Producer: Argus Press Software
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Designed by Ron Harris and Paul Clansey, programmed by Concept Software

The Force represents an unusual approach to strategy gaming. Instead of being a military commander in charge of winning a battle against an easily identifiable foe by the process of eliminating the opposition's forces, the player's task is to run a town's constabulary. This presents far more of a challenge to the player, as the police are a peaceful force in a generally peaceful society and the 'enemy' is not easily observable. The supposedly typical town of Middletown has been created as the backdrop for the strategy. It has many of the features of atypical' small city, complete with urban, suburban and residential housing; centres of entertainment; industrial estates and the unfortunate but realistic run-down, underdeveloped areas. Middletown also has its own airport.

Across the town are four police stations. Each has its own particular equipment and policing style. Your job is to effectively control and co-ordinate these four stations with the aim of keeping down crime whilst simultaneously creating a good community atmosphere.

The individual tasks include visits by VIPs who arrive at the airport, meetings of all kinds, marches, football matches (the town has an aspiring team that is climbing up the League, though there has been no trouble to date) and traffic control. Such tasks are incorporated into the daily routine of making sure there is enough manpower available for the day's three shifts and, of course, throughout the week.

Gameplay is fairly straightforward, as the whole simulation is icon driven. An overall view of the town may be split into any of four more localised views, with a police station at the centre of each. These are shown in pictorial form during the deployment of units. They may later be viewed as collections of colour coded icons which show the crime level in the locality. The lighter the colour, the higher the crime rate in an area.

Units are deployed by selecting the icon for the type of unit you want (foot, motorised and so on) and positioning it over the area that needs covering. The diary for the week ahead needs to be checked while deploying forces. Units selected to police the events in the diary have to be taken from the correct station, day and shift. The computer will not allow for error here. A message window at the bottom of the screen tells you how the events go, and tells you of any other crimes that happen during the week.

The statistics for the week may be examined to help a strategy for the coming week to be devised so you can try to meet the changing requirements of each area of the city. At the end of the week a mini arcade section puts the player in control of the traffic computer. As cars and trucks move along a perimeter road and venture towards the centre of the city, everything has to be kept running smoothly. The priority on a set of lights is toggled by moving a cursor over them and pressing fire - the lights remain green for traffic flowing in the selected direction until they're changed by the player. This part of the game only lasts for a minute, so speed and accuracy are essential for maintaining a good traffic flow. After the arcade sequence has been played through, a message rates your performance as Superintendent.

Whilst Argus Press have taken an original approach to a strategy game, there are problems. Three manuals are supplied with the game - one is a local information guide, another is a training manual suggesting strategies and guidelines for the many problems that might arise, and the third manual explains how to interact with the computer. None of them are particularly good. They constantly stress the difficulty of the situation but offer little in the way of a coherent guide to play. Strategies are expounded upon in reasonable detail, but the actual instructions for play are sloppy, unclear and incomplete. No proper explanation for the meaning of some of the kerns appears for instance. A first time player will not get into the game very quickly.

The screen layout is good - it's bright, Informative and intelligently constructed. The traffic control section appears to be an excuse to add variety to gameplay without any consideration for the internal logic of the game. It is supposed to represent changes to the programming of the traffic computer, but even if a Superintendent had to be a qualified programmer it is unlikely that he would need to implement changes in real time. Another approach may have been better in this case.

These are however, small niggles. The real problem with The Force is that there isn't enough game there. Whilst it's subtle to have an'unseen enemy', what results is very abstract play consisting of not much more than shoving a few icons around a screen. I sometimes felt that ft was rather like shooting in the dark. Granted, this is where the challenge is supposed to lie but it's all too much of the same for me. There are no logistics to consider, no shape to the course of the game and never any obvious signs of progress.

There is no precedent by which to judge the authenticity of the game and I would give AaGU6 the benefit of the doubt and say that it appears to be realistic - senior police officers were consulted during the design phase. However, it must be remembered that the simulation is a microcosm of a 'conflict' that is still going on around us. There are no historical notes or papers on Policing in the Eighties. I remember the authors who published books about the Falklands War before the conflict had even been resolved. The real situation in this case has not come to its conclusion as yet, and consequently, it is rather difficult to judge any kind of conclusion in the game in terms of comparative success or failure. You are only left with extremes. I, for one, am unsatisfied.

Mind Games
£9.95

This is an icon-driven strategy game that simulates the duties of a newly promoted divisional superintendent (stand up straight when I'm talking to you!) and his attempts to deal with crime in Middletown, Middlethorpe. And, yes, it's a rather middling game. In TV terms it's nearer to The Bill than Starsky And Hutch as it attempts to get beneath the glamour to the nitty-gritty of a policeman's lot. Hill Street Blues without the jokes.

In many respects The Force, with its use of multiple maps, statistics and a barrage of facts to create a smokescreen of reality, is closer to war games and battle simulations. Well, you've heard tell of the 'war against crime'! But Mind Games emphasises that winning this fight (and so increasing your rating) has more to do with deployment and communication skills than the use of violence, hi-tech weaponry and machinery. Armed police are never called in, though there is always the Chief Constables Reserve Foce for emergencies. But you're advised to use it rarely - its short term achievements will ultimately lose you community goodwill, your prime measure of success.

