FRENCH COMIC BOOK Don't you just love it when things are simple. Try this: Get Dexter, a French game licensed over here by PSS, is the best game I have ever seen on an Amstrad. If you play games you will require around two nanoseconds peek at one screen shot before you start drooling.  .png)
The game is the culmination of the game style begun by Ultimate with Knight Lore - imagine that game in hi-res multicolour, with as-toundingly imaginative graphics that mix French comic book styles with odd alien beasties derived from blue period cubists. Imagine that you can pull or push around virtually any object to your heart's content, add moving platforms, jump platforms, vicious wrought iron gates, a punk with a mohican haircut and at least one blonde nurse (maybe more) and you have something of the character of the game. You are the hero, Dexter, and aided by a strange yellow pet (which behaves like a dog but looks like a vacuum cleaner), you are seeking the letters that make up a code word. Then find the central computer and Bob's your uncle, or the world's saved, or something (I had problems translating the plot from the French). Getting the letters is a matter of finding the correct uses for numerous bizarre objects scattered around the many rooms. Some are easy - footpads which open doors, others are weird - I mean do I need the vase of flowers or not? It's becoming a little wearisome to keep describing games as interactive movies but I can think of no other game that mixes such spectacularly detailed, beautifully animated, and more than anything else, character-full graphics with such a wide freedom of action. Here's an example -1 decided to do a little furniture rearranging in one of the hospital bedrooms (don't ask me why there are hospital bedrooms) - having happily shunted around the bed and some chairs I decided to move some charts on the wall and what should I discover but . . . I'll leave it to you. I spent hours with the game and hardly scratched the surface of what's possible - for one thing I haven't yet found a reason to press the button that lets you ‘call' your little vacuum cleaner dog though it seems that some of the cubist monsters don't like water. The sound effects and music are wonderful as well. No matter what else you've been saving for, buy this game, and have your Spectrum and Commodore owning friends green with envy. It's out in three weeks. PCW | 
