CodeMasters
£3.99 cassette
0926 814132
Reviewer: Andy Hutchinson
Mice, eh? What utterly crap creatures they are. They shuffle around twitching their cute noses and gnawing seeds with their cute little paws. I mean, even their poos are blimmin' attractive, and they don't smell! No mammal should be allowed to get away with such overwhelming puke-inducing cuddleyness. As for guinea pigs (Oh lor', he's off on one of his winges again! Linda), they're even worse. (Stop it right there, I've got a deep personal affection for guinea pigs! Linda) Oh alright.
Murray Mouse is a police rodent. He lives in 1930s Chicago, a town not famed for its polite treatment of citizens. Nope, 1930s Chicago is a dirty town, a town so riddled with crime and addled with robbers that ordinary people are forced to slink into rough saloon bars and kncok back far too many glasses of illegal hooch. (I'd love to have lived there.)
One sunny day in 1930, scientists make an amazing discovery: the moon really is made of cheese. Obviously every mouse in the land is overjoyed with this news; but, unbeknown to them, there's a conspiracy in the offing. A nasty mafia boss and nine of his hench men are planning to steal the moon and sell it on the black market.
MOST CONSIDERABLE DUDE!
Obviously such a totally bogus plan has to be scuppered by some aspiring individual: namely one Murray Mouse. Hence the furball becomes an Untouchable, a government agent whose sole mission in life is to ruin the life that the organised gangs are leading and in the process 'save the cheesy moon'. Blimey, who writes this crap?
The game itself is a glorified explore-and-collect-'em-up. You wander around various screens in search of household implements such as saws, hammers and planks. The usefulness of these items becomes apparent later on when you keep repeatedly dying.
Now, the main problem with this games is that it's crap. It's supposed to be set in Chicago, but the backgrounds look naff all like an American city. I mean, since when did Chicago have blimmin' great mountains downtown? Nope, what we've got here (I strongly suspect) is a game with a plot bunged on the end.
However that's not the only crap thing about this game. Consider the act of jumping. Usually you can jump to the left, to the right, or straight up. Not in this game though, here you can only jump to the left or right, which means that you spend ages walking left and right trying to find the perfect spot from which to launch yourself into the great beyond. Get it wrong and you're highly likely to get your hair singed by a nearby torch and, thus, lose a life.
TRIFF NIGEL, TRIFF!
The problem-solving in the game manages to be simple and obscure at exactly the same time. For instance, while a key opens a locked cellar and a plank bridges a gap, you'll need a jar of woodworm to get through a door. What's more, these items have to be dropped in exactly the right place. So, if you're a little bit too far to the left your item will make no difference to the obstruction at all.
Actually getting the objects is a bit of a problem too. Not only do you have the tricky jumping manoeuvres to contend with, you'll also discover that certain objects can only be grabbed whilst in mid-air. All of this makes it blimmin' tricky in the extreme to get certain items.
Nope, I'm sorry Codies, you're going to have I better than this. Murray Mouse is twee, derivative, unfunny, annoying and bland. I mean, it's all very well going for a cutesy angle on a game, but this is a schmaltz overload. Cheesy Moon indeed.
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