General Garantz is threatening to nuke the world if we don't give in to his demands. And that's why I'm standing at this deserted railway station, awaiting further instructions.

Rick Hanson's the name, and I guess you could call me a special agent.

I'm a tough, no-nonsense detective with a gritty determination and nerves of steel (but I just hate spiders!)

I've sniffed areound a few text adventures in my time, including the disc-only type which is what this is, so you could say I know what I'm talking about.

And what I'm talking about is quality with a capital Q which is what this one has in spades.

Sure, there's plenty of locations, the parser's ace, the response time is fast and the puzzles are neat - but that don't necessarily make it the bee's knees in my book.

Where it brings home the bacon is in the quantity, detail and atmosphere of the descriptions. No threadbare one-liners from Robico - what they give is nothing less than fulsome and relevant prose coupled with a slick smatter of humour.

So there I was at the station. Being Rick Hanson, my first thought was to snoop around outside the entrance to see if I'd been followed. I had.

A suspicious character dodged behind a parked car, and then somewhere above, a window broke.

In the time it took to look up, there was the crack of gunfire and a bullet ripped through my chest, hurling me to the floor.

Some you win, some you lose. I restarted and this time began exploring the station. I found a tape recorder, which told me to get my tail over to the inn in the next village where I would be contacted further about my mission, which was to assassinate Garantz.

The recorder self-destructed - the Chief thinks of everything. Pity I was holding it at the time. This was not turning out to be my lucky day.

Once more into the breach, I just had to find some way out of this station. A goods train passing under the bridge offered distinct possibilities and apart from a fracas with the guard, I had no more trouble until I reached the village outskirts.

There was plenty to explore here and it seemed my task had barely begun. One final interesting point, I've never before been sent on an assignment where one of the ways you can get yourself killed is by sneezing yourself to death!

Robico promises two more Rick Hanson adventures in the future. They'd better hurry up or I might just have to visit them with a small helping of knuckle pie.

This is one wowser of an adventure, so good that Level 9 had better hold tight to its laurels. Here's looking at you, kid.