I am mad, I am MAD, I AM MAD. Santa Claus gave a gun to me. Let loose the puppies of war. Mummy, take the bad man away. Two of the past four sentences appear on the back of the DreamWeb box. Which two? WHICH TWO? It's for you to decide. YOU DECIDE.

DreamWeb is a point 'n' click, viewed-from-the-ceiling adventure game and the unfortunate protagonist, Ryan fears he's going mad. MAD. He's been having odd dreams - or were they dreams - and he's been kind enough to write a bizarre diary which contains a few clues, and a lot of squiggly writing.

Seven evil people are wandering the world. Or are they? OR ARE THEY? It's a nightmarish world, a murky, ill-lit world where Bladerunner meets EastEnders. A world of criminal activity, of plimsoll theft, of drug taking, of illicit sex in hotel rooms. Ryan, the deliverer, is the man to assassinate the magnificent seven, and you are he. But you can deliver? You have a girlfriend. She's called Eden, and last night she let you stay at her flat. From here, your adventure begins, so be prepared to wander about, observing and picking up objects as you wend your merry way to the first cold-blooded killing.

The mouse is the tool through which you manoeuvre your way through this nightmare world and the screen portrays the particular room or area in which you currently reside. Quite why we need to look at an alarming profile of Ryan at all times remains a mystery. A mystery, dear reader, which your correspondent can clear up once and for all, for in fact you are Ryan and so therefore you are looking at yourself. AT YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES. In a, ahem, self-analysis sort of way. Probably. So, that's that solved.

With but a door code and a network password, and the vague feeling that something rather odd is going on, you must travel from flat to flat, from bar to hotel to pool hall, collecting snippets of information, more door codes and weapons to kill. Travel access areas are located at the edge of groups of map screens which then despatch you, Star Trek-style to the location of your choice. But certain locations are only revealed if you have accessed one of the various computerised network screens which are operated with cartridges - you can trip about for ages not knowing somewhere exists. Which it can't, if you don't know about it.

DreamWeb is a fiddly game. The puzzles are not wildly difficult to solve, but some of the objects are so tiny as to be virtually invisible. A zoom option allows you to search the rooms in detail, but you have to be eagle-eyed.

The scene: I'm at the hotel and I've safely negotiated the room-booking situation. I take my eye off the screen for a millisecond and miss a vital animation sequence, (which I might have missed even if I had had been glued to the monitor). The hotel receptionist had punched in my details and a keycard, the size of a baby ant had slipped out of the machine on to the desk. I need this card to use the lift, but I failed to see it. Much brain-wracking later (OK, so I asked the friendly chap in sister mag, Amiga Power), the pixel was located and off we go again.

Footwear fetish
Yet, other puzzles are very easy to solve. You have a pair of plimsoils, but are zapped by a pink, laser whip-wielding lunatic who steals them and jumps into a waiting getaway car. Seconds later you are inside your chum's flat and he happens to have a pair your size lying on the floor which you promptly slip on and, hey-ho, you're on your way.

'This game contains scenes of violence not suitable for small children'. Readers, this adventure is adult-oriented, which means there is a rather blurry 'sex scene' and some heinous axe-wielding. It isn't as exciting as it sounds. DreamWeb, for all its bluster about nightmares, madmen and plimsoil theft, is very much a traditional point 'n' click adventure game. It does have atmosphere, but droning music and ill-lit back streets can only be atmospheric for so long.

Yet despite these reservations, DreamWeb isn't at all bad. It ain't as sophisticated as it pretends; depth-wise it's way off Monkey Island 2, but then, aren't they all. The real excitement is in the confrontation of your foe, only the problem here is that if you don't reach into your inventory, pull out the weapon and do the deed in the winking of an eye, it's game over. Teeth-gnashing.

This is what I was thinking while playing Dream web. "Of course. They're the chaps who did The Fury, Nemesis the Warlock and everyone's favourite illiterate adventure Slaine". (That's me suddenly remembering who Creative Reality are).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising the inexplicable pauses when the game locks up but the cursor is still movable before everything unpredictably snaps back to life are going to continue to happen about every 15 seconds throughout every session I play. Perhaps it is 'decrunching data', or something. It can't be loading from disk I know, because then it helpfully turns your cursor into a disk).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising this is one of those point-and-click adventures that, far from having the courtesy to tell me which objects in the picture are of value when I point to them, is in fact to regale me with an excitingly lengthy text description of every single object, supporting character and piece of scenery in the game universe and then put a 'use' option in the top-right screen.

