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San Francisco, in the year 2033. You're Tex Murphy, private investigator. A broad by the name of Sylvia Linsky, a real looker, hires you to find the real cause of her father's death. Officially it was suicide, but she believes he was murdered.

All you've got to help you solve the case if $10,000, a sizable gun, a gorgeous assistant and a sleek, technology packed hover-car. Can you find you why Carl Linsky died or will you end up in the harbour, sieving algae through your teeth?

With Mean Streets US Gold have gone for the hi-tech approach and produced a new twist in arcade adventures: it's not just stick men and cute graphics, but four different modes - travel, search, shootout and interrogate.

You spend most of your time travelling in your hover-car, which is also your office, where you receive faxes and make video calls to either your assistant Vanessa or your snout Lee (they're both swell broads, and you can count on them to come up with a lead when you need one).

When you call them, you hear them in digitised sound and see them in respectable animation. When a fax comes in, a convincing blow-up of the fax machine shows the paper scrolling out.

You move around either manually or by autopilot, though most of the flying is best left to the car: you simply enter the navigation screen and key in the Nav-code for where you want to go. You gradually learn the codes for various sites and can then speak to different people and chase more leads.

You can choose external views, so when you're landing at a particular location you look straight down and get an overview as you come in sight of a building.

In the search scenes you see a large representation of yourself as you wander around a room. To examine an object you move the joystick up and down to select it and then move the joystick left and right to choose what you want to do from a range of options at the bottom of the screen (manipulate, taste, get, open or switch on or off).

The shootouts are very intense experiences after your laid-back trip to the location in the hover-car. You must make your way across the screen from left to right through the hordes of bad guys trying to blow you away. Fortunately you can hide behind a convenient crate and duck to dodge their bullets.

On the interrogation screens you see a blow up of the person you're talking to and ask questions by typing in keywords in response to a prompt. The answers you get depend entirely on who the person is; some are more forthcoming than others. If the straightforward approach fails, you can either hit them or bribe them. Certain members of the police force enjoy the extra dosh, and certain members of the public respond if you stick your fist in their larynx. (Use your own skill and judgement!)

The sound is excellent. Surprisingly clear samples play whenever someone talks or a sound effect, such as the fax operating, is called for. The attention to detail in the visual effects is exemplary: when somebody speaks on the video phone her face moves in sync with the digitised speech; when you interrogate people their facial expressions change depending on what you're asking. The flight scenes in the hover-car are smooth and faultless, and the graphic representation of you in the driver's seat has nice touches such as the way the driver's hands move on the throttle and pitch control as you move the joystick.

Mean Streets will appeal to most people. The graphics and sound are excellent and it's very easy to get into, but it also keeps you playing by revealing clues at just the right moments and demanding some modicum of intelligence to complete. The driving around and the digitised pictures are reminiscent of Resolution 101, but this goes several steps further. If you liked that, then you should enjoy this well-programmed cocktail of flight simulator, adventure game and shoot-'em-up.