Producer: Infogrames
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: Gilles Blancon

I thought I'd skip the smart guy intro and get straight into the story for this one.

You have just been appointed Detective Sergeant in the Crime Squad at Saint Etienne, a place known to you, me and every one else who has sat through those interminably boring French lessons at school as just another faceless town on a that country's wallchart. As an Officer of the Police and in your capacity as a Judicial Police Officer, you are capable of leading any criminal investigation (which rules out any comparison to the luckless Clouseau, not to mention the fact that I can't even spell Clouseau).

No sooner have you taken up your new post than you are called upon to investigate what the press are fast terming L'Affaire Vera Cruz, or, in English, another one of those flippin' INFOGRAMES grames, sorry, games. On the 8th of August 1986 you are notified by the caretaker at the Forest apartment block of the discovery of a body. It has been provisionally identified as one of the residents and, from the caretaker's description, it is believed to be a case of suicide with a shotgun as the weapon involved (although I could only find a 9mm pistol).

You and your team must go to the murder scene to ascertain the facts which, in actuality, involves moving a camera around a picture (you know, the one with the attractive young lady lying on the ground). When the cursor lies over some interesting object, like a handbag or ashtray for example, then you take an instant picture which pops up onto the screen. It's worth noting here that the diary needs two photographs - one just shows the outside and it is the second which reveals the very important names inside. It is very easy to miss details here and to rush onto the second investigative part which loads next but, no doubt, like myself, you will resort to sweeping the screen systematically with your viewfinder in order to unearth all the details this scene holds. It would take a Clouseau sense of the inappropriate to try to commit these facts to memory and not to make good use of your notebook.

So onto Part Two and this is where the pace slows, not just because of the need to think out and to see through each investigation, but also because the instructions are inadequate leaving you to flounder in a most Clouseau-like fashion (oh crumbs, there I go mentioning that infamous French clot again, a right cliched review this one's turning into). The State Police Force is one of the oldest French institutions since its origins date back to Napoleon. Its experience regarding judicial matters has led it to computerise rapidly, far in advance of similar services in other countries. So, in addition to traditional methods such as comparing evidence, interviews, sifting through alibis, you can use the Diamond Computer Network. Mastering this sophisticated system is far from easy but once achieved will ensure the tieing together of justice departments, prison administrations and other police services along with the overall body, the National Police HQ.

Code M for message is the first of many access procedures for the Diamond Network. A message addressed to any service must include the code for that service and its base town and must impart as much information as possible.

The P Code stands for printer and this refers to a printer connected to your Spectrum. It must be an 80 column printer, otherwise you're with all the rest who must take notes manually.

S is for Statement. To hear someone's statement you need to know, not surprisingly, their name and whereabouts. E for Examinations encompass things like Autopsy while Comparison allows evidence to be correlated and compared, for example, an alibi from one suspect can be compared to the evidence of another. If you are certain of someone's guilt it only remains for you to arrest the culprit, but arbitrary arrest is the sign of a, oh go on, say it, a... Clouseau type of incompetent.

L'Affaire Vera Cruz is a much more promising release than INFOGRAMES' last - Mandragore - but it fails just as much in presentation to the reviewer. Little help is given to get through what is a very complex game and one can't help but develop a healthy suspicion of games which are just dumped in laps; is it that the company doesn't want the reviewer to get far enough to see through the game? Leaving such weighty considerations aside what can be said is that the program has an irritating auto-repeat on its input routine and the second part of the game chooses blinding white as its background colour (in fact the whole lot, including the super photofits of suspects, are all boring black and white). Regular readers of this column needs any reminder of what I think of that idea!

COMMENTS

Difficulty: very hard to get into the second part
Graphics: very good
Presentation: neat, but that blinding white!
Input facility: keywords and sentences
Response: okay

FAX BOX
Title: The Vera Cruz Affair
Publisher: Infogrames
Price: £7.95

Who is Vera Cruz? You may well ask. In fact, it's a case of who was Vera Cruz. As soon as you load up part one of this two-part adventure you'll get a screenful of Vera lying sprawled across the floor, a pool of blood oozing from her and making a right old mess of the Axminster.

And you, mon brave, are naturally the intrepid detective who has to investigate the death of Vera Cruz and decide whether it really is a case of suicide, as the note found beside the body suggests. The death takes place in St-Etienne in the Loire region of France, where a case of wine is infinitely preferable to a case of murder. But as a newly appointed detective sergeant in the Crime Squad, you can't neglect your duties and off you go to investigate. Its 8th August 1986, and the discovery of the body has just been reported by the caretaker of the Forest apartment block, where Vera Cruz was a resident.

