Freeway Warrior

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1. Highway Holocaust - Score = 0.0   Tier = Broken

Sections: 350
Attempts before running out of gas: 50

Ugh. Well that was certainly a rough start to this series to say the least. I had been looking forward to this series by gamebook author Joe Dever for a long time too, being a fan of post-apocalyptic stories in general. And for a short while to start with anyway, this adventure was living up to, if not even exceeding, my expectations. We begin with the intro that takes us through world events (on Earth) during the early 2000's, when a crime syndicate known as HAVOC (Hijack, Assassination, and Violent Oppression Consortium) rises to prominence. This group has managed to recruit many agents all around the globe, and eventually manages to get their hands on some nuclear weapons (as all fictional terrorist groups seem to do), which they then hide throughout various major cities in the world, vowing to detonate them one at a time unless their demands are met, which includes the release of any of their agents being held in jails around the world, along with 5 trillion in gold bullion. Various governments band together however, and are able to locate and eliminate the HAVOC high command in their secret lair, but in a final act of vengeance before they can be either captured or killed, HAVOC manages to detonate all their nukes around the world, causing mass devastation and loss of life. What then follows is a long nuclear winter, before the few survivors who managed to get underground in time eventually emerge to find only a decimated wasteland remaining. We play as one of those survivors, Cal Phoenix, who had been touring an underground mine in Texas with his aunt and uncle on the day of the nuclear armageddon.  The three of you have only now managed to dig through the many layers of rubble and come out onto the surface. So first things first......Cal Phoenix? Credit where credit is due, that is a 10 out of 10 character name right there! Not only that, but this whole introduction is excellently told, and while the post-apocalyptic setting may have become quite overdone in movies, tv shows, and video games over the last decade or so, this set up must have been relatively still fresh back in 1988 when this book was published. Dever also wisely adds a bit of mystery to the proceedings, as we learn that our Cal character is not actually from Texas, but was visiting from his home state of California, and therefore does not know for sure if his family, which consists of his parents, two brothers, and a sister, who were in California at the time, survived the holocaust or not. (Although who are we kidding, I have to believe that with that opening at least some of them survived, otherwise what a waste). 

EDIT: After posting this review, I began playing book 2 and found it interesting to note that depending on which edition of the books you are playing, the day given for the nukes going off could be either Jan 3rd 2012, or Jan 3rd 2025 (and perhaps there is even yet another date used from an edition I do not have). I suppose this was to keep this nuclear holocaust day in the "future" when the later edition was released, although that doesn't really seem necessary, as I'm sure players can deal with a fictional timeline. In any case, this 2025 date will soon be in the past as well, so I wonder if any future editions will push the date out even further.  

After breaking out of the mine, Cal, along with his aunt and uncle, manage to hook up with a local colony of survivors in the town of McKinney, which is located just north of Dallas. The situation in the colony is rapidly becoming desperate however, as food is becoming more and more scarce, with it being difficult to grow crops in the very arid and irradiated desert. Hope comes in the form of a message received over the radio one day from another survivor colony located in the town of Big Spring, many miles to the west, who agree to let your colony join theirs in exchange for a tanker full of fuel, a commodity of which they are in short supply, and of which you have more than enough to spare, being located in oil country after all. With that, you decide to accept the offer, and your colony packs up to leave for Big Spring in a 3 vehicle convoy, with yourself (being the best driver in the colony) driving your "roadster" to act as the scout, followed by a school bus loaded up with all the colonists to be driven by your uncle, and finally the fuel tanker to be driven by your best friend and mechanical whiz of the colony, Cutter. It won't be as simple as just driving down the highway to Big Spring however, as you can expect to be hassled by the biker gangs of the area who will be looking to steal your fuel, your food, your water, and even your lives. 

Turning to the rules of the adventure, we are first given a Close Combat statistic that is generated by using a random number table at the back of the book (or by using a 10 sided die as I did) which will give a value between 0-9, then adding 10 to this result. Your Endurance score is similarly calculated, except this time you add 20 to the result. Should you need to fight an enemy hand to hand, this is done by subtracting their Close Combat statistic from yours, which gives you a "Combat Ratio", which is then looked up in the Combat Table at the back of the book. You then select a number between 0-9, look up the result on the Combat Table for that Ratio, and deduct the amount of Endurance shown for both your enemy and yourself, and then repeat until one of you is dead. So in other words, this is pretty much exactly the same as the combat system from Dever's "Lone Wolf" series. But hang on there is an added wrinkle here, as the adventure also includes gun combat! Before you begin, you get to pick one of 4 firing weapons (Pistol, Machine Pistol, Rifle, or Shotgun), and get a limited amount of ammo for whichever one you select. You then may be given the option to use your firearm at various points in the adventure, which can help to end a confrontation more quickly. You are also given 3 weapon slots so that you may pick up and carry additional firearms should you come across them in the course of the adventure. Oh, and you also need to keep track of your ammo, so use it wisely!

