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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.
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!)
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3. The Omega Rebellion - Score = 4.2 Tier = Bad
Sections: 170
Attempts to beat: 1
What the heck did I just play? This is going to be a shorter review, because this adventure flew past so quickly on several different levels that it's tough to describe, but I will give it a shot anyway. This entry is set in the world of Keith Laumer's "Star Colony", which as far as I can tell was a single novel and not part of a series, and we are back to having an introduction provided by the original author himself, as Laumer gives us a very brief description on the world we will be playing in. If this introduction is anything to go by though, I have no desire whatsoever to try and track down this novel in order to read it myself. First of all, Laumer doesn't even seem to be trying here, and I felt like I was just receiving the bare bones background information about this universe provided in almost bullet-point format. This is one those futuristic "the Earth is now overpopulated so the vast majority of humans now live in crowded squalor" kind of deals, with an authoritarian government ruling over the planet as it sees fit. A new habitable world has been discovered however (Omega), but is being kept secret by the government so that they can maintain their tight grip on power over the human race. We play as Gasper Newlin, a junk-loader who because he is one of the lucky few to have a job, is entitled to a small apartment at which he and his extended family can stay (all 11 other members of them). There is some kind of rebel group operating to overthrow the government (because isn't there always?), and not much is given other than that. So, with the rules for the adventure being pretty much the same as last book, off we go.
The story opens with our Gasper character heading in to work one day, when he notices a police security ambush set up in what appears to be an attempt to capture a woman walking towards us. You then need to decide whether you want to warn the woman of the ambush, or let the police do their thing and apprehend her. And boy is there ever a lot riding on this decision. What you choose to do in these opening sections would seem to determine whether you want to side with the government or the rebels for the adventure. That said, we have already been told in the intro about the evils of this government, and how they are not above arresting and detaining innocent people. Therefore I assume most players will initially choose to warn the woman about the ambush, as I did. The problem here is that this decision then sent me down a path that had me beating this gamebook in record time.
After a combat against the police forces, the book seems to assume that I already know what this woman's name is, as it proceeds to refer to her by the name Tita as if we had already met. It would seem that I have now cast my lot in with the rebels, of which Tita is a member, and there is no going back now. Strangely, Gasper seems to have little regard for what this decision will do to his extended family who will now face eviction from his apartment (and probably worse than that), as he basically takes an "oh well" attitude to the whole business. We then get the lowdown from Tita on the existence of the planet Omega, and what plan the rebels currently have in mind for it. A small group of rebels, with our help, plan to stow aboard a sleep-ship that is heading for the distant Omega, and have made additional plans to have themselves awakened part-way through the journey, at which point they intend to raid the storage area of the ship which they believe to be smuggling weapons that are intended to help the government take over the newly discovered planet. Once armed with these weapons, the rebel group plans to then storm the bridge of the ship, forcing it to land in a spot of their choosing on Omega, where the weapons can then be used there to help the resistance.
And this is exactly what you do. Quickly. You awaken from your cryo-sleep, locate the weapons in the storage area, fight another combat against a security force come to check on what is going on, then storm the bridge for the final combat against the bridge crew. Once that is finished, you have won. The combats here see you leading the rebel force (and the speed at which you are put in command of the rebels, seeing as how they know nothing about you, is hilarious) against rather non-descript enemies, and I did not find any of the combats to be particularly challenging. Once you raid that storage area on the ship and pick up some assault rifles, you are now armed to the teeth and get to fight with the best Combat charts, while your opponents could only wish to be so lucky. This book is one of those gamebooks where the sections play out somewhat sequentially as you go, so that in section 1 you might be given a choice, with option A telling you to go to section 2 and option B telling you to go to section 3 for example, and so on throughout the adventure. There are some exceptions of course, but when I found myself jumping all the way to section 149 in the very early going, and then continuing to make my way towards the last section of the book (section 170) from there, I had a sinking feeling something was up. Like landing on that big long ladder in a game of "Snakes and Ladders".
Nevertheless, I was still stunned to look at my map of the adventure after beating this to see just how short my winning path through the book actually was. Stunned because there are actually 170 sections in this gamebook, which isn't a small amount, and is many more than the previous two adventures, yet I was able to beat it in a fraction of the time. No joke, but I beat this book on my first attempt in about 25 minutes, and I was taking my time too. After winning, I just had to go back and see what all the other sections of this book were devoted to, and it does appear that I missed huge swaths of the adventure just because I decided to side with the rebels at the beginning. Going back to look at what would have happened had I made different choices at the start, I could have opened up several different, and for the most part, longer paths through the gamebook. However, the rebels were made out to be the "good guys" right from the start, so why wouldn't I side with them? This book then falls into the category of gamebooks that provide several different paths through to beat the adventure, with the downside being that some of those paths are going to be quite short. The big problem though is that a gamebook such as Escape from Castle Quarras from the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" series did this as well, but was actually fun to play, as opposed to this snooze-a-thon. There are a few different successful endings here, although it was tough to say which was the "optimal" one, if any of them even was to be considered that, as several of them seemed just as good as the others.
The author of this gamebook is Troy Denning, and this being the first gamebook of his that I have played, I must say that I am not a big fan of his style, at least if this entry is anything to go by. The adventure is told in a very matter-of-fact style where characters all seem to shrug their shoulders at most story developments, make an off-the-cuff remark, then continue going about their business. I was finding it hard at times to determine if this was supposed to be some sort of dry comedy or not, but at the end of the day I don't think that was the intention, and I think that Denning was just rushing to get this book completed as soon as possible, which is kind of how I also felt as a player playing it.