Part one consists of just the single screen showing the scene of the death, and to avoid touching evidence you must make use of a camera to photograph anything that catches your eye. This is done using the cursor keys to move the viewfinder about the screen, and pressing Space to take a snap. You then get a close-up of anything interesting you happen to find. Some things are obvious, like the suicide note and the gun, and others are slightly hidden. For example, you'll need to pay attention to at least one of Vera's extremities - no, not those, you fool. And don't neglect the shadowy areas either. Once you're sure you've covered everything, press ENTER to conclude your investigation and load part two.

This is where the story really starts. Now you have to piece together clues and try to find out what you can do about the life and death of Vera Cruz, using the sophisticated Diamond Computer Network of the French State Police Force. The terminal is shown on the screen, and pressing 'M' allows you to key in any messages you want to send.

Pressing `P' will give you hard copy on your own printer, 'C' allows you to compare evidence and `E' to carry out various examinations, such as fingerprinting or calling for an autopsy report. 'A' awaits for when you're ready to make an arrest.

Whether the game has the complexity of The Fourth Protocol remains to be seen, but after finding out a little about Vera, the gun that killed her and the cartridge found near her body, I'm intrigued to know more about the strangely elusive names, addresses and phone numbers discovered in her diary. Who is Nadine Lafeville, and what goes on at Eva's transport cafe? Screen presentation might prove to be a little boring after a while, as everything takes place at the computer terminal. But for those of you who fancy yourselves as Maigret rather than Inspector Clousseau, you should enjoy investigating the seedier side of French life.

Label: Infogrames
Author: Gilles Blancon
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Brenda Gore

Shades of inspector Clouseau. This is a game for all 'Who dun it' fans.

In L'Affaire Vera Cruz, you take on the role of a newly appointed detective sergeant in Saint Etienne's regional crime squad. Your first case is to investigate the mysterious death of Vera Cruz, whose body was discovered by a caretaker in the Forez apartment block. Was it suicide - or murder?

Proceeding in an orderly fashion, you arrive at the scene of the crime. A high res picture displays the murder scene. You are not allowed to touch the body or its surroundings, but you are allowed to photograph them for clues, searching the picture with a magnifying window which might highlight important details. It is easy to rush through this section of the game, in an attempt to get on with solving the crime, but painstaking efforts now pay dividends later on. Some of the evidence is certainly worth looking at more than once.

Having completed your preliminary enquiries, you make a list of all the evidence you have discovered. Then it is time to do battle with the real enemy of the piece, the French police computer system. Buried away in its multifarious files is the information you will need to solve the case - if you can find it.

The nerve centre of the system is the research co-ordination centre at Lyon. This gives criminal records of suspects, some addresses and photographs, information about vehicle registration and ownership and other interesting snippets.

The Saint Etienne police squad is linked directly to Lyon, as are other police squads throughout France. But, not all relevant information is passed to Lyon, so you may have to contact other police squads.

The prison service is also linked to the system and contains important facts about prisoners and ex-prisoners. Unfortunately, most of these facts are kept at individual prisons, so they will have to be approached separately, providing, of course, you know which prison to approach.

So you delve into the system and begin to build up your case. This involves taking statements from suspects, comparing the evidence and conducting examinations such as autopsies. Sounds simple doesn't it? it isn't.

The key to the game is knowing what questions to ask and who to put them to. To take a statement, though, you must be able to provide both a name and an address or location. If you want to trace a car, you will need the full registration. None of these facts are provided for free.

This is where Vera Cruz is so different from games like Cluedo. You are not given a list of suspects, Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet, etc, nor a list of possible murder weapons. You must form your own list of suspects, decide upon their motives and whether or not they are lying, and draw your own conclusions. The failure to ask a particular question, of the right source, could mean that you fail to uncover a whole number of important suspects.

Just as important is the element of uncertainty. You may have uncovered all the relevant information and potential suspects, but you have no way of knowing whether you have missed something vital or not. As in real-life investigation, you will be operating in a state of uncertainty.

If in doubt, follow the police's example: go back to the beginning and re-examine all the evidence. Look for correlations which you may have missed and questions which remain unanswered. The printer option, which enables you to print out the evidence, is extremely helpful in keeping track of the investigation. But, don't forget that there may be advantages in returning to the original source.

Don't despair if you become completely stuck. Not even Sherlock Holmes solved every case. But, you might want to take a leaf out of Sherlock's book and acquire a Dr Watson. Get a friend to have a go at the game - a fresh viewpoint often brings surprising results.

Infogrames' Vera a Cruz, written by Gilles Blancon and converted for the Spectrum by Malcolm Herd, is an intricate puzzle which will take many hours of playing time to solve. My only real gripe, other than the idiocies of the French police computer system, which probably reflect the real thing, concerns the instructions. They give almost no help - maybe that's part of the game.