It's only when I click on this option that the game admits if the object (or whatever) is of any use or whether it has been put there solely to 'enhance the atmosphere'. And not, for example, for the purpose of intensely annoying me because I'm now forced laboriously to check everything (and that is, of course, everything so as to be sure not to miss that vital object or giveaway clue).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising that this is one of those point-and-click adventures that demands pixel-perfect cursor control. Curiously, the programmers have clearly realised the folly of this because there is an invaluable option to have a window display a blocky close-up of my immediate surroundings.

They have, however, declined the opportunity of realisation to, say, repair the damage by redrawing the graphics or throwing away at least some of the near totally pointless clutter in every screen).

"Oh Dear". (That's me discovering that after trying to use my in-game computer by clicking on the keyboard and reading the excitingly lengthy description only to discover it is useless, clicking on the mouse and reading the excitingly lengthy description only to discover it is useless, accidentally clicking on the mouse mat while trying to click on a disk but reading the excitingly description anyway only to discover it is useless, and clicking on the monitor and reading the excitingly lengthy description only to discover it's my virtual girlfriend's in-game computer and I shouldn't be messing with her stuff, that I'm supposed to use my in-game computer when I find it by clicking on its monitor screen).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising that whenever I click on something, the game arbitrarily decides I'm standing too far away to see it properly and so I have to confirm I want to go over to it (which may involve my character walking round in an unnecessary circle) before I get the option to examine it).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising I've not yet left the first location).

COBWEB
"Oh Dear". (That's me later that morning, having gone to my character's flat. Upon leaving my virtual girlfriend's house, my character mused, "I can't help feeling I've forgotten something". This turned out to be the mystical key hidden in her microwave cooker.

At my character's flat, I'd used his in-game computer to discover he'd been fired from his job at a bar. I'd instantly travelled to the bar ready for a jolly good argument, only to find this is one of those point-and-click adventures where, instead of getting multiple-choice questions and answers, I merely click on someone and the game conducts the whole of an embarrassingly banal, badly-written conversation on my behalf).

"Oh Dear". (That's me realising I'm carrying too many objects and will have to drop some. I do so only to discover the game places everything I've specified in a single heap on the floor, so if I've inadvertently discarded something important I'm going to have to pick it all back up again later. Except I can't, because I'm carrying too much. So I shall have to crawl the cursor about the heap pixel by pixel, patiently waiting for the 15 seconds catatonics to pass, until the game has decided I'm pointing to a bit of the object I require.

Fortunately, since this is only an 'adult' adventure starring the dregs of society even the dregs of society shun as dregs and featuring graphical violence and murder aplenty. I can rest assured that the pile of objects will never be stolen).

"Oh dear". (That's me cottoning on to the artificial size of the game. To separate the interesting bits and so make it appear larger and more complex than it is, each set of locations to which I can travel via the main map requires me to walk stoically through irrelevant streets and hotel lobbies, using lifts that only go to one floor and passing locked rooms whose inhabitants never answer the doorbell, before reaching my intended destination).

"Oh dear". (That's me being told trying to 'use' the suspiciously loose lift controlpanel isn't going to work. Apparently I'd be well advised to 'use' something sharp here. Phew. I'd been careful to pick up that excitingly lengthily described knife from my virtual girlfriend's kitchen for just such an occasion. Now I've exposed some wiring. Now I've had to 'use' the knife again with a separate 'use' command to cut the wires. It appears the lift is now safe to climb on top of. Lucky I didn't fall for the old ignoring exposed wiring trick, eh?).

"Cripes". (That's me being shot by a guard when I 'use'd a fire axe to break to the doors of the floor above).

"Oh dear". (That's me having reloaded my saved position and attempting to drop my axe to show the guard I mean no harm. The screen now shows my axe lying on the floor next to me holding my axe. I recall a similarly shoddy bug from earlier on, when after seeing a crime boss and buying a gun, I return to the building to be told the crime boss is impatiently waiting for me. I get shot again).

"Criminy". (That's me having 'use'd the axe, unexpectedly swinging it at the man besides me I'd assumed was the fellow I'd been chasing around the city but who in fact turns out to be another guard. This throws the aim of the man with the gun, and I'm able to shoot him. I reflect on the ingenuity of this scene. From bursting through the doors to the man firing at me. I've been given a few seconds to call up my inventory and make a plan. It's a real-time action sequence in a point-and-click adventure - THAT WORKS! I am pleased).

CAPTAIN WEBB
"Oh dear". (That's me in the next part of the game. I'd found the man I was chasing and killed him, only to be dragged to a place where someone explained the plot of the game. Since the point of the firs part is that you are wandering around in bewilderment, convinced you are going mad, only a cockroach would spoil things by revealing what is really going on. In the next part of the game I am to kill another man. But where is this next victim? There appear to be no new locations on the map.