The fun doesn't stop there though, as we are also given points to allocate among the five attributes of: Driving, Shooting, Field Craft, Stealth, and Perception. These attributes can and will be tested many times over the course of the adventure in a "skill check" manner, with failure often having dire consequences (and boy will I have something to say about this aspect later). And in true "Lone Wolf" style, we also have a cool inventory system here, allowing us to carry up to a maximum of 10 items, with the caveat being that depending on how many of these 10 slots you choose to use, you may need to take a penalty to your Stealth attribute (presumably from all your junk clanging around in your backpack).  And continuing on with things to keep track of, you also have an inventory of Medkits to start the adventure, the number of which is determined by random roll and which provide +3 Endurance points each when used, along with a full canteen of Water. This canteen holds enough Water for 4 drinks, and at various times during the adventure you will be told that you must take a drink of lose a certain amount of Endurance points. This was a neat inclusion, and always has you on the lookout for possible places that you may be able to fill up your canteen. Whew! There definitely was a lot of good stuff to unpack with this system, and along with that great introduction, not to mention a beautiful map of the state of Texas near the front of the book (from the edition I am playing anyway), we are off to a rip-roaring start! 

And then the rules section concludes and you are told to turn to section 1 to start the adventure. Whoa whoa whoa! Back the school bus up a second! Where the heck are the rules for car combat??? Surely in a gamebook with a Mad Max style theme and setting there will be a car combat system? Surely in a gamebook that sees you spending large amounts of time driving a souped up roadster down a highway and being attacked by vicious biker gangs there will be a car combat system? Surely a gamebook series that calls itself freaking FREEWAY WARRIOR wouldn't drop the ball by not including a car combat system? Well, apparently it would, at least in this entry of the series, as there is no car combat system to be found here. Oof, what a miss! So immediately after that phenomenal intro and impressive rules section comes my first major disappointment with the adventure, and unfortunately it would not be the last.  

The adventure itself starts out decently enough, and very early on (before even setting out actually) your colony rescues a teenage girl called Kate, who has recently escaped after being held hostage by a Michigan based biker gang known as the Detroit Lions. And yes, this gang is apparently based on the NFL's Detroit Lions team, as they even use the Lions logo on their bikes. The Lions are led by a madman known as Mad Dog Michigan, and though the gang had been travelling towards Texas to loot the largest armoury in the country which happens to be located in the state, they now have a different motivation, because during the rescue of Kate your character ends up killing Mad Dog Michigan's brother, who will now stop at nothing in taking his revenge upon you. So you make your way westwards toward Big Spring, leading the convoy down broken highways and stopping to investigate deserted towns in hopes of finding more supplies for the journey, occasionally having to fight off raids from various biker groups, including the Lions. And that seemed to be about it. I felt like the process of "explore deserted town, gather supplies, fight off a couple of bikers, rinse and repeat" started to get old rather quickly. 

You advance through the adventure by overcoming obstacles that involve both combat against enemies, and also needing to pass various skill checks. The combat isn't too much of an issue providing you rolled a decent number for your Close Combat score, although I was finding myself losing at least a handful of Endurance points with each encounter, which would eventually prove problematic. But the real problem of the whole book comes down to the skill checks. There are just so many of them of the do-or-die variety to pass, that even though they are always in your favour, it means that even one low roll among the plethora of these checks and it's game over. This isn't helped by having character creation and setting up your adventure sheet before starting the quest again be more involved than usual, with many things to record before restarting each time you flunk one of these do-or-die dice checks. And to add insult to injury, after finally going on a lucky run and making it farther into the book than I ever had, I was at one point asked what my current Endurance score was, and not having it high enough meant I was instantly killed. Are you freaking kidding me? What the hell is that crap? So now even in the unlikely event I pass all these do-or-die checks, I need to not lose too many Endurance points also or I'm dead anyway? At this point, the book lost me. I kept on playing in a vain attempt to beat it, wanting to at least hit 50 attempts, but I did not have much desire to finish it anymore if the adventure was going to pull stuff like that. Even after those 50 attempts, I don't think I ever really come close to beating it even once, and if anyone who has played this book and beaten it happens to be reading this, did you have a certain strategy you employed regarding your route through the adventure along with your initial allocated stats and weapons? If so I would love to hear it, because I felt like I tried just about everything, but each attempt seemed just as futile as the last. 

