AHH! Tahiti, the cool winds, golden sand and the beautiful aqua. What a way to take a holiday, just lying on the sun-drenched sand, soaking up the glorious rays of the daystar. Wow! Ah! This is the life, I think I will have a swim.
What is this magazine? Hmmm, the oil crisis worsens with a war imminent. US and Russian military build-up as the dispute heats up. The US ambassador has been kidnapped - if the terrorists' demands are not met they will shoot him through the head and leave his body on the steps of the US embassy.
A message from General Braxton awaits you in the reception room of the holiday village on the edge of the island. You are summoned to Washington immediately where you will be briefed and dispatched with one objective. Severely inconvenience the US ambassador's captives and bring him back - alive! The operation, code name Iceman, must be handled with the greatest care lest it ends all disastrously.
This is a bit of a breakaway from the standard Sierra adventure. Although the game begins with the usual play-style of Sierra, it soon changes to a bit of a simulation as you enter a sophisticated submarine to gain access to the terrorists.
But first you must find your way about Tahiti. After falling off my stool in a blind drunken stupor after buying this pretty girl a few drinks I realised that this was not Leisure Suit Larry I was playing here and restarted.
Although the graphics are not exactly what you would expect from an Amiga, they are reasonable and very colourful. The tropical music that drifts across the island and the more rock style that is at home in the bar is very good and you can hear different instrumental sounds.
The beginning became quite tedious for me. I found myself wasting a vast amount of time strolling across three or four screens time after time.
Although Code-Name: Iceman requires at least 1Mb of RAM, the software does not keep many screens in memory, and constant disk accessing slows things down quite dramatically. In fact I got very bored waiting for the scenery to change all the time. Many of the computer's responses take quite a while to appear, too.
There are few new additions to the Sierra gameplay method. Previously, if you wanted to look at a particular thing, you would have to walk to it first then type the command. Now in many cases you can simply look at an object from a distance, else your character will walk towards it. Many doors will now open for you when you approach them to avoid having to type "open door" - a great improvement, I am sure you will agree. As usual the packaging contains all the documentation necessary to enable you to navigate your way about the game. An (apparently) authentic submarine navigation chart of the Western Hemisphere accompanies the game and proves invaluable when you get to your single seater USS Black Hawk submarine.
Equipped with eight harpoon radar seeking missiles, torpedoes and sea mines, this underwater military vessel carries up-to-minute technology.
Iceman really should be played from a hard disk, but with five floppies in the package, it is going to swallow a large portion of your A590! Still, if you are prepared to wait for the game to access itself, I believe it is worth it.