
Anyway, back to the actual investigation… Steve's dad gives him his actual first lead. Some bloke who sits around in the pub all day offers some advice. He will find out more things as the game goes on. How he does that without ever leaving his bar stool? That's his secret. Steve sits down in front of his dad's computer instead and plays some Arkanoid. Frustrated about the insane difficulty, he decides to browse the Internet a bit. His favourite BBS offers some interesting news. And the police servers are ripe for some hacking…
From there, though, it goes straight downhill. The inclusion of RPG-like character abilities and the time management is questionable at best – some people may appreciate the general idea that Steve needs some practice before being able to overcome a thug in hand-to-hand combat or before he can pick a serious lock. In gameplay terms, this not only feels out of place, but leads to serious issues. Namely with money (training is not free…). This resource being limited leads to a rather unlikely mini-game: stock market trading. I.e. crucial steps to progress in the game depend on randomised gambling. You can do everything right investigation/plot-wise, but fail to make the right bets and your game will still be over. Pure frustration.
The conversion from the Amiga original works reasonable well on a technical level. If you select the VGA version, you will at least be treated with half the colours of the original, i.e. 16. The reason most of the pictures look ugly is just that they were drawn that way. If you select EGA instead, you will have a hard time making anything out in the non-distinct mess. Or to stop yourself from ripping your eyes out. Don't say you haven't been warned.
It wouldn't really matter. Some games have become classics in spite of sub-par visuals. Their secret is simple: They are fun. In spite of some basics which are not completely wrong, playing Crime City is about as much fun as doing your tax declaration. In the in-game computer, you will find the announcement of another mystery adventure game 'coming soon'. The advantage of looking back at this announcement in hindsight is that we know how it turned out. The IF… label, under which this game was published, has never been used again.