My expression while playing this gamebook

On the subject of your Close Combat and Endurance scores, is there even a point to playing this book if you don't roll high scores in both of these to begin with? Sure, in many other gamebooks if you don't roll a high score in a certain attribute you have very little chance of succeeding, but here you likely need TWO high rolls to begin or you might as well put the book away. It's incredibly frustrating that Dever does such a good job in allowing you to allocate points among your 5 attributes (not that it ultimately does you much good), but when it comes to the Close Combat score, it is left completely up to random chance. C'mon man! It is also something of a shame that you don't actually play the hero of the adventure, who is clearly the Cutter character. This guy is a total badass! He fixes everything that breaks down, sneaks in and out of seemingly anywhere he chooses at will, and is unstoppable in combat too, possibly saving your rump on more than one occasion. How do I play as this guy instead? His stats would probably be through the roof enough to possibly allow the player to beat the adventure! And speaking of fixing things, what was the deal with the sequence where you investigate a deserted town and find a broken down bus that you can pilfer for parts, and can choose from a list which parts to take with you. Later on, your convoy bus does indeed break down, but the required part was not one from the list! Okay, so maybe one of these parts will prove useful in a later book, but it sure served to make the sequence in this adventure rather frustrating. 

One thing I will say in Joe Dever's favour is that his world building is incredible. From "Lone Wolf" to now this, he does a wonderful job of setting the stage and providing a fantastic atmosphere that oozes from every place you visit. The Cal Phoenix name alone is worth some points, although you do later encounter (should you ever make it that far) a pilot by the name of Rickenbacker, who to anyone familiar with their US World War 1 history might be a little too "on-the-nose" of a name for a pilot to have. Dever also introduces a slight romantic angle between your Cal character and the Kate character that grows slowly over the course of the adventure and doesn't beat you over the head with it. It's just too bad then that Dever clearly has a gift for creating these worlds along with an initial well thought out and intriguing game system, but then doesn't seem to be able to do near as good of a job when it comes to actually implementing that system into an enjoyable and balanced game.  

Ranking: I don't recall the last time I was so disappointed with a gamebook. The lack of any car combat is something I am going to remain salty about for a long time (I have had these books on my bookshelf for years now, and always just assumed they contained one). But even without such a system, talk about taking such initial great promise and pissing it away by apparently not play-testing your adventure. The dice rolls required to beat this, while perhaps not near Crypt of the Sorcerer level, still seem over the top. I would compare it more to something like Sky Lord, where there is a very slight glimmer of possibility, but even knowing what to do and even with strong starting stats, success still feels depressingly unlikely. I wasn't expecting to say it, but both Battle Road from the "Car Wars" series and Freeway Fighter from "Fighting Fantasy", which both had similar settings, were more fun than this. I had to go back and check, and this is also the first time that a debut book in a series I have played ended up in my Broken tier (although you could argue Fire*Wolf from "Sagas of the Demonspawn" might also need to be in that group), and this now has me dreading the rest of this series. And despite the odd moment of inspiration, such as a confrontation with a Native American Chief for example, even the story had a feeling of "samey-ness" to it as I was going along. It's not going to be 4 solid books of exploring deserted towns and fighting off the same bikers is it? Well, nowhere to go from here but up I suppose! Or at least, I dearly hope so! 

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2. Slaughter Mountain Run - Score = 7.4   Tier = Good

