Commodore Amiga

Dylan Dog: The Murderers

Poor old Dylan Dog (a man with a miserable childhood, no doubt) is, apparently, the star of the ‘No. 1 Italian comic book’. Our hero has had the misfortune to attend a party at which everyone goes barking mad and tries to maim everyone else. Mr Dog’s task is to suss it all out and be the hero. Fat chance. Dylan strolls around this flick-screen ‘whodunit’ as if hunting for his car keys, rather than the forces of evil. Every time you enter a new screen, the game pauses, displaying a little picture to keep you entertained. The high point of this adventure comes when Dylan bumps into other party-goers. Unfortunately, the ensuing hand-to-hand combat is totally naff. The good points – the graphics are great, with nice realistic animation and loads of tomato ketchup splattered all over the place. You also get plenty of tunes that change as you go on, but very few meaty FX to go with the gore. Whenever you reach an important point in the game, you get an animated scene to illustrate it, which is quite nice. And, erm, that’s about the good points actually. The bad points – it gets very boring. You never seem to make any progress, you pick up objects that don’t seem to serve any purpose and wander through rooms that appear interesting but aren’t. You only get six bullets for the whole game, which means you have to indulge in far too much hand-to-hand combat. And, blow me down, hand-to-hand combat is crap. You punch, then they punch. Worlds are born, stars go supernova, the universe revolves, and eventually they fall over dead. It’s also nigh-on impossible to die. I spent five minutes being attacked by a maniac with a power drill, and barely lost any energy. Challenging it is not. Plus, the control system is annoying. You have to push up to go through a door, but that also makes you jump. Be prepared to spend a lot of time jumping in front of doors before going through them. If the comic book was as slow and tedious as this it would soon be heading for treble figures in the comic charts.