Producer: Players
Retail Price: £1.99
Author: Alex Williams

Matt Lucas isn't a car emulsion, he's a private investigator who zips around in a red Ferrari, pulling up now and again to use it as a prop to pose against, leaning on the windscreen with gun purposefully pointed at the action (how's that for a Russell Harty introduction?).

The tough American city where this chap ekes his living is none other than the drugs capital of the States, Miami, lying luxuriously white-washed on the eastern seaboard of the sun-kissed peninsula of Florida. The curious geography of this coast probably explains how Matt always seems to be strolling by the sea, as inlets, harbour walls and sand-bars allow great intimacy with the ocean (sorry folks. I can't quite seem to kick this Russell Harty flavour).

In this, the land where red smarties are banned, it's your job to infiltrate the seedy drug culture of Florida and find out what has happened to your partner in crime-fighting, John Harpinger. It seems that the poor chap has been taken hostage by a ruthless gang, therefore it's your most immediate task to follow the trail of clues to the kidnapper's hideout. Your colleagues on the precinct are Cosby, Deringer and Makepeace (I made that last one up) under the world-weary direction of Lieutenant Davis.

This program (which appears to be a GAC clone) doesn't set the world alight with innovation, but I was most impressed with its competence for such a low asking price. The location descriptions show a fine writing style, the problems are interesting (even if the solutions are unimaginative), and the program makes good use of informative EXAMINE statements to keep the game moving along. Try these two location descriptions:

'Matt is near a T junction. Suddenly all the wealth of the city gives way briefly for the poverty of the high-rise flats', and 'Matt is outside the precinct. As he looks up at the familiar building he cannot help but think of his good friend and colleague, John Harpinger.'

These passages may seem unremarkable, but they are representative of a style which goes some way beyond the 'I am in/You can see' cliches of lesser games.

The game vocabulary is friendly without being a pushover; it might take a little while to get the right word combinations, but once achieved the correct solutions appear to be the most logical, or at least elegant. In the butcher's there's meat, which apparently must be bought with some presently non-existent money, and sawdust. EXAMINE SAWDUST gives 'Yellow and dusty. Very interesting!' while TAKE SAWDUST tells you in no uncertain terms, 'What the hell for?!' One non-standard useage is a reliance on TAKE only, with no GET option. However, any annoyance over this omission is somewhat assuaged by the use of the abbreviation of T for TAKE.

A good many locations can be explored before the player has to do anything beyond simply mapping the adventure, and it's quite some time before the first objects begin to take on unmistakable associations. A car standing in a filling station with its petrol cap removed, a tube and a container is one of the more obvious strings of objects that no doubt can be brought to bear on the problem of getting that red Ferrari started - sadly, it just isn't going to work when it's found in the very first location.

Getting some way into the game reveals only good things, but some may gall at the very slow response times; for example SMASH VASE isn't the right way to go about making the vase you find in Phil's place useful, but it takes the program an awfully long time to look through its vocabulary to tell you this. There's also the small point of missing part of the game should you play with TEXT only (and to be quite honest, although the graphics are by no means the worst I've seen, repeating them so often allows the player to become jaundiced with their overwhelming simplicity, so playing text-only can't be ruled out). A computer lies on your desk in your office and inserting a disk (found elsewhere) causes a map to show up on the computer screen. Unfortunately you won't see this map on the TEXT option (although, admittedly, it won't take you long before you realise that you've missed something). But small niggles apart, Matt Lucas is a really tine game for the asking price.

Difficulty: easy
Graphics: average
Presentation: redesigned character set
Input facility: verb/noun
Response: sluggish

Label: Players
Author: Alex Williams
Price: £1.99
Reviewer: John Gilbert

Good to see another decent budget adventure title. This time it's from Players and its been written using Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator.

Matt Lucas, PI is set in Florida, the centre of the world's drugs trade. It's a tough place for a private investigator to eek out a living. Your partner, John Harpinger, has been kidnapped by a gang of dope peddlars and you've got to find him.

You're on good terms with the local cops. It's Davis, Cosby and Deringer and, if you can spot them, there are the clues the gang left behind, but your car's broken down by the side of the road and the city just don't look the same on foot.

From the breakdown site you have two choices. Either go south and walk along the gusty cliffs, looking down at the beach or head into town where you'll find you pal's pad and the downtown precinct. Harpinger's place is locked up so take a look at his desk down at police HQ. The game's detailed, swiftly drawn, picture of the desk shows a computer and two software packages by its side, neither of which are the blindest use.

In the drawer you'll find a hairpin - this mate of yours is pretty strange - and of course you know what to do with it. Go back to Harpinger's place, pick the lock with the hairpin and get the floppy disc he's hidden amongst his personal effects. Go back to the precinct, load the disc into the computer and a map of Florida's seedier dives is drawn on the screen.

From there on quality of the locales continues to dive - you get to go to some real dodgy dives. Most of the plot solutions rely on simple object transposition, such as finding and taking the hairpin to the flat, finding the disc and taking it back to the precinct.

The text parser is also a simple verb/noun affair, straight from the Graphic Adventure Creator which even makes a guest appearance at the precinct.

You get a lot for £1.99. This is one of the better Players efforts. The company hasn't been able to hit the Mastertronic standard of quality yet, but Matt Lucas marks a change for the better. Good quality low rent adventuring.

Players
£1.99

Matt Lucas is an adventure in the Miami Vice vein. You play the eponymous detective; you have a Ferrari and a boat (though no crocodile). One of the graphics even features a face which, if you squint, looks like Don Johnson. Your colleague Harpinger has been kidnapped; rescue him, and in so doing clear up some of the other vice in the unnamed Florida city. The detection here is not in the Sherlock style; more traditional adventure hazards must be overcome (how to enter a flat, fuel your boat etc).

What is interesting about Matt Lucas is that it is GACed: and GACed well. The other GACed games I've reviewed - including the ones from Incentive themselves - have performed badly in comparison with Quilled adventures. Matt Lucas shows what can be done. Adding a redefined character set and using colour better make much difference and show up GAC's good points - static graphics, multiple command entry, GET ALL etc. Mind you. I still feel GAC's response time is too slow.

As an adventure Lucas is amiable enough, though generally primitive. There's no true attempt at realism, neither in the portrayal of the locations, nor in the nature of the detective work. Compared with CRL's Murder Off Miami, Lucas becomes laughably crude. But the puzzles are pleasant enough to while some time away with. The vocabulary is, sadly, very small; and the game responses are extremely limited (for example you can TIP VASE UP to remove a note but you cannot SMASH or BREAK it).

Matt Lucas is a respectable enough budget title, but nothing special.