Combat Command

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1. Cut by Emerald - Score = 6.0   Tier = OK

Sections: 105
Attempts to beat: 1

Whenever I read the titles to the books in this series, in my head it comes out in the voice of "Movie Trailer Guy". You know......"IN A WORLD.......where celestial bodies have replaced countries as we know them......ONE WOMAN will rise up to defy the odds, and prove that sometimes......the best play is the one that NO ONE sees coming!" So yes, much like the very similar "Crossroads" gamebooks which did it with fantasy novels, each entry in this series takes place within an established science fiction novel or series of novels, where the player gets to experience, at least somewhat, the world that their various authors have created. This first book in the "Combat Command" series takes place within the world of Piers Anthony's "Bio of a Space Tyrant" series of novels, and oh boy, if I wasn't impressed with Anthony's other creations, I saw nothing here to change my mind. The story here takes place several hundred years in the future, where the various planets and moons of our solar system have been colonized by humans. The strange thing is, the planets and moons have been populated in such a way that they retain almost the exact same political situations that existed within various countries during the 1980's. For example, Saturn now exists as the parallel to the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, with the same style of government (and with its citizens apparently even having Soviet sounding names), while the planet Jupiter represents the sphere of the United States. Mars represents the Middle East, and so on and so forth. Hell, even Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, is a stand-in for the communist country of Cuba, where its citizens sometimes attempt to escape their oppressive regime by trying to defect to Jupiter by making a dangerous journey in rickety spacecraft. Good grief. I'm sorry, but I find this incredibly lame, and much like how Anthony used the state of Florida as a near-exact stand-in for his world of Xanth, this seems to me to show a severe lack of imagination. But anyway, I digress, and on to the story for this particular gamebook I go.

Here we get to play, for the most part, as Commander Emerald Sheller, a senior officer in the USJ (United States of Jupiter) navy. There has been a recent string of pirate attacks within a certain sector of the galaxy, and we are sent to command a fleet to root them out and destroy them. Upon arriving, we learn that the pirate fleet is much larger and more dangerous than expected, and actually puts our side to flight in the initial encounter. While retreating, Emerald devises a plan to lead a group of 24 ships through a seemingly impassable field of asteroids and debris, then loop back and catch the pirate fleet unawares in an ambush to their flank, while the rest of our fleet immediately turns to attack at a coordinated time. Thus, the adventure opens with us setting off with our group of ships to plot a route through the debris field, and we are given 12 hours in which to do so, at which time the main fleet will be forced to attack without us, which will likely lead to their demise. To that end, we are given a time sheet at the front of the book, and are told to mark off on it how much time has passed whenever we are instructed to do so in the adventure. Should we ever go over the 12 hour time limit, the game immediately ends in defeat.    

Next up is the combat system, and when I first started reading about it, I thought it sounded really cool. You are provided a list of all the 24 named ships in your fleet, along with their individual values for "Ordnance", which is used to calculate your Attack Strength in a battle. The value of your Attack Strength is arrived at by multiplying  your "Manpower" (ie. the number of ships involved in that particular battle) by your Ordnance value. You are then told what battle chart to use at the front of the book (there are 5 different charts, with some making it easier to inflict damage on your opponents than others), and you then roll two dice, at which point you read down the list under your current Attack Strength value to determine how much damage you have done to your enemy. This damage takes the form of a loss of ships from their side, and therefore a reduction of their Manpower, which in turn also lowers their Attack Strength, and of course they then get a turn at doing the same to you. This is a lot more simple when playing than it sounds, but it does mean that the combat values are always changing, and whoever loses all their ships first then loses the battle. The player also loses the game at any time if their number of total ships remaining drops below 5, as they will then not have enough firepower to achieve their goal in ambushing the enemy at the end of the game. (Although strangely, this appears to be immediately contradicted in Section 1, where it is stated you must always have at least 6 ships remaining as opposed to the 5 mentioned in the rules, but I never came close to losing that many of my ships in any case).   

However, the more I played it, the more disappointing the whole thing became. You have this long list of ships with cool names like "Silver Dawn" and "Scimitar", but almost all of them end up being functionally identical to the others. Most of them have the same value for Ordnance, which contributes to robbing them of any individuality, and no background information or flavour text is given on the vast majority of them either, so that they might as well have been named "Ship A, Ship B, Ship C, etc.". This reminded me very much of the mass combat system from Armies of Death from the "Fighting Fantasy" series, in that you are given different types of troop units, but for the most part that doesn't really matter all that much. You do have some Drones that you can send into combat at various times which inflict damage on the enemy for one round before they detonate, making them each one-time use only which you cross off as you use, but at least that added a little something. You can also find yourself in personal combat here, either hand-to-hand or with weapons, but this works in the same manner, with your character, along with any allies who happen to be with you, given values to calculate your Attack Strength, with all this working the same way for your enemies as well, with enemy Manpower and Attack Strength for them provided at the start of each fight. Finally, you are also provided values for your fleet's "Stealth" and "Morale", and may be required to pass a dice check at certain times to see if you are successful in whatever it is you are attempting to accomplish in that particular moment.

