, sophistication and subtlety and just about anything else you care to think of.

The story opens with you, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, having just earned a partnership in a City firm of brokers. Your task initially is to stay alive, later to stay out of jail, and finally to defeat the machinations of those by whom you have been lined up as a fall guy.

This attractively presented package consists of an Archimedes disc, a tape - essential listening before starting - and a nice little addition to your Filofax giving playing details, encyphered hints and some very useful, background information.

To get the full benefit of the graphics you need one megabyte of memory - which makes me so glad I have a Archimedes 310M. Should you have a backplane and rom expansion card fitted, you might well have to enter *UNPLUG Podule before the game will run. After that, simply enter *GAME and you are up and away.

I was astounded at the quality of the loading screen - it really did look just like a photograph - but I was less impressed by the banal music that accompanied it. Pressing the spacebar soon relieved that problem and there I was in my new office being reassured by David, my new partner, who then asked me to do a little errand for him.

The playing screen is split into three. At the top is the name of your location and - disguised as a clock - a move counter. Below that is the graphics window showing one of the superb illustrations, and finally text of aquality equal to the graphics.

There are also four mouse-operated icons labelled Files, Text, Goodies and Specials. Files provides the Save, Quit, Restore and Restart options and Text offers a variety of options giving combinations of message lengths and graphics. To my mind, Normal is the best of these, since it provides a full description of each new location and a shorter one when you next revisit.

Goodies provides you with an inventory, a list of the exits from each location, entry to the hint decoding facility and Look which re-describes the current location in full. Specials reveals the option to send all the text to aprinter - a useful way of keeping an accurate record of your progress - and it also provides your score and a list of pronouns with their referents. This assistance is vital to your understanding what you have to do. Finally, not least, a list of the game credits is provided.

Thus you start this fascinating adventure well equipped with utilities to assist the gameplay. The parser is fairly sophisticated and - as the instructions make clear - allows such input as:

OPEN THE DESK'S TOP DRAWER WITH THE MASTER KEY AND LOOK INSIDE IT

GET THE FAKE BLUEPRINTS FROM MY JACKET POCKET AND PUT THEM INTO THE FOLDER.

You can talk to the various characters met in the adventure, ask them about other characters and give them information. This is a vital tool in building up a clear picture of what you must do.

Initially I wandered around innocently, doing David's bidding, accepting everything I was told at face value and so on. I dutifully explored my work area, popped into the loo to powder my nose, met Bill Hughes - such a nice, trustworthy man - and then went to do some shopping.

Unfortunately I forgot about my credit card and landed up in the slammer along with a most dubious character called McNally.

Using the restart option, I tried again. This time I explored a little more carefully and discovered how vital to progress the use of the word EXAMINE is: You won't get far without frequent use of this instruction. I helped myself to the contents of my own filing cabinet, talked to anumber of people and once again went out exploring.

This time I managed to get run over: There must be a way of leaving the hospital without being encased in a coffin, but I haven't quite worked that out yet, even though I am progressing where mobility is concerned in spite of polar bears. However, that dratted Nurse Stephenson will keep popping me back into bed all the time.

Later explorations have involved listening at doors, vandalising a Volvo to good purpose and having a tedious time with my wife. Similarly, I've explored the park carefully and I am having driving lessons because I'm sure that a car chase is involved somewhere.

There's a motto writ large on the underside of the packaging box - it reads: "In the real world, the good guys rarely win." Providing you take that on board, you'll stand a fair chance at cracking this superb adventure.

Readers will realise that I've not succeeded yet, but I'm working on it. I've never before been so stunned by the graphics that I've taken them as an integral - and essential - part of an adventure game rather than optional illustrations that can be turned off at will because they tend to interfere with the text and thus the storyline.

Where there are no illustrations, the text is well able to stand on its own. Here's an example:

"The stale air of the city hangs all around you here, clogging your lungs. The only refuge from the fumes and the crowds along London Road is to cross over into the relative seclusion of the park. The only safe means of crossing is via a set of traffic lights to the north, outside Le Monaco restaurant. Your office building is to the south and a ramp leads east into the office car park."

This is the class of adventure that Archimedes owners have been waiting for - it certainly exploits the memory and graphics capability in away that I've not seen before. Ican t wait to see other games of this calibre.

Mad Hatter