Watch your back for mobsters

By Peter Eley

Street Wars Constructor

Studio 3

PC

$99.95 (M15+)

* * * *


It's 1930s America. Liquor is banned and the Mafia cashes in by selling illegal booze to thirsty citizens.

That's not to mention its other business ventures - hookers, gambling and extortion.

Street Wars Constructor is set against this bleak backdrop, but it's light on Bogart and heavy on black humour. As a wannabe crime boss you have to build your own criminal empire.

You start in the back streets of Hick Town but progress through five major cities until you reach the mecca of organised crime, Capitol City, aka Chicago.

And all the time you have to watch your back for rival mobsters who'll be only too happy to see you sleep with the fishes in a nice pair of concrete boots.

Street Wars is basically a take on Sim City.

You develop land, allocate it for housing or business and sit back and pocket the proceeds.

In place of Sim City's restaurants, banks and schools, Street Wars has saloons, brothels and soup kitchens.

The houses are slums and the rather dodgy tenants show an alarming tendency to breed and damage your property.

If the crims are bad, the police are even worse and you won't get far without bribing them.

Street Wars is a lot of fun to play and it's great to look at, with excellent modelled characters and good 3D effects.

It's a hard game to pick up at first and the tutorial is a must.

But its one flaw is that once mastered, it is fairly easy even on the top difficulty setting.

Required: Pentium 166, 16Mb Ram, 2Mb graphics card. Pentium 266 and 32Mb Ram recommended.