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The ship had only been out of port for a short while when the murder took place. You know what it's like. Run out of port and people sober up and get nasty. Luckily, the fortunate discovery of some cans of Cydrax prevented mass genocide.

But we must not joke of such things. An extremely unpleasant act has taken place. As grim a tableau as ever one could wish. A dreadful, horrific crime of almost Poe-like proportions. Someone's croaked someone else. And you, as the callow sleuth, must point your pixellated finger at the evil villain.

Could it be Hector, the mild-mannered SS officer? Or Tom and Rebecca? They look so much in love that you might forget they were both last seen leaving Jonestown in a hurry. What about Suzanne? Surely she doesn't wear that bandolier packed with 7.62mm steel-jacketed ammunition just for sartorial effect? Well you certainly won't find out by reading this review, that's for sure. You should suspect everybody and suspect nobody.

Cruise For A Corpse is a point and click affair, utilising the Cinemateque system. This means that if you're observant you can select even the smallest details with the mouse and interact with them; reading notes, sniffing empty Cydrax cans knowlingly, even checking DNA scrapings that are left on the stairwells.

The advantage of the system is that you are free to wander the length and breadth of the ship, searching for people to make polite conversation with, discovering clues and stealing expensive-but-small items of jewellery.

The wealth of detail in each screen means that it takes a while simply to play the game, even if you're being efficient with the mouse. There are five disks, and as you explore, you swap them constantly. Yes, in time (lots of time) you learn to hate the disk accessing icon, as it sits rather smugly at the side of the screen loading in the graphical data for the next portion of investigating.

But if you're interested enough to embark upon a game which, by its very nature, is deep and abiding, you are certainly not going to be put off by a spot of floppy mungeing. In fact, you might welcome it as a chess-player welcomes a couple of fhours of deliberation time (what a farrago that Nigel Short thing was, eh?).

And Cruise For A Corpse is a game in which time ceases to matter. Once you start, and you get a grip on the problem of who killed whom, you probably resign yourself to being the sad, hunched figure, clicking the mouse buttons with fingers freezing in the pre-dawn chill, as the sun struggles above the icy horizon. And it's nearly time to go to school or work.

The game looks so good and plays so well that, as a budget job, it's well worth getting. It takes a while to finish, during which time you can enjoy the slightly surreal French view of life aboard ship.

The graphics are superb, the puzzles tricky enough and the touches of humour just the right side of smirksome. Unless you won't mistake Cruise For A Corpse as anything other than a giant murder-mystery adventure, and if you decide that's what you're after then dally, dawdle and delay no longer and sprint bravely to the nearest software vendor.

And if you're not sure whether you are going to like it, then get it anyway. It's a lot of fun, by golly.

1. It's big and very lovely to look at.
2. It's also great fun to play for great long stretches of time.

1. Did I say "great long stretches of time"? Well, the five disks need their exercise, and things don't happen fast on board a ship...