The actual story in the adventure itself is fairly straightforward, as you lead your group of ships through the debris field, dealing with several rogue ships that you come across who you need to silence before they give away your position to the pirates. Although there is the odd diversion or two, such as getting to investigate a distress call from a refugee ship, and in one of the more interesting sequences of the book, you take on a Saturnian defector, and must determine whether she is legitimately seeking asylum, or is in fact a spy sent by the Saturn government. So, not unlike 1980's Soviet-US relations then eh? The author of this gamebook, Dana Kramer, wrote what I thought was one of the better books from the "Crossroads" series in Warhorn, and is definitely a strong story teller, although she does seem to make her gamebooks a bit on the easy side if my experience is anything to go by. Actually, now that I look at it, I have played 3 books by Kramer, those being: Blast Out in Lebanon from the "Sniper!" series, the aforementioned Warhorn, and now Cut by Emerald, and all 3 of them I managed to beat on my first attempt!   

One interesting thing to note about the writing here is the shifting perspective of the player. For most of the adventure you will find yourself playing as Emerald Sheller, who is leading the fleet from the command center aboard the ship called Inverness, but at various times you will find yourself experiencing story events from the viewpoint of one of the other ship captains in the fleet, or perhaps even as a member of an away-team. (And in at least one section, you take on the perspective of one of the pirates, which briefly confused me.) I enjoyed this for the most part, as it made me feel like I was taking part in a larger adventure akin to a big-budget movie, although it could be jarring if you were attempting to role-play as Emerald herself. And speaking of Emerald, attention is called several times to the fact that she is a black woman, which might be the first time I have gotten to play such a character in my adventures, so kudos to the author for taking that step. Emerald's "right hand man" in the adventure also happens to be another female in the form of Lieutenant Dixon, and I thought that they both had some nice chemistry, although the book doesn't really last long enough to establish as much as I would have liked to have seen. 

Speaking of that, the writing of the adventure was really quite solid for the first three-quarters or so of the book, and it needs to be, as this is one of those gamebooks with a short number of sections (only 105), but with many of those sections being several pages long. However, something appeared to happen in the final stages of the gamebook, and this is something I see pop up quite a lot, in that things start to feel more rushed the closer we get to the end, which could be due to an approaching deadline, or perhaps the author just getting bored and wanting to get it over with. The jump-the-shark moment for me came when Emerald has an encounter with a pirate by the name of "Big Hairy Dick" (no......really), who wears a stuffed codpiece (again....really) and who she readily agrees to meet in a one-on-one duel. This whole sequence is completely ridiculous, and felt absolutely nothing like the rest of the adventure. Even after this encounter is over and the squadron continues on to the final ambush point, things are rushed along and the sections start to become shorter and shorter. After all this, you would think there would be a final space battle against the pirate fleet right? You know, where you get to put your remaining ships into action to hopefully win the day? Nah! Just make it to the ambush point under the time limit and with at least 5 (or 6) ships remaining and it's an auto-win with no final battle required. There is a rather decently sized space battle that takes place shortly before this, but still, not being able to see and experience what was supposed to be the goal of the whole adventure was a large letdown. 

I guess I should be thankful there were no "I can see Uranus!" jokes. 

As I said earlier, I managed to beat this adventure on my first try, although I must say that I was just barely able to do so, as I came in at exactly 12 hours on the time chart, so had I taken even an extra half-hour at any point in the book, I would have lost. So it's tough to say if I just got really lucky in that respect. It seems to me that the time limit will be the most likely way you will lose the adventure, as I did not come close to losing enough ships to suffer defeat by means of the ship limit requirement. The space battles I found myself in all seemed to favour my side, and the Stealth and Morale scores are set reasonably high enough so that you should pass most of them, and you can even earn additional Morale points at various times during the adventure. There really weren't as many battles overall as I was expecting either, although with only 105 sections to the gamebook, maybe I should have seen that coming.  

