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Comics have undergone a change since Superman first pulled his undies over his tights, and Robin climbed into his pixie boots. They're much much tougher, twice as streetwise and bang up-to-date. Give me a game called Comics and I can guarantee you'll grab my attention.

Just imagine the chance of playing an animated Tintin, or swallowing the mouse whole in Ton and Jerry... Well, Accolade's Comics doesn't quite do that. You don't even get the chance to write your own script.

What you do get is the brainchild of (I think) Steve Keene, a bald bespectacled and probably very rich American yuppie with a fetish for cheap graphic detective novels. 'Steve Keene - Thrillseeker' is his rough cut, smartmouthed, cool-headed animated alter ago. Basically, he's probably all the things his deficient creator isn't.

Steve Keene 'Private Spy' is a comic book with options. Like all these huge American conceptualised packages you get a load of disks to shuffle around and a hole in your pocket. You also get something different. A comic adventure. Once you've crunched your way through the tedious loading procedure you can get started. Frames build up on the screen as the plot progresses. Keene meets his boss and is assigned a mission. The mission you are given depends on how you handle the options which arise during the dialogue.

When Keene has a choice of lines, his speech bubble turns black. Shifting the 'stuck runs through the options which normally include a couple of choices and a smartarse remark. It's tempting to mouth off a lot, but choose the smartarse option too often and you'll get the chop from someone you annoy.

Occasionally you'll be given the opportunity to choose between performing a couple of actions like walking through the front door or climbing in the window. Selecting the wrong one may take the game in a different direction. It may more often be fatal.

Every now and again as you elect an option you will be thrown into an 'arcade sequence' which you'll have to negotiate to continue in the game. There are some eight including 'Bomber', 'Swimmer' and 'Jetpack'. These show a remarkable degree of similarity to old computer games like Defender - 'Jetpack' or Hunchback - 'Building'. Fail here and you lose more of your four lives. Lose the lot and you're back to the beginning of the story and another cuppa whilst you wait for more disk accessing.

The screen itself holds up to about four frames on average, but each one accesses disk as it progresses, so there's much impatient clicking of the joystick button to try and speed it along. Some of the frames are animated quite nicely, a foot treads in some bubble gum which sticks to the sole for example, but the graphics are nothing special. Certainly not the quality of many comic illustrators or even our own Jerry Parris. Nor is there much attempt to design a page by doing something special with the framing.

Sound is pretty minimal and you only get a handful of tunes that become pretty monotonous after a while. Sadly three disks, and six sides do not live up to their promise that it will really "show you what getting into a comic book is all about". The promise of great interaction just isn't fulfilled. Now 'Hotshots - king of slander', there's a good strip!