Ranking: I initially didn't think I was going to put this in the Bad tier, because while I beat the adventure rather easily and VERY quickly, I did not at first think there was anything all that objectionable about it, and it would appear to provide some decent replay value at least. But the more I thought about it, one thing stood out to me, that being that I just found this adventure boring as hell. In fact, this is one of the more boring gamebooks I can recall playing. That is personal preference talking obviously, but I had no desire at all to try all the different paths through the adventure when I could barely keep my eyes open on that first playthrough as it was. The writing does it no favours either, and it felt like the author was not taking this assignment seriously at all. Is a boring gamebook worse than a flat out bad one that at least contains some interesting parts to it? I'm not sure really, but I know I could not bring myself to give this one a passing grade just based upon my experience with it. This is easily the worst of the first 3 books for me, but at least it was over fast. Kind of like the tooth that comes out on the first quick pull from the dentist.
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4. Slammers Down! - Score = 4.0 Tier = Bad
Sections: 138
Attempts to beat: 1
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5. The Legion at War - Score = 7.2 Tier = Good
Sections: 182
Attempts to beat: 4
Phew! I was starting to get a bit worried there! Thankfully though, while not great by any stretch, The Legion at War from author Andrew Keith gets this series headed back in the right direction. This entry is based upon Jack Williamson's "The Legion of Space" series of novels, but as with Shines the Name, there is a surprising lack of background information about these novels provided here. We get an introduction from Williamson himself, but rather then give us an education about the universe we will be playing in, he spends the several pages of his introduction waxing about the art and history of the "space opera" , providing a few examples of various such stories as he does so. So, what I learned about the universe this adventure takes place in I picked up from the opening sections, with more background information filled in as I went along. We play here as Vice-Admiral David Ulnar, the leader of the Ninth Squadron of the Legion of Space, a military group that exists to protect the universe we live in, which consists of a handful of populated planets. The universe lives in relative peace, until one day a distress call comes in from one of the outer planets, who find themselves under attack from an unknown but very powerful enemy. We spend the opening sections not knowing exactly what is going on, only that this seemingly unbeatable enemy has appeared out of the depths of space, and this is a great opening to an adventure. This reminded me a lot of the Mass Effect series of video games, where an unknown force arrives on the scene, obliterating the outer worlds, asking no surrender, giving no quarter, and ignoring any pleas for reason or mercy in the process. You then, are tasked with leading your squadron out into the universe to see if you can locate this mysterious enemy force, and hopefully defeat them before they can destroy any more worlds.
Your squadron in this adventure is made up of two different types of ships, the faster Destroyers and the more heavily armed Battle Cruisers. You begin with a certain number of each, but can acquire more by visiting different planets and absorbing any garrisons at that planet into your own force if you wish (and you will probably want to do this). A map of the universe is provided at the front of the book, showing 10 different planets that you can travel to, with a section of corresponding background information on each planet available for you to read about should you wish. A chart is also provided showing how many Destroyers and Battle Cruisers are currently stationed at each planet, and each time you visit a planet you can choose to add any of these to your force, or even leave some of your force behind on the planet should you wish (and you probably won't). To make matters more interesting, some of the planets also have an Orbital Fortress, which packs an incredible amount of firepower, but unfortunately cannot be taken with you, as it is tied to the planet it is currently orbiting. Still, these Fortresses could come in handy should you find yourself in a battle at a planet that happens to have one of these beasts circling it.
You are given an incredible amount of freedom right from the start here, and you can basically decide to go anywhere in the universe you wish in trying to locate the alien fleet. There is however a time mechanic at play here, and at various points in the adventure you are told to note down that a certain number of days have passed. There is also a Travel Chart at the back of the book to use when travelling between planets, where you look up the planet you are starting from along with the planet you are travelling to, and are given the number of days it takes to make that particular journey to mark off on your time log. Should you ever find yourself taking too much time and allowing too many days to pass, you can find yourself being locked out of certain events or encounters. While I can appreciate the thought behind all this, with the aliens out there destroying planets you obviously only have so much time to locate and engage them, I have never been a big fan of time limits in gamebooks, because I always want to explore as much and as thoroughly as I can, but then feel rushed by having to try and do things as quickly as possible lest I fall foul of some arbitrary time limit.
Using trial and error you will learn which are the planets that you should be visiting, and which are red herrings. There is one large battle in particular that occurs at one of the planets, however you will need to visit it within a certain time limit or the aliens will already have destroyed it by the time you get there. That might be for the best though, as this battle can be completely bypassed with no adverse outcome to achieving the optimal ending, and only seems to result in having your forces chipped away, of which you will likely need all of for the final encounter. One thing I do have to mention though is in just how fast you can reach that final encounter once you know what to do. Section wise, this is the longest entry in the series so far at 182 sections, however you can reach the end faster than any of the other books. By visiting one planet, then returning to where you started and just waiting for the alien force to arrive for the final battle, you can find yourself right at the end of this book rather quickly. That said, it took me a few tries to figure this out, so I got to experience a lot of the book in initial playthroughs, and the final battle itself can take a fair amount of time to complete, with both sides loaded up with a high number of ships, so by the time I had won the adventure I still felt as though I had "earned" my victory.
The aliens themselves, known as the Ka'Slaq, (and I'm not sure when we learned their name, as one minute the book was just referring to the mysterious aliens by this name without me apparently having learned it), are suitably creepy, with them being floating brains with tentacles who must reside inside liquid-filled tanks to live. They communicate telepathically of course, which gives them a great advantage in battle, as they can coordinate their efforts seamlessly and at great speed. Fortunately for us though there is at least one science fiction trope alive and well here, as the Ka'Slaq have a mothership which, you guessed it, if destroyed will bring down their entire armada. This gigantic mothership is described in such a way (as large as a small moon) that I don't see how anyone reading this will not call forth images of the Death Star from "Star Wars". I found they made for a more than suitable enemy that was mysterious, spooky, and ominously powerful, with no initial apparent motive or any willingness to negotiate or even communicate, as the only thing they appear to want to do is wipe out all life.
