by Ron Enderland

Ace Ventura has suddenly become an icon of our culture. He loves animals, women, and body function humor, in that order. I guess that pretty well sums up the 90's generation, eh?

7th Level Software has produced Ace Ventura, the game, on CD-ROM. It's challenging, entertaining, and funny, although not overly so in any of the three cases.

The game is a situational puzzle, where you guide Ace through predicaments in various settings, picking up objects as you go and using them when conditions warrant it. As far as the challenging aspect goes, this is the best quality of the game.

You really have to use your head here. Paying close attention to the shape of the cursor is an essential part of your strategy. Objects in each room might trigger further action, or they may not. Those that do are either useful or not. Your strategic thinking determines which things you activate by selecting with the left mouse button. There are also puzzles to solve, mazes to conquer, and dilemmas to "de-dilemma."

As far as entertainment goes, well . . . it's not bad. I'd give the scenarios a solid average. In the first, you're underwater in Captain Nemo's sub, being captained by the evil Jacques Demonque. If you successfully complete this adventure, then you head north, to the land of the Eskimos. Once again, it's cute, but not exactly a "must have."

Then, there's the humor. As all Ace fans know, butt yodeling is an essential part of the Ventura mystique.

Don't get me wrong. There is the occasional sly offhand witticism. The seal that lives in the toilet is a favorite of mine. Ace himself comes up with many bon mots, to be sure. However, there is that occasionally manifested element of dreaded anal non-retentiveness to deal with.

The game comes in a "kid approved" state. If you want to bump it up to a "teen" version, then you are instructed to make a change in an .ini file so as to create a password. Then, hitting F4 during a game should bring up a screen which allows you to shut parental controls off, with clearance provided by the aforementioned password.

The problem is that I could not get the feature to operate on the program that I have. It is supposedly a final release version, but it would neither confirm nor deny that I had changed the ambiance of the game. I didn't see anything which a parent of a small child would find objectionable. There were Eskimo maidens who were quite shapely, but completely inoffensive. I assume that I never left "Kid Mode."

To sum up, Ace fans will love this game. Everyone else . . . well, let's just call it average.