Mind Games has tried to combine reality with some sense of the moral responsibilities of policing but whether there's enough 'whizz bang, 'allo, 'allo, you're nicked my son' to make it a commercial success is another question.

The Force package includes three manuals - New User's Guide, Training and Local Information - that give you all the information you need to play. Essentially your division (one overall screen) splits into four sub-divisions (a screen each) which in turn is split into four. Each sub-division has its own character (whether suburban, inner city and so on) and peculiar crime problems. From your seven resources - Bobbles on the beat to Crime Prevention Officers - you have to allocate the appropriate forces to deal with the crimes revealed on the screen.

It may sound simple but, like chess, you can move your men without being too sure what the opposition is up to. The more you play, though, the more you'll suss things out.

To complicate things even further there's a diary screen that informs you of special events during the week, ranging from royal visits to flying pickets. At the, end of each week there's a traffic control exercise and your final weekly rating is a combination of this, community goodwill and the new crime statistics.

Definitely a game for those who want to test brain muscle rather than reflexes, especially if you've plenty of patience. But plod on, Plod, it's worth it. And good night, all.

Label: Argus
Authors: Concept
Price: £9.95
Memory: 48K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jerry Muir

'Ello, 'ello, 'ello. 'Ere's a chance for all you trainee Knackers of the Yard to deploy your forces round what appears to be an anonymous London suburb and its four stations in an icon-driven management game.

And it's not easy to keep the criminal classes under control.

The key elements in getting the bobbies on the right beats are the crime rates and the diary. The statistical evidence on types of crime in certain environments should help you cover them successfully (even though you are horrendously undermanned... continued Police Review) though with three shifts a day and four areas to every station that's an awful lot of information to assimilate.

The diary contains those unique events that go to prove the policemans life is not an 'appy one. There's the meeting at the industrial estate or the Saturday Football Match. Will you send extra forces to the ground only to find that the visiting Millwall fans were meek as little lambs while Mr Knuckles and Nosher made off with your next week's payroll?

None of this ignores that thorny topic, police relations. Pile all your plain clothes thugs... sorry, best men, into a deprived area and you'll find you've got an image problem.

At the end of every week you get to control the traffic around town. Quite what a top cop is doing on point duty is never satisfactorily explained but if this is the way the commanders carry on no wonder law and order's in the state it is. I suspect this frantic sixty seconds of changing signals is included to get the adrenalin flowing, however sluggishly, after the tedium of a week behind your desk.

Tedium is the word to describe The Force. As a game it's more The Farce. Unless you're heavily into resource management simulations I bet you won't even get through the manuals for this one. Even though it's dressed up with maps and symbols, icons and scrolling messages, it can't fail to disguise the fact that at heart it's all a series of repetitive tasks.

It all becomes a lot of hard work with far too little variety. The manuals themselves aren't particularly helpful, the pictograms are often puzzling and the nesting of command screens isn't always helpful.

I have no reason to doubt that these are the day to day problems faced by real police commanders and I pity them. But I can't see many games players getting pleasure from such routine unless they're heavily into repetitive bureaucracy.

Argus Press Software
£9.95

Congratulations, Sir, on your promotion to Superintendent. After countless years plodding (no joke intended!) around the streets telling people where the Gents are, you have finally made the grade. In your new role you will have less contact with the general public, nor will you be able to spend hours at the pub during lunch time!

As Super, you must both maintain a satisfactory level of community goodwill, and police your area efficiently enough to stop any massed rioting. Thankfully you have been provided with three manuals, each of which give you clues and advice on how to make the most of your precarious position.

Argus Press Software's latest game, The Force, is not one that will appeal wildly to arcade fans, yet it can be really fascinating to play. Your first task is to plan ahead for the weekly shifts. Although you cannot be expected to control each officer on a minute by minute basis, you are expected to have made sure that there are enough men to cope with any eventualities.

In each diFferent area that you control there are areas where more police are likely to be needed at specific times; Saturday afternoon at the football ground needs crowd control, and you will be expected to have checked your diary and planned ahead.

You must also be able to differentiate between when you will need certain types of police. I found that cars were needed most during the night shift (4pm to midnight), presumably to cope with the drunken drivers!

As well as coping with theft, muggings, burglaries, and the like, you must take on the more mundane tasks such as ensuring the traffic flows smoothly around town, and for this you will be rewarded in the way of popularity - as long as everything keeps moving.

Thankfully your predecessors have left you a series of notes which detail the most efficient ways of crime prevention, but sometimes a compromise is necessary, and the decision rests on your head...

Using a joystick/keyboard driven pointer, a la Macintosh, means that playing is very simple and this combined with reasonable graphics means The Force is one of Argus' best recent releases. If you do well, something I never quite managed, I am assured that you receive promotion - but unfortunately the public never took a liking to me, is this a reflection on my policy of banning football?

If you fancy a game that stretches more than your joystick, The Force could well be for you. I found it enthralling, though fortunately I can't vouch for its realism!!!