What I wouldn't give for a Simpsons gamebook.
I thought the final battle against the Ka'Slaq forces here was great, as you get to choose from among a handful of different fleet formations for your squadron, with each formation leading to different rules for the battle, as each formation has its own strengths and weaknesses. My first time making it here, I decided to try the Wedge formation, and found myself suffering a narrow defeat. Upon making it back here the next time, I decided to stick with the Wedge formation again because of how close to winning I had come, and found myself achieving a narrow victory, with only a couple of ships remaining in my force. Had I failed here a second time, I was planning on trying the Destroyer Screen formation instead, which allowed for a special attack (but not without cost), and even though I had beaten the book already, I was still tempted to try the battle again using this formation just to see how it would play out, which is always a good sign, but I ultimately decided to save that for a possible replay of this adventure in the future. There are a full 7 different types of formations you can choose between, so there is a lot of room for experimentation here. Once this final battle is won and the Ka'Slaq forces defending the mothership are defeated, we then must decide how we wish to deal with this gargantuan ship itself. We are given options of bombarding it, boarding it, or trying to communicate with the aliens, and this is a big decision too, because only one of these leads to the optimal victory section. So if you make the wrong choice here, you may find yourself having to fight that last battle again should you wish to get the optimal ending.
The writing of the book was serviceable, although nothing to "write" home about. There isn't all that much characterization going on here aside from it being hammered home multiple times that your ancestors were apparently traitors of some sort, and that fact has sullied your family name to this day. I would have thought we were past holding our ancestors acts against us even today let alone far into the future where this adventure is set, but I guess not. I also need to comment on the "game over" section of the gamebook, which you are directed to should you fail to stop the aliens. Jeesh! Could they make you feel any more guilty about your loss? You are basically told that you will go down as the most hated human to have ever lived, yet another traitor who chose to flee and hide from the aliens rather than stand and defend your fellow man (even if you didn't actually flee). The human race will not have long to live before the aliens find and kill any people that remain, but rest assured, they will all curse you with their dying breath. Harsh!
Ranking: Of all the books in the series so far, this is the one that feels most like a game. To top it off, the initial premise was excellent too, even if it's not something particularly original. I wish the story had been fleshed out a bit more though and there was more of a reason to explore all the planets rather than just to collect some more ships for your squadron. Oh, and I could have done without the time mechanic, although I can at least appreciate how it was meant to represent the impending doom from the arrival of the aliens. I found the final battle tense and well balanced though, and had a lot of fun playing through it. A good thing too, because this final battle can be reached shockingly fast, although it will probably take you a few tries to realize that. So even though there are certainly things that could have been improved, I rather enjoyed this one, (although how much of that is relativity at play due to my boredom with the previous two books could be a factor) and have it as the best one of the series up to this point. This is the only entry of the series from Andrew Keith, which is a shame, but hopefully the next person up can continue this momentum.
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6. The Black Road War - Score = 3.1 Tier = Bad
Sections: 94
Attempts to beat: 7
Ugh. Back down the crapper we go! The author of this gamebook, Neil Randall, was responsible for a couple of the more poorer experiences I have had in my gamebook odyssey, with ULTRA DEADLY from the "Sniper!" series and Seven No-Trump from the "Crossroads" series, so perhaps my feelings about the quality of this particular adventure should not have been a surprise. Interestingly, this adventure is set in the world of Roger Zelazny's "Nine Princes in Amber" series of novels, which also had an entry in the "Crossroads" gamebook series. So with that "Crossroads" series focusing on fantasy novels, and the "Combat Command" series focusing on science fiction novels, what then does that make "Nine Princes in Amber"? I suppose it could be (and is) both, but it seems odd to me that both of these gamebooks were not included in the same series. I have no experience with the novels on which this gamebook is based, so maybe someone who has read them would be able to say if they fit properly in both fantasy and sci-fi. My only experience with Amber at all comes from what I went through when I played Seven No-Trump, and even then I have no idea how much that strayed from the source material. The introduction to The Black Road War from original author Roger Zelazny didn't help me much either, as I was met with an incredibly boring info-dump on the genealogy of the various important people in Amber. I suppose it was meant to set up how important Derek's mission is to him (Derek being the character you play as here), as he seeks to avenge his father, Eric, a Prince of Amber who was killed years ago. Derek holds another character from the Amber novels, Corwin, responsible for this, and vows to somehow find a way into the realm of Amber from Earth in order to seek justice for his father's death.
The adventure opens with a section that hits close to home for me, as Derek lives in the city of Toronto, a city that I grew up in a suburb of, and it becomes clear that author Neil Randall must have lived there at some time, as he really goes over the top in cramming in the Toronto references (including name-dropping several Toronto Blue Jays baseball players of the day, many of whom I used to root for as a kid). The opening here is long, but rather interesting, as we learn how Derek has read the "Nine Princes in Amber" novels, believes himself to be the son of one of the characters, and determines to seek out a mysterious individual who lives above a bookshop who he believes has the power to send people to Amber itself. There is a bit of an odd moment where Derek has apparently hired a local street gang (?) to head with him to Amber, with this street gang not even batting an eye about their employer having them travel between dimensions. This is explained somewhat later, but the whole thing felt like it existed because it had to, because the whole premise of the series and the combat system requires you to lead a group of soldiers or spaceships etc. into battle, even though in most gamebooks you would have made this journey alone.
