The Tube - Advent Software - RRP œ5.95
                    (Text/graphics adventure)

                     Reviewed by Neil Shipman

After an unsuccessful time as a literature student in Paris you 
return to London and manage to secure a job in politics with the 
Conservation Party. But, just before the general election, your 
Party's manifesto is stolen by the extreme left wing Incoherent 
Party and locked in the safe at their H.Q. The three keys which 
will open this have, for some inexplicable reason, been hidden 
throughout the London Underground and your task is to find them, 
retrieve the manifesto and return it to your beloved leader, Mrs. 
Charlotte Pillock.

Getting out of the first location isn't too difficult, but your 
problems really start when you get to your flat, which is where 
you need to find some money to buy tickets for the Underground. If 
you aren't wearing the right things then the moneybox will remain 
hidden, but you don't know this (and you don't get any useful 
responses to point you in the right direction) so much of it is 
down to trial and error. Examining and searching everything 
mentioned in the text isn't enough; you also need to look at the 
graphics and, on occasion, make some improbable guesses as to what 
the programmer has in mind.

Once down on the Underground you find that you can travel easily 
around London just by using compass directions to get from one 
station to another. No getting on and off trains, waiting at 
ticket barriers or being squashed on the escalators in the rush 
hour. In fact not much at all. There are no trains and hardly any 
people and you begin to wonder whether something disastrous has 
happened. In reality it is the author's almost total lack of 
imagination that's the reason for this as is evidenced by the 
descriptions which usually begin "You are on a platform..." and 
are no more than two lines long. The graphics too are mediocre and 
depict either a deserted platform or a map of the Tube.

Back above ground things are no better. The descriptions continue 
to be very brief, consisting almost entirely of street names, and 
the pictures simply show roadway unless you're inside a building. 
Pointless "instant death" actions and even an "eternal loop" from 
which there's no escape make any progress tedious to say the least 
- if you've managed to stick it this far!

Little thought seems to have been given to the structure of the 
adventure and objects can be found in the most unlikely places. 
For example; there's a screwdriver in the fire (if you can even 
find that) and a pair of pliers is your prize for winning on a 
gamecard in the pub. You need both these tools to get one of the 
keys but, once again, there's no clue to this and no sensible 
reason why this should be so. The required inputs necessary to 
solve the puzzles in the adventure are very specific and any 
synonyms are conspicuous by their absence.

Spelling and punctuation are, quite frankly, atrocious. Examples 
include "From a speaker you here the words...", the response "You 
cant do that" and even "Baklerloo" instead of "Bakerloo". The text 
is all squeezed up and what humour there is is on a schoolboy 
level - no disrespect to younger readers intended. A typical 
example is the message you get when examining the bed in the cell, 
namely "It's old and rusty.(a bit like my brain on a good day)" 
which, for me, says it all.

The Tube is quite obviously the author's first attempt at writing 
an adventure using STAC and is an excellent demonstration of how 
this utility should not be used. It cannot have had any more than 
the briefest play-testing or proof-reading, text and graphics show 
a distinct lack of literary or artistic ability and the puerile 
humour just makes things worse. When reviewing a poor adventure I 
usually try to be encouraging but the best advice I can offer to 
the author in this instance is to quit now. And to those of you 
who are still thinking of buying it after reading this, don't say 
you haven't been warned!