The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm und Drang by Neil deMause Part of Disk 1211 Reviewed by Nick Edmunds As the game opens we find ourselves sitting in a living room, not massively original but nonetheless a cracking good place to start ;-). You play Improv, the leader of the Frenetic Five, a band of half-baked super heroes with crap powers: Pastiche, whose body parts each possess a different talent (not as interesting as one would have hoped), Lexicon, a walking "compendium of the world's languages", Newsboy, a child with the ability to report the news headlines as they happen, Clapper with her "psychokinetic echolocation", (she can find things by clapping her hands) and yourself, Improv, reputedly good at improvising. Times are hard for the F5 when there's no superheroing to do and so you are relieved to receive a phone call from Supertemps, a super hero backup staffing agency, asking you to collar the recently escaped supervillains Sturm und Drang. As you can see the F5 started out in fairly standard fashion, explore your friendly environment, get a feel for your character and stock up with kit before heading off into the great unknown to begin your quest in earnest. Unfortunately from there on, in the F5 began to become a little untidy. Once outside we wait at a bus stop, board a bus and wait some more. In fact the command I used the most during this game was 'wait', as in 'wait for something to happen' as you seem to spend a lot of time stuck in a linear dialogue waiting for the outcome. Interaction with the NPC members of the party was quite fun in that they do all possess different attributes and bicker between themselves at any opportunity, but their response is limited and the repetition can become a bit mundane. The characters are also called upon to use their individual skill (or crap super power) in order to complete a particular puzzle, although each character's skill is only required once. The non-event locations made for a gappy plot structure with sporadic bursts of activity. I don't know if these were designed as red herrings, padding or just vehicles for a gag, but they certainly succeeded in slowing me down as I was convinced I was missing something. Most puzzles were pretty straightforward although I did take quite a while to get out of the trap toward the end. This may well be inability on my part, although I feel it was an unlikely use of the items available. True, your character is allegedly a great improviser, but there were much more plausible ways around the problem. Apparently the F5 began life as a role play game before being turned into a text adventure and initially the idea of the F5 captured my imagination (superheroes with crappy powers that in everyday life are more of a hindrance than a help - genius). Indeed this sort of deranged humour pervades throughout, leading us from the wrong side of the tracks through the five-sided Mill Square to the Evil Mart shop for villains. In general the Frenetic Five is well written with no noticeable coding, or typographical errors, but turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps this disappointment resulted from my initial interest as what was probably a right laugh as a role-play hasn't really translated well into a text adventure. Not one of Neil deMause's better games, check out "New York" and "Undo" by the same author. - o -