One other puzzling aspect about this opening section though occurs when someone throws a bomb at your character while you are sitting in a car outside the bookstore, waiting to make your move. I think it's implied that this bomb came from the apartment above the bookstore, but to me this whole sequence made little sense. Why would the person living there want to throw a bomb at you? Not only that, but no one else seems to take any notice of the bomb, as the shoppers inside the bookstore, along with the proprietor himself, continue to just go about their business despite a car having just exploded right outside. Come to think of it, you remain at this building for some time afterwards, and no one ever comes to investigate the explosion or seems to even have taken any notice of it. Weird.
Anyhow, once we have "convinced" the person living above the bookshop to send us and our team of hired thugs to Amber (which involves a random 50/50 choice in order to do so), we find ourselves awakening there right smack in the middle of some sort of medieval-style battle between two opposing forces. Thankfully they take no notice of us, and our group manages to slip away during the fight. We are now confronted with a major decision in the adventure, and must choose between heading east towards the city of Amber, or west towards "Chaos". I have no freaking idea what that second option means, and this is just yet another example of many in this gamebook where you apparently need knowledge that can only be had from reading the novels in order to make an informed decision. Once you pick a direction, then begins a death march as you travel alongside the titular Black Road, which runs east to west, in an attempt to reach your destination. You can find yourself coming across various groups of soldiers or lizardmen that must be fought, but the biggest threat comes in the form of the Black Road itself, which appears to be some sort of evil malevolent force that constantly attempts to lure you towards it and then destroy you with various nightmares that it can create. I will admit to liking the Black Road aspect of the adventure, as trying to resist an entity of pure evil is always a good time in a gamebook, as strange as that sounds. It also reminded me of the Stephen King short story, "1408", which was later made into a movie starring John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson.
So you make your way towards your ultimate goal, never really sure how you are going to accomplish it, or even if you are right to attempt it, and it becomes more clear as you progress that your character is in way over his head. You can encounter more than one individual who will tell you that Corwin was in no way responsible for your father's death, and you really have no reason not to believe them. You eventually make it to the final confrontation of the adventure, where you meet up with the current King of Amber, Random, in an attempt to get him to tell you where Corwin is. Random is in no mood to appease you though, and you find yourself in a fight against him and his guards. At this point I should mention that there is a mechanic in this book called the RAL (Random Awareness Level), where every time you use guns in combat (as your force brought guns to Amber with them, and using them can give a combat bonus), you are told to add 1 to the RAL counter. As guns are not native to Amber, the more times you fire guns in combat, the more aware Random is of your presence in this dimension, and the more prepared he will be when you finally make it to him. That said, I found the combats generally easy enough throughout the quest that I never needed to fire the guns (and truth be told, I often forgot they were even an option), so that I never once needed to fire them. The rules for this final fight also tell you that unless you have done everything required up to that point, you are unlikely to win this combat. I call BS on that warning though, for even though you are told that Random's forces get to use the best Combat Chart available in Chart A, it is not stated what Combat Chart your side is supposed to use in this fight! Oops! There is a good chance that you will have picked up some allies along the way, very powerful ones at that which allowed you to use Chart B earlier in the adventure, so I assume you get to use that Chart again? Either way, because I had obtained these allies, and because I had never fired my guns, I didn't find this final combat to be all that difficult.
Here's the thing though, even when you win this combat against Random, you still need to solve a puzzle in order to continue on. And this is where the adventure gets infuriating. Now get this. There are not one, but at least THREE different puzzles in this book (including the one after the Random fight), where in order to solve them you have to have read the first novel in the series on which this gamebook is based in order to get it right. (You are given a description of a character from the novel, and must determine their name and then add up the letters in their name using the typical A=1, B=2, approach, which will give you the next section to turn to). Now, I could perhaps see this included as an added bonus for someone who may have read the novel, maybe awarding them with some lore or some such, but having this occur three times, including apparently needing it right at the end, is egregious, and smacks of the author trying to suck up to Zelazny by trying to get players to buy his book. That said, I'm not totally sure if there is a way for anyone who hasn't read the novels to actually "win" this adventure. The best I could do was get close to the end, then ultimately return back to my home in Toronto without having accomplished my mission of getting justice against Corwin. I survived though so I'm counting it! That seems to make sense anyway, because as I understand it, Corwin was a major character in the novels, so getting revenge on him might mess up continuity of the books. There is also the possibility that you need to be able to answer one of those puzzles that require knowledge of the novels in order to solve them in order to get the optimal ending (and if that's the case, then I curse this gamebook even more).
I will say this, if completely unpredictable arbitrary random deaths in gamebooks bother you, then this adventure probably isn't for you. The danger in failure here does not necessarily come from combat (I found just about all the combats rather easy), but in having to make a decision based on either no information, or information you will only have if you have read the novels on which the gamebook is based, which should never be required. This adventure did ultimately however feel a lot longer than its meagre 94 sections might suggest, so I guess I can say that for it at least. Although that might actually work against it considering the frustrations it was giving me.
Ranking: In my opinion, this is a very poor gamebook. The story at times made little sense, frustrating random deaths abound, and requiring intimate knowledge of the source novel to get the most out of the adventure is the final kick in the teeth. The initial premise of fantastical novels believed to be fiction in our world, but which are in fact telling true stories was a good idea, and I could even have gotten behind an adventure with no real "good" ending as a nice twist on the genre. Unfortunately I was far too frustrated by the time I made it near the end of the book to even come close to appreciating any of that. The worst book of the series for me so far, and it isn't even really close.