But wait. I go to my character's flat and use his in-game computer to read an embarrassingly banal and badly-written news report that mentions the victim is to appear at a television station, reminding my character that he knows where the station is. It is now visible on the map, replacing the locations used in the last section. Still, it's not as if they're needed to, for example, create a cohesive, rounded 'feel' to the game rather than reducing it to a series of aloof sections with everything you need to solve them contained within. Or anything).

"Oh dear". (That's me in the studio after cunningly gaining entrance by shooting the security guard. I am upon a high gantry above the set from where my enemy is broadcasting. A fused winch supporting a gigantic crate points to my method of dispatching him.

But after having just shot a harmless old fellow, I decide instead to fire at my enemy from above. But the game decides I had better not use my pistol at the moment, even though nobody has shown the slightest interest in my blasting down the elderly security guard)).

"Oh dear". (That's me realising that instead of bypassing the blown fuse with, say, an identically-sized piece of metal, a wire exposed at both ends, a knife, a screwdriver or (rather cleverly I thought) a chewing gum paper wrapper excitingly described at length as being tin foil, I'm meant to examine a brochure to discover a security pass and use this to enter a storeroom containing a single brand-new fuse).

"Oh dear". (That's me realising that I'm halfway through the game and the puzzles are indeed going to remain at the same level of failed text-adventure feebleness. The game stops for its irregular rest break. I throw myself wearily at the guns of some guards).

Enough.

A man thinks he is slowly going insane. He starts to keep a diary, noting down all the strange things that are beginning to happen to him while he sleeps. Sex with strangers, murder, dodgy dealings and evil forces abound, his rantings become more and more erratic as he is sucked further into the Dreamweb. This disturbing tome is the key to getting into Dreamweb - Empire's first adult adventure.

The Dreamweb, a sort of collective consciousness made up of good and evil, controls a city that's set in a sort of future world. Unfortunately, evil is gaining the upper hand and has taken control of seven people. The keepers of the Dreamwob have decided to fight back and have chosen you - Ryan - to kill these seven baddies and hence restore the natural equilibrium.

And so the scene is set for a rather good adventure. You control Ryan and must guide him through this top-view game, picking off the seven evil ones and executing them in (and this is essential) the right order - going back to the keeper after each execution to find out who to track down next. Sounds simple enough, but it isn't. You have to logically work your way through the game, by hunting around and visiting various locations, to gather all the information and items that you need.

Just to complicate things even further there is a network which you can log into once you've found the password and the right cartridge, to glean various bits of extra information that will help you through the game.

GOOD GAMEPLAY
A lot of time has been spent on the gameplay and it shows: Dreamweb is very easy to get into. The point and click interface means that all you have to do is drag the pointer over to the item you wish to examine and you can then decide to either use it now or stash it away in your inventory for a later stage.

All of the various locations in the game host a plethora of items which have been lovingly crafted with intricate detail, right down to a fridge which is stocked up with orange juice, milk and butter. Not all the items are necessary, but then again that's the fun of the game - finding out exactly what you need.

Dreamweb is linear which means it will not let you progress unless you have all the information or items you need. A message like: 'Maybe I've forgotten something' will flash up and send you scurrying back to where you came from to make sure you have everything.

There is also a lot of humour dotted throughout the game. For example, there is some interesting interaction with dodgy looking types in bars who tell you to shove off (or words a bit less polite than that), if you are bothering them.

TINY SPRITES
The graphics in Dreamweb are good and contribute to the dark, moody and atmospheric feel of the game. However, the actual window that the game is played in only takes up a minute portion of the screen so the sprites and items themselves are unnecessarily tiny. Thankfully there is a zoom option but the game would have been much more enjoyable (but no doubt slower) had this window been bigger.

SEX, DRUGS AND MURDER
In all Dreamweb is a very enjoyable graphic adventure. It has been rated 18 due to its 'adult' nature though. However, the infamous sex scene involving the rock star David Crane (one of the evil ones) having it off with a groupie is merely laughable because the sprites are so tiny you can hardly tell what sex they are, let alone see any action.

Another reason for the 18 rating is due to the graphic nature of the killings. One of the 'victims' is seen dragging her entrails along the ground pleading for her life. Perhaps this is the most chilling aspect of Dreamweb - it all seems so very realistic. Some might argue that there is a slight difference between blasting away mindlessly at cartoon mutants in a shoot 'em up and actually premeditating and carrying out serial executions!

However, whatever your moral stance, if all you are interested in is a good involving graphic adventure, and you are over 18, Dreamweb is the game for you.