Ranking: I don't have too much to compare this to yet, but it was smack in the middle of the "OK" tier I think. Despite an incredibly ridiculous sequence involving that pirate, the story was well told, with some nice points of intrigue here and there, even though the ball was dropped right at the very end. The mass combat system had some good ideas, but I didn't think they were implemented particularly well. This adventure badly needed some more personalization and/or specialization of the various ships in your fleet, but with the lower number of sections that might have been too much to ask. While I wasn't all that impressed with this entry, first books in a series are oftentimes just laying the groundwork for what is to come, and I am trying to look at it as a decent "foundation" for the rest of the series to hopefully build upon. I guess I will find out in short order if the series will be able to take that desired step forward with the next entry.

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2. Shines the Name - Score = 7.1   Tier = Good

Sections: 134
Attempts to beat: 2

Well whaddya know, a gamebook setting from these "in the world of" entries that I am actually familiar with. Granted, that is more due to the 1997 movie, "Starship Troopers", as opposed to the original novel from author Robert Heinlein, but I will take what I can get at this point. 

Would you like to know more? (And if you have seen the movie, you will get this reference). 

It's actually a good thing I saw that movie (which is a guilty pleasure that I find highly enjoyable to this day, despite some crappy acting), because there is a shocking lack of information given about the world Heinlein has created here. Oh, this book contains the usual introduction these gamebooks have, but this time not by the original author himself, but it is rather provided by Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax. Rather than bring the reader up to speed on the world of Starship Troopers though, Gygax spends almost the whole intro discussing gamebooks in general and how they relate to role-playing games, which almost makes it seem like a plug for his own product. Well congratulations Gary, you may have now taken over for having written possibly the worst one of these introductions, seeing as how what I believe their purpose is meant to be (and that is really saying something, as I have read a couple of these written by Piers Anthony). The gamebook itself is written by Mark Acres, whose only other work I can recall playing was the Viet Rampage entry from the "Sniper!" series of gamebooks, which was something of a mixed bag as an adventure.  

The rules for this adventure are basically the same as in the first book, except that instead of a fleet of ships, we are this time commanding a squad of Mobile Infantry soldiers of the Terran Federation, which is currently at war with the Bugs (literally, large bugs) of the planet Klendathu, along with the Bugs humanoid-like allies known as the Skinnies. We then jump right into the adventure, playing as Corporal Julian Penn, smack in the middle of leading a mission on the Bug controlled planet of Birgu, as we attempt to evacuate a highly valuable operative who had been doing covert research on the ground there. This opening sequence is really just to get our feet wet with the gamebook, and is over rather quickly, but I found it to be rather excitingly told. One of the more enjoyable aspects of the whole adventure is that you often find yourself using power armour on your missions, with this armour not only allowing you to jump great distances (called "bouncing" in the book), but also spew hot death from the various weapons systems at your disposal. The Y-rack was a particular favorite of mine, as I thought having a Y-shaped device strapped to your back that could launch a seemingly never-ending stream of grenades out of each of the two protrusions that made the top of the Y, had me feeling like an absolute force to be reckoned with. (Sure beats a Y-shaped stick right?) Granted, this is all done narratively, as you do not get to choose your own weapon loadout, but it was done as well as could be expected given that unfortunate constraint. Once this opening mission is over, we then need to decide how we wish to deal with an insubordinate soldier under our command who almost got everyone killed, before learning that due to our heroism and success in completing the mission, Terran High Command has yet another near-suicidal mission for us!

The adventure then moves on to the first of its two main missions for the book, with our superiors giving us the unenviable task of leading a 5 man squad down to the surface of the Skinny planet, where we are to make our way through a city towards a research and development centre of theirs, where we are then expected to take several of the presumably highly-intelligent Skinny workers there as our prisoners so that they can be interrogated. The Skinny race themselves is something of a mystery, as they are very tall and "skinny" humanoid like creatures, who would appear to have far more in common with humans than they do with the Bugs. They seem to live, work, and play as humans do, with many living in cities and travelling to their jobs in various forms of vehicles, so it is therefore a wonder as to why they choose to ally themselves with the Bugs instead of us. It is never revealed why that is either, at least in the gamebook, so I will likely need to check out the novel to find out the answer to that question (assuming there IS an answer). Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this mission, and you are given several tactical options to decide between as you arrive at your landing zone, make your way through the city, and ultimately arrive at the research plant where you grab as many prisoners as you can before a landing craft makes a blitz run in to pick you and any surviving members of your team up, as you are almost certain to lose some of the troopers under your command on the mission. 