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7. Lord of Lances - Score = 5.3 Tier = OK
Sections: 87
Attempts to beat: 1
Well this was definitely a step up from the last book, but still very much left a lot to be desired. This adventure from author Mark Acres is set in the world of Jerry E Pournelle's "Janissaries" series of books, which are about......well, I'm not really sure what they are about, as almost no background information on them is given. We have an introduction here from Pournelle himself, but he spends it mostly discussing how the original story was planned to be a novella, but grew into a full series (along with a very strange tangent from Pournelle about the possible existence of UFO's). For the adventure itself, we are told that our character, Paul Nelson, is a CIA mercenary who along with the rest of his platoon, found themselves surrounded while on a mission in South Africa, about to be killed. Before that can happen however, a flying saucer appears, and rescues Nelson and his squad, transporting them all to the distant planet of Tran. Humans already live on this planet (why and how I have no clue), but in a state of technological advancement equivalent with more ancient times, which include the use of mounted cavalry and armoured pikemen. (Gee, not like we have seen anything like this many times already huh?). Anyway, since Nelson and the rest of his squad still possess their modern weapons, along with knowledge of various modern military tactics, this gives them a huge advantage in battle, and they quickly become highly valued and sought after mercenaries on the new planet, with many of the various city-states that rule Tran vying for their services.
The adventure opens with Nelson deciding to set out on his own, having become disillusioned with the current leader of the platoon, who he fears is descending into madness a la Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now". Thus, Nelson sneaks out of camp on horseback one night, taking his M-16 rifle and Colt .45 pistol with him, as he heads south looking to make his living someplace else. It doesn't take long before Nelson is waylaid by bandits on the road, and after defeating them with his guns, or "Star Weapons" as the inhabitants of Tran take to calling them, the bandits convince him to become their leader, and this is how you get your "Combat Command" force to lead for the game ahead. Nelson then takes it upon himself to train this motley group of bandits, mostly outcasts and criminals from the various city-states of Tran along with their wives and children, into a fighting force to be reckoned with. Once Nelson is confident they can hold their own, and with them quickly running out of food, he leads his army to attack the nearby city of Karinth, in an attempt to obtain either food or land or both. This then begins the main battle of the adventure, which pits your forces made up of various units of cavalry, pikemen, and artillery (catapults), against the defending force of Karinth led by their general Hectris and his top commander, Philemon. This encounter is rather entertaining as you have a few options in how to deploy your men, and it's a good thing too because the adventure doesn't really have all that much going for it gameplay-wise outside of this battle. I didn't find the battle particularly difficult, but again, it was well-told and fun enough for what it was.
This gamebook was on its way to a bit of a better score, but once this Battle for Karinth is won, the adventure then suddenly starts to go downhill real fast. First, there is a big WTF moment thrown in when it is revealed that a group calling themselves the Shalnuksis (and I have no idea what exactly they are) that live far off to the west, plan to drop atomic bombs on the whole planet, which is something they do every 600 years or so when they feel technology is advancing too far for their liking, and they wish to literally bomb the planet "back to the stone age". Where the hell did all this come from? It tonally felt very out of place, and even worse would go on to have no resolution whatsoever. What really brought the score down though was that after defeating the Karintihan forces sent out to meet your ragtag army, you are then able to negotiate your way into having the Karinthians name you as their new General so that they can benefit from your military prowess and "Star Weapons". In turn, your people are provided some land on the plains outside of Karinth in which to set up their own village, so mission accomplished there in terms of providing for your people. Now though, one of the neighboring cities, Delphos, has marched out to attack Karinth, and as their new leader, you then lead the Karinthian forces out to meet them. There is a bit of a twist here too, as the Delphos forces are led by Gengrich, one of your former platoon mates from Earth and a fellow "Star Lord", so this promises to be a difficult fight indeed. Except it totally isn't. There are several pages at the back of the book detailing the various units on both sides, including their stats, along with checkboxes for you to mark off when any of them are wiped out. But then the adventure makes all of that almost moot, by having the final battle just be one big tease. There is an initial short skirmish between the two sides, but not much else going on after that. You didn't really think Nelson and his longtime friend Gengrich were actually going to fight were you? Just make the correct decision when asked and this battle is an auto-win. Even if you don't make the correct decision, you only need to pass a dice check to then win. Wait, so despite all that battle information, there is no actual large-scale fight here? What the hell? The victory section is even a letdown, as the whole matter with the atomic bombs has not been resolved, and the adventure ends with your Nelson character wondering where they can go to hide from the oncoming holocaust. Ah, the thrill of victory!
I have to admit to being very puzzled about the whole situation on Tran itself. It is a world apparently populated by humans, who were brought there by aliens in flying saucers? Not only that, but whole cultures seem to have been transplanted, as the planet seems to have a very "ancient Greek" feel to it, right down to city and character names (Karinth = Corinth? Delphos = Delphi?), along with a bit of ancient Rome thrown in as well (hell, even one of the cities is just straight up called "Rome"). This is definitely a case where I could have badly used some better background information in the introduction instead of the weird departure we got there instead. As it is, the whole thing just appears to be yet another excuse to transport humans to a different planet, only to have them revert to a much earlier era in human history. And other than the flying saucer bit right at the beginning, this doesn't feel like a science-fiction story at all. It doesn't feel like a fantasy one either, as there are no dragons, zombies, or magic in this story, and everything is played with straight up gritty realism. If not for the fact that your character carries an M-16 and a Colt .45, this could easily slot into the historical fiction genre. And while being able to carry modern weapons back in time to fight battles feels like a fun idea, because you only have one single rifle and one single pistol, it barely plays a factor at all. (And wouldn't you have run out of ammo by now?)
