Cruise for a corpse (1991) review for MS-DOS

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Cruise for a corpse
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At a time when most games other than simulators were still using fixed sprite-based graphics Delphine used vector graphics for some of their games making them very distinct in style. In case you don't know what vector graphics are they are rendered by your computer in realtime instead of being predrawn and this makes for much smoother animations. In cruise for a corpse you play the role of inspector Raoul and you receive a letter from Niklos Karaboudjan to join him on his yaught for a welldeserved vacation. However shortly upon arriving on the boat you find Niklos stabbed in the back and the same person clobbers you on the head knocking you out. After you wake up you have a limited time to question the people on the ship and find out who the killer is.

The game starts directly when you wake up from the hit on your head and you find yourself in the room where the victim was found. It would be wise to scan the room for anything that might give you a clue to finding the murderer before you leave the room. After that you can visit any place on the ship and question people about things like where they were at the time of the murder and their relationship with the victim. Don't take their word for it though so take time to investigate rooms and try to find some evidence and maybe something that will give a motive. Even though the entire game is limited to the ship it's a pretty big one and to make walking around the place easier there is a map option that shows the all rooms and you can simply click on one and you will walk there. The rest of the interface is easy to use as well with a popup menu that shows when you rightclick on an object. Unlike other adventure games where you can wander around checking the scenery and take your time solving puzzles there is murder to solve here and you will have to do it in a certain amount of time. Time in the game is not realtime but when you do certain things like questioning a person or view some events it will trigger an advance in time shown by a clock advancing 10 minutes. Can you solve the murder before time runs out or will you be the next victim.

Cruise for a corpse is basically like the classic 'clue' game where you find clues to who comitted the murder. However the presentation is obviously very different but being done as an adventure game suits the theme well. The time limit might be an annoyance to some adventure gamers but it doesn't really get in the way of the game too much. The problem is that there are no different scenario's as the murderer is the same each game so it offers very little replay value once you've completed it but this is the case with most adventure games. Another thing that have to be mentioned are the vector graphics, they are nice to look from a distance but once they zoom in the lack of detail becomes very apparent but don't let this minor distraction put you off in any way. Other than this the game is fairly unique and well worth playing so give it a try.

Overal rating: 8/10

Erde Kaiser

Cruise for a corpse was released for three different systems here are some notes:

DOS	Released in 1991. Game has been tested but not completed on a win2k PC. Works fine under windows and Dosbox. Don't press X in the game because it will throw you out of the game without warning.
Others	These versions are not available. Amiga released in 1991, all versions I tried locked up. Atari ST released in 1991, the only version I could find was a german one.