Once this mission is complete, there is a brief interlude where you meet up with your girlfriend as you enjoy some well deserved time off back at your home base planet of Sanctuary, before you learn that you have been promoted to the rank of Sergeant, and are given the next and final mission of the adventure. As you went up against the Skinnies last time, it should come as no surprise that this time you will be going up against the Bugs, and are tasked with leading an expanded 15 man squad, which is only part of a larger force that will be landing once again on the Bug planet of Birgu in an attempt to destroy an underground armory there. We were told earlier that no humans have ever entered an underground Bug tunnel before and lived to tell about it, but that is exactly what we are going to attempt, and hopefully the sheer number of troops we are sending down will allow at least some of us to accomplish the mission, and maybe even survive. Once again you are given a couple of tactical decisions to make, including a choice between two Plans, and whether you want to break up your 15 man squad into smaller groups, or keep them all together as one unit. The latter will be slower, but will allow you to maintain a higher level of firepower (and as your Manpower directly affects your oh-so-important Attack Strength in combat, I felt keeping everyone together was the better choice). We even get a map of the underground Bug tunnels here, provided by the operative we rescued back in the beginning of the adventure, who apparently has the special psychic ability of being able to "see" what lies underground should he be close enough. The map is rather bare-bones, but we do have 4 different options as to which area of the underground caverns we wish to explore. Which one you choose seemed rather random to me though, and unless I missed a clue on the map or somewhere in the text, each of the choices seemed just as good as any other. Which option you choose will determine just how difficult the final stretch of the gamebook is, but even so, I did not find the combats overall to be too difficult, because once again the Combat Chart that your squad is told to use often allows you to do more damage than the Chart assigned to your enemy. But hey, at least there WAS a final combat this time, where you get to flame-roast some Bugs!   

So once that is completed, you have won the gamebook, presumably making it out of the Bug tunnels and back to Sanctuary where you plan to marry your girlfriend. I have to say though, this ending really wasn't much of a payoff, and once again the final sequence of these books rushes as it gets closer to the end. The mission on the Skinny planet for example felt much more fleshed out than this final mission, and I couldn't help but feel that a lot more could have been done within the underground Bug tunnels. Where were the horrific scenes of captured humans being eaten alive by the Bugs? Or where even was any kind of insight as to how the Bugs live and what their motivations are? Instead we are shuttled through increasingly less descriptive corridors until arriving at the final fight with the Bugs. While this whole final mission was "ok" I suppose, it was a step down to me from the Skinny planet mission, and it certainly shouldn't have been, which is the frustrating part. And while author Mark Acres sure knows how to write military action with over-the-top violence, with both gamebooks of his that I have played now having been heavily military based, that violence seems to fit far better here in a made up science-fiction world than it did in the much more realistic setting of the aftermath of the Vietnam War from the first adventure of his that I played. (ie. Viet Rampage). 

One thing I mentioned in my reviews of the "Crossroads" series of books was that I often found myself interested in learning more about the actual novels the gamebooks are based on, along with the original authors themselves, knowing that despite my best intentions to do so, I likely will not find the time to read most of the novels. In doing so here though, I found it intriguing to note that Heinlein was criticized in some circles for "Starship Troopers", due to what some thought was its pro-military and fascist undertones, and later, the 1997 movie was criticized for these same reasons. Now, I'm not sure just exactly how much the novel and the movie have in common, but I remember seeing the movie in the theatre when it was released, and even as a much younger person at that time, I thought it was clearly satire, and just assumed everyone else did also. I mean, the militarism is so over-the-top (especially those "Would you like to know more?" vignettes), combined with giant bugs that shoot asteroids out of their asses for crying out loud, that I think the critics might be trying to read just a wee bit too much into this. 

"I'm gonna need some RAID here! About 30 cans worth!" 

Ranking: Despite having a few problems, I still found this rather enjoyable, and thought it was better in just about every way than the first book. The increased section count compared to that first book felt like it allowed this adventure to contain a few more battles, and more felt at stake in those battles as you had a much smaller squad to work with this time around, and therefore I felt I could not as easily afford to lose any of them. The story was better here too, and full credit to Acres for imbuing many of the sections with a high excitement level. And while the adventure is fairly linear, it provided just enough differing options at certain points that made me want to go back and see what would have happened had I tried something else. The downsides are, again, that I did not find it particularly challenging as a game, and once more the ending sequence felt a bit rushed. There are also a few things that should have been explained better (or at all), but were not. However, if we can continue to trend upward as the series progresses, I will be a happy Mobile Infantry trooper indeed. This entry not only made me want to read the novel it was based on (always a good sign with these gamebooks), but it also made me want to revisit the movie again after all these years. (No co-ed shower scene in the gamebook though unfortunately!)