The book is not without some sloppiness either, with a couple of instances standing out rather badly. First, there is meant to be some intrigue in the final battle, as one of the squad leaders under your command is Philemon, who you defeated back when you attacked Karinth, and no secret is made as to the fact that he hates your guts, so you have to factor in whether you can trust him or not to follow your orders and not try to stab you in the back. One problem though, as at least in my playthrough, Philemon died back in that first battle! Oops! Bit of a glaring continuity issue there! The other instance of sloppiness occurs during this final battle as well, as we once again are not told which Combat Chart each side is to use for that skirmish I mentioned earlier. This again? This is the second book in a row where this has happened, and I began to wonder if it was something I was missing. I pored over the rules looking for some indication of what to do if not given which Chart to use but came up empty-handed. Is there supposed to be a default Chart? That doesn't appear to be the case, as in every other fight in the book you are explicitly told which Charts to use, so why omit it right at the end? And while not really an example of sloppiness, it is very unfortunate that the thing that is supposed to distinguish this adventure, that is you having access to modern weapons to use against ancient warriors, is taken completely out of your hands, and you never get to choose when to use them, as it is all done narratively. Talk about burying your best idea.
Ranking: If I were to sum up this gamebook in one word, that word might be "headscratcher". The adventure isn't bad per se, and I can't say it's boring either so it at least gets a passing grade, but just barely so as there was a fair amount of confusion going on here. There is just way too much that isn't explained, which is too bad because the idea of assuming command of a group of outlaws out in the wilderness and turning them into a cohesive fighting force has a very nice "Robin Hood" vibe to it. It must also be noted that the adventure is very short at only 87 sections, and it is quite linear as well, which really puts a damper on any possible replayability. Author Mark Acres shows once again he is a strong writer, and I was often engaged by his prose, but his game design here leaves something to be desired, and overall his gamebooks do not appear to be improving in that aspect as I make my way through them. I see now that this is the last gamebook of his that I will play, so I guess my experiences with his work ends here, with Lord of Lances being my lowest ranked gamebook of his that I have played (Viet Rampage and Shines the Name being the others). I put this entry squarely in the middle of the pack for this series so far, and with only two more books in the series to go, it is starting to feel unlikely that I will come across a "great" one at this stage, but stranger things have happened I suppose.
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8. Dorsai's Command - Score = 5.7 Tier = OK
Sections: 221
Attempts to beat: 14
Onwards I go to this entry set in the world of Gordon R Dickson's "Dorsai" series of novels, and the first thing that jumped out at me was that this gamebook was apparently written by 3 different authors: Troy Denning, Cory Glaberson, and Gordon R Dickson himself. I usually think that gamebooks written by multiple people will not be a good thing, but some of them have turned out better than I expected, so I was trying not to pass early judgement. Having the actual author of the original works also be a writer of the gamebook is another interesting aspect, although I suspect Dickson had little if anything to do with the game design of the adventure, although who knows. So what are the "Dorsai" books all about? Once again I haven't got a freaking clue, as this time there is NO introduction at all given before the adventure starts, and I had to pick up the general gist of things as I moved along. We play here as Mies Ohanlon, a fresh graduate of the prestigious and elite military school located on the planet Dorsai. Mies' first mission is to travel to the rugged planet of Ceta, where some incredibly rare and valuable ore deposits have recently been uncovered in that planet's Jacal region. More than a few unscrupulous individuals now have their eyes turned to this planet, including one Prince William, a local despot with designs on taking over the galaxy, of which these valuable ores would prove.....invaluable. This William character is made out to be the typical evil businessman archetype, a powerful CEO craving wealth and power above all else, who decided to make himself royalty and then try and conquer the universe. (You know the type). Mies thus heads out alone to the planet Ceta, to see if he can uncover what exactly William's plans are there, and if possible, put a stop to them.
Breaking the adventure down into what I felt were the 4 main areas below:
Travelling to the Jacal
The gamebook starts off in more of a choose-your-own-adventure style, as your Mies character begins his journey by going undercover on a mining ship that is heading for the Jacal region. You don't have any kind of squad to "command" yet, so you make choices as you wait for your ship to leave orbit and descend to the surface, where you must determine if your cabin-mate, another miner by the name of Bret Scoles, can be trusted or whether he's an agent of William, in which case your cover is probably already blown. (And I will get back to this Bret Scoles character later). Once you have navigated through this potential minefield with your cover intact, you arrive at the surface and head toward the main city in Jacal, where your potential squad of 5 Jacal men are currently being held within the city jail. The plan is that these men are known to be Jacal loyalists, so if you can liberate them from prison, they may be willing to follow you and aid you in the quest to help stop an outsider from raping their lands. However, even should your cover have been blown earlier, you could still find yourself leading your own personal squadron, just with a different makeup as opposed to the Jacal men. This then makes it somewhat difficult to fail this part of the gamebook (though certainly not impossible), and while there is not a ton of gameplay here, it was an enjoyable enough cloak and dagger style opening sequence.
Exploring the Jacal Region
Easily the longest and most in-depth area of the adventure, once Mies and his squad arrive in the Jacal region, you are provided a full page map of the area, with numbered boxes overtop of the various locations that can be visited. The numbered boxes are connected by lines, and you guessed it, you explore the region by moving from one numbered box to the next, turning to that section in order to experience a mini-adventure at each location. Once you have done all you can at one location, you can then move on to another, but you can only move to a numbered section on the map which is connected by a line with the section you are currently on. (Although the gamebook often ignores this rule, allowing you to warp directly to another numbered section nowhere close to the one you happen to be on at various times).
And boy you are going to want to explore all these locations fully, because they will be key to beating the adventure. At most of these numbered map sections, you will need to determine what needs to be done in order to win over the people living there, and should you succeed in aiding them, (which could be anything from rescuing a tribal chief's daughter, or helping to repel an enemy raid) they will reward you with some sort of token, which acts as a promise to aid you in the upcoming battle against William by providing you with their own squadron of fighters when the time comes. The little mini-adventures were well thought out and varied up enough to keep things fresh and interesting.