Certainly, the instructions were deliberately written to provide just enough information to play the game without actually being 'helpful'. Personally, I think I need all the help I can get.

The graphics are simple and straightforward and provide a much-needed break from the mental task of working out who did what to whom. I particularly like the photographs which accompany the police files on certain suspects. If all else fails, you can always decide who the guilty party is by seeing whose eyebrows are too close together.

The game actually provides a real insight into the way police investigations are conducted. No Miami Vice heroics, no screaming car chases, no street shoot outs, just lots of slow plodding hard work, taking statements and questioning witnesses to build up a picture of what really happened.

Where the game really scores is the way your fascination grows as you get deeper into the case. You are drawn into the investigation just as the much as any of the suspects you uncover. Spider-like, you are weaving a web which nets some surprising victims.

What is the Morrocan connection? Is the French military really involved? Who did Vera write her last letter to? Did she even write the letter or is it a forgery? The answer to these and other questions will be revealed when you start playing the game... maybe.

So, do you fancy yourself as a detective, are you an Agatha Christie fan, have you ever wanted to pit your wits against the great fictional detectives? Vera Cruz provides a stiff test for your powers of deduction and stamina.

As for who really did do it - I'm not telling. Whether I'm not telling because I didn't find out, or because I don't want to spoil the surprise, I will leave for you to deduce...

Amstrad, £9.95cs, £14.95dk
C64, £8.95cs, £14.95dk
Spectrum, £8.95cs
IBM PC, £19.95dk

This French game was rapidly followed by The Sydney Affair, which was in a very similar mould. You play a detective from the Gendarmerie, who has to investigate what initially appears to be a suicide but turns out to be not so simple.

The case starts with an examination of the scene of the crime. This is graphically depicted and has to be carefully scoured to make sure you don't miss a clue. Information in hand, you head for the police computers, from where the rest of the investigation takes place.

You can communicate with other branches of the police and judicial services in order to get more evidence. You can call up witnesses' statements, which are accompanied by pictures of the people.

The only problem with the game is that it's not very well translated. This means you can get an awful lot of frustrating responses from the computer, without finding out what you're doing wrong. If you can cope with that, both Affair games are testing pieces of detective work.

Infogrames
£8.95

You play what Inspector Clouseau would call an Officer of de Luuure, dans un jeu francais, Oui, following US Gold's import success, French software house Infogrames are trying to break the UK market.

Title star Vera is less than forthcoming when you first meet her, not least because she is dead, and slumped messily across the floor of her apartment. Is it a simple case of suicide as the note on her table would have you believe? Presumably not, or the game would be somewhat pointless. As newly appointed head of the St. Etienne Crime Squad, you must find the truth.

The game is in two parts. In the first, an excellent graphical representation of the scene of the crime is portrayed, complete with central corpse By moving a "viewfinder" window with the ability to give close ups of certain objects, you must collect the evidence. Vital information such as the type of pistol used is gained here.

Part two, which sees you back at central office and again has superb graphics, resembles The Fourth Protocol, with use of single key commands and computer instructions. As well as the traditional methods of taking statements and conducting examinations such as autopsies, you have the French police computer system at your disposal, which can be used to obtain information on suspects, registration numbers and the like. You can also contact police forces elsewhere, who may have further details on leads you are following.

As you delve deeper into the investigation, increasingly sordid details emerge. Vera was a lady of the street; and, considering the needle marks on her left arm and the presence of the name of a drug smuggler in her diary, narcotics seem to be involved too. A real sense of deduction is created, each new, hard-gained fact spurring you on.

The translation of the game is in no way stilted, and the French atmosphere if retains is entertainingly unusual. Some of the messages from the computer, however, contain confusing French abbreviations and place names. It can be hard to tell whether something is a police code, a French district code, telephone number...

This is precisely the sort of thing that the instructions should deal with. The aforementioned Fourth Protocol had an excellent glossary booklet of technical police terms, as well as a game manual. Vera Cruz's only tells you the bare necessities, and this is the game's major flaw. Not enough examples of what you can do are given, while the computer system is extremely unfriendly. So when something meets with a negative response, you are unsure whether you are trying something the computer cannot do, trying something the computer can do but using the wrong words, or just on the wrong track with an idea. The unhelpful, standard game messages make life still worse. As a result, Vera Cruz is at times infuriatingly difficult, and progress slow.

Apart from this, it is innovative. feels authentic and is enjoyable. Infogrames planned future releases sound very interesting, but documentation really must be improved. As it stands, this game requires great patience and perseverance: if you have this, you will be rewarded.