This was the most fun area of the whole adventure, and determining what you needed to do at each map space in order to add that location's contingent of troops to your forces was the highlight of the book. At this point, I thought this adventure had a very good chance of moving up to the top spot in the Combat Command rankings, but then.......
The Battle Against William's Forces
Ugh. So, before the battle against William's forces begins, you are asked as to what tokens you have collected from the various locations you visited while exploring the Jacal region, and are rewarded for each token obtained with a group of troops that all have their own stats (and are not meant to be all added together, but kept separate). Once you have determined which groups of troops you have, you are sent to a full page map of the valley where William's forces are invading. This map also has numbered sections at various locations in the valley, and before the battle begins, you need to decide which group of troops you want to station at each numbered location, and if you don't have enough troops to cover them all, you will need to decide which areas to leave undefended. Once this is done, William's forces attack in 3 waves, making their way down the valley from the top of the map to the bottom, and each time they come to one of the numbered sections, you turn to that section to see what the conditions for that particular skirmish are. Some of the locations reward your troops with a bonus, and some with a penalty, and others don't even let you fight at all, and just have William's forces bypass you. The first few times you play this battle then, it's merely trial and error to determine which are the locations that provide bonuses, so that you can allocate your troops to the most advantageous spots in future playthroughs.
To be honest, this didn't start out so badly, in fact I was quite into it at first. The problem comes in all the different special rules that must be kept track of during the battle. Each one of William's 3 waves has special attacks and dice rolls and Morale checks that will need to be made each round to see what happens next, and these special rules even extend into your own forces, as some of your groups of troops don't get along so well, so you will need to make modifications to your stats depending on which ones you have gathered. You are even told to write down all the various troop stats, both yours and William's, on a piece of scrap paper, which turns out to be rather tedious. This is especially true when you have to keep going through this fight over and over again trying to determine the optimal spots to put your various troop types, and I hoped you grabbed all the tokens you could from the previous area because you are likely going to need them all. I was eventually able to beat this using that trial and error approach, but any gamebook where you continually suffer defeat at the exact same spot in a run of successive playthroughs is always bad news.
The Assassination of William
So when I finally beat the preceding area, I was fully expecting the game to be over, as it sure felt like the big "final" sequence. But no, you are not done yet, as upon defeating his forces you learn that William himself has arrived on Ceta to personally oversee its takeover. Big mistake buddy! This gives you the opportunity to launch an assault on his compound in an attempt to put this conflict to rest once and for all and rid the galaxy of this tyrant by killing him. This final assault plays out something like the previous fight, in that you are provided a full page map of William's compound, with different section numbers for each area (front gate, landing pad, communications room, headquarters, etc.). You then need to allocate your various squads of troops to different areas, and you can assign up to two different squads to each section, and play out the encounters in turn as you try to locate and kill William. Once a group of your troops has won an area of the compound, they can then move to an adjacent area in their search. It's made a little too obvious as to which area of the compound William is in if you ask me, and it didn't take me long to realize that I only needed to put my two strongest squads on the front gate, then immediately move them to the area where I knew William was holed up. But bro-ther! The amount of data you are asked to write down on scrap paper is even more ridiculous than the last fight! You have a full 10 different squads of troops to choose from this time, and while you can't take them all, they still all come with their own stats and various modifiers that you need to record (unless you wanted to keep flipping back and forth to the page where the stats are located, which might get hopelessly confusing in its own right). Thank goodness this battle doesn't take nearly as long as the fight against William's forces from the last area, or I might have been forced to check out of this one.
So once William is dead you have won the adventure right? Well, yes and no. Yes in the sense that the game is over, no in the sense that you don't quite know it yet. Remember that Bret Scoles character from way back in the beginning? Well after his mysterious disappearance in that opening sequence, he makes a surprise return here, claiming to be an undercover operative on your side. You are then given 3 choices on how you want to deal with him. You can either: believe he is telling the truth and let him join you, think he is lying and have him killed, or hedge your bets by having him banished. It seems like this is going to be a big decision as to what ending you get, but then the adventure goes all "Real Life" gamebook series on us (which is a comparison I make whenever a completely meaningless choice arises, of which that series was chock full), by having all 3 of these options lead to exactly the same thing! Even if you pick the option to have him killed, you are basically then told "Nah. You don't want to do that" and sent to the same final victory section anyway. (And yes, I discovered this after beating the book and then going back to see what the other choices would have led to). I don't suspect the authors behind this gamebook will ever come remotely close to reading what I am saying here, but I would dearly love to know the thinking behind choices like these. Anyway, William is now gone and you are the new leader of the Jacal people, whether you want to be or not. Congratulations!
This gamebook really did feel like it was written by 3 different people after all, with some sequences seemingly having more effort put into them than others. I am also sorry to say that the adventure did seem to me to suffer from a lack of atmosphere. You find yourself travelling through what should have been some jaw dropping locations, including mountains and inside volcanoes, and while the prose is not terrible by any means, I felt like these locations could have been described much better and with more immersion infused into them. I also think I used more scrap paper while playing through this adventure then all the previous 7 books in the series put together! This might not be up there with "Sagas of the Demonspawn" when it comes to level of bookkeeping (and what is?), but it's up there with some of the "Car Wars" books for going a bit overboard in all the data you are expected to jot down. And while the adventure was the most challenging in the series so far, it was not in a good way, as almost all the challenge comes down to that one battle against William's forces, which ultimately had me dreading having to play through it again. When I finally beat it, I was just glad to have it behind me, which probably isn't a good sign. Oh, and it was only after playing the adventure several times that I realized the "introduction" was actually put at the end of the book! It is not by the original author, but provided some background information that would have been illuminating, however it is also 15 pages long and too boring for its own good. My own fault for not checking the back of these books before playing, as this is not the first time they have hidden some information back there (useful or otherwise).
Ranking: This was on its way to a much better score until the last two battles went way over the top with the bookkeeping. On the one hand I can appreciate the attempt to inject as much "realism" as possible into the game system by having all the various troop types and modifiers, however I think that might be more appropriate for a board game as opposed to a gamebook, in which I assume most people are not looking to have to record reams of data. It's a good question though in how much record-keeping is too much, and the answer will probably be different for everyone. As it is, the first half of the adventure, which was quite good, helps to propel this entry into the middle of the pack in the rankings. The story and the writing were a bit of a letdown too, which could have helped to elevate it somewhat but ultimately didn't. Ah well, only one more book in the series to go! Will I have a new rankings leader with this last entry?
You're in good critical company with your verdict on Piers Anthony, John. Here is Dave Langford's review of one of the execrable Tyrant novels from White Dwarf 96 (Dec, 1987): 'Anthony's overall scheme is clear - to offer enlightened liberal solutions to world political problems, mapped by ponderous allegory onto a Solar System where Jupiter is America and Saturn is Russia plus China. It's the execution which is dire, with its humourless efforts to characterise all women by their performance in bed'. Even in the 80s it looks like readers were far from convinced by this stuff.
ReplyDeleteI haven't even read any of his actual novels yet, but his introductions to these gamebooks is enough to put me off trying I think. Although apparently enough people like his work to make him a successful author, so more power to him I guess.
DeleteHere's something else that struck me about that Langford column: in the same issue, he also reviews Terry Pratchett's "Mort", Clive Barker's "Weaveworld" and Alan Moore's "Watchmen". Aside from the fact that any of those would have made an excellent basis for a gamebook, that is quite the embarrassment of riches for a single month. Nice work, late 1980s.
DeleteEither you got lucky on the time front, or I was unlucky when I played Cut by Emerald for my blog. The fact that I haven't been motivated to try the book again in the dozen years plus since then is a good indication of how much I enjoyed the experience.
ReplyDeleteYeah there is always that suspicion when beating a gamebook on the first try if I just got lucky. I even went back and retraced my route through the adventure to confirm I hadn't missed any time penalties, which I hadn't. From the beginning I decided to prioritize the time factor as opposed to conserving ships as I felt like I had more than enough ships to begin with, so that apparently helped. What did you think of the mass combat system Ed? If you can recall it after so many years of course.
DeleteNo specific memories of what I made of the mass combat system,but ambiguities and inconsistencies in the text concerning some battles left a poor impression.
DeleteOh, and if you got confused just by having the perspective shift to that of one of the pirates, it's a good thing that you managed to miss the careless structuring that makes it possible to experience that change of perspective at least three times, and cut to the exact same scene on each occasion.
Thanks for another entertaining review, John! I read with dismay last week that Neil Blomkamp is remaking "Starship Troopers"...but without all that troublesome fascist subtext. What's his next project, I wonder - "Stuart Little" without the mouse?
ReplyDeleteHe is probably intending to tone it all down too right? I thought the fact it was rated R made it stand out from a lot of other stuff at the time.
DeleteAt least one of this books (won't say which one) requires you to read the novel it's based on in order to play it.
ReplyDeleteUh-oh! I'm in trouble if that's the case. Wonder if I will be able to figure out which one it is.
DeleteAlso, either I misread your review or you may have misinterpreted the rules in Cut by Emerald. Though to be fair I don't think it would have taken more than 2-3 tries if you had played right.
ReplyDeleteThe Omega Rebellion is the only one of the Combat Command books I've played that I actually enjoyed. And it's not the only one I've won, so my having succeeded at it can't be the only reason I preferred it to the others.
ReplyDeleteMy discontentment with Shines the Name started with a semi-pointless fight:
A) Roll for your troops and ignore the result because reinforcements immediately replace all enemy casualties.
B) Roll to see if the enemies kill you.
C) Repeat steps A and B.
D) Repeat them again.
I mean, why even bother with step A unless you're trying to impress on the player the interactivity-unfriendly idea that nothing they do matters?
Except that player input turned out not to be completely irrelevant, as it was my next decision that led to what finished souring me on the book - an apparent mistake ("Hang on, succeeding at the roll meant death?") that turned out to be a poorly implemented no-win situation ("Oh, so if I'd failed the roll I would have died that bit more shamefully. Well, that makes all the difference.").
Interesting how my feelings about books 2 and 3 seemed to be flipped from yours. I think my experience with book 3 was heavily influenced by not having any interest in the original source material. The first thing I did after finishing my reviews was to check out your playthroughs. Maybe not a surprise, but I ended up taking the exact same route through The Omega Rebellion that you did.
Delete'Slammers Down' sounds like a Pog gamebook.
ReplyDeleteOr a tequila-themed one. Now there's an idea - are you listening, Sir Ian?
DeleteCan't say I'm familiar with Pog books. Aren't pogs those oversized bottle caps? lol
Delete"Margaritaville - The Gamebook". In order to win you need to find the magical "lost shaker of salt".
Yeah, Pogs were cardboard discs which you stacked up and then threw a plastic slammer down to try to flip them over. I'm not aware of any Pog gamebooks but they were insanely popular in the 90s so wouldn't be that surprised!
DeleteNice to see this series get back on track anyway. Hope it lasts!
RAL actually sounds like a pretty good idea. Pity the implementation (and the book in general) left a lot to be desired.
ReplyDeleteYes maybe I didn't give it enough credit in the review for the idea. I think if we started listing the initial good ideas in gamebooks that didn't pay off because of the implementation, we could have a long list indeed!
DeletePrince William must have survived, since he is now heir to the British throne. I wonder what intrigues he pulled to manage that?!
ReplyDelete