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 6

Well, that sure was a lot easier! Author Joe Dever scales back the difficulty level a huge amount with this second entry, and I thought the adventure was much the better for it. (Hey I like a challenge and all, but book 1 was ridiculous). Despite not being able to defeat the previous entry, I read the final section anyway so that I would know what was going on with the story moving forward. As it turns out, I needn't have bothered, because there is a handy recap to kick off this second book which brings you up to speed anyway. So, even though our Cal Phoenix character was able to successfully lead the convoy into the town of Big Spring to end book 1, the adventure wasn't without its "Empire Strikes Back" downer ending, because in the process of getting everyone safe inside the town, our romantic interest, Kate Norton, was unfortunately recaptured in the process by the Detroit Lions biker gang led by the maniac Mad Dog Michigan. Book 2 kicks off with the colony of Big Spring now surrounded by the biker gang, and with it being only a matter of time before the walls are breached or the colony runs out of supplies, a plan is formed for the whole colony to make a blitz breakout under the cover of night and continue heading west towards the town of El Paso. At first this sounds like you will be doing the exact same thing you did in book 1, that is, acting as scout for a convoy heading west on the highway. But no, Cal has sworn to himself that he will not leave Kate to her unspeakable fate, and resolves to head to the east instead, towards the city of San Angelo, where Mad Dog Michigan is currently holding alliance talks with another biker gang, the Angelinos, and where Kate is likely to be. 

After a brief sequence where Cal accompanies the convoy as it breaks out of Big Spring, you then find yourself going it solo as you set off alone to rescue Kate. I thought this made the adventure much more interesting than the previous one, where I found leading the convoy from one deserted town to the next to be too repetitious. Here though, we get to play the stealth game as we drive into enemy territory (with no Cutter to bail us out this time), attempting to avoid biker patrols from both the Detroit Lions and Angelinos gangs as we skirt even more deserted towns and dried up river beds. Once we make it to San Angelo, we enter from the less well guarded southern area, picking our way through the rubble until we arrive at a large sporting arena in the centre of the city where the alliance talks between Mad Dog Michigan and Mekong Mike (the leader of the Angelinos) is taking place. This then commences probably the best part of the adventure, where we infiltrate the arena, sneak up to the press box where the alliance talks are being held, storm our way in, confront both Mekong Mike and Mad Dog Michigan, rescue Kate, then make our escape through the tunnels and broken alleys of the city back to our roadster. As exciting as all this was though, there did occur one incredibly "Are you an idiot?" moment, where Cal has a golden opportunity to finish off Mad Dog Michigan once and for all, but leaves him alive instead! (What a twat!) 

Once you and Kate are clear of the city, you begin to head west again in hopes of rejoining the colony on its way to El Paso. Now, up until this point I was having a blast and was expecting the adventure to get an even higher score than what I eventually ended up giving it. Everything had been fantastically told, and I truly felt like I was the main character in a big budget Mad Max style action movie. But uh, yeah, about that being the main character thing? From here on out, so much for that. Next up comes a very odd encounter with a group of cannibal cave dwellers, where I really wasn't sure what the hell was going on, but these cannibals actually help you out by "taking care" of the bikers that had been sent in pursuit of you after your escape from San Angelo (they'll be having a "ball" tonight I guess...heh heh).  After that you hook up with a group of military guys trying to make it back to their base at Fort Bliss, which they believe to still be operational and which is in the same direction that you are going. About what I said earlier in regards to being the main character in a movie? Well, the leader of these military guys, a Sergeant Haskell, says "I'll take it from here", as he basically becomes the hero of the story from here on out, much like Cutter was in the first book. This guy sneaks around and guns down people with ease, although he at least has the decency to let you solve the one puzzle in the book, a combination lock whereby you must recognize a pattern in a given set of numbers and then provide the one missing number, and then doing so allows you to get some much needed fuel for your roadster.   

I also don't know that I have seen a book rush its last act more than this one. After you finally rejoin the convoy in the town of Kent and continue on together towards El Paso, the adventure presses the fast forward button. The name of the book is Slaughter Mountain Run after all, so just how long does the "run" by the convoy through Slaughter Mountain take? Just a few sections. (Although it does contain what I thought was the trickiest test in the adventure, as you try to avoid getting hit by a guy who fires a rocket at you from the side of the road). Once that is done, the adventure becomes a quick straight shot to the end, where you quickly get the option of picking up an advanced piece of weaponry called a Leviathan Missile. (Gee I wonder if this will come in handy. Who the heck is not going to take this?). You need the missile to blow a gap in the final biker roadblock preventing you from making it to El Paso, and possession of the missile makes this final sequence an automatic win. Even should you not have taken the missile for some unknown reason however, you will then be told you can use a grenade to blow an opening in the roadblock instead, and you should not have too much difficulty in doing so, which also leads to victory. There is also an odd moment thrown in this final sequence where you are asked if you have a Signal Flare among your items, as you will need one to signal the convoy that it is safe to proceed once the roadblock has been breached. Should you not have a Signal Flare however, a member of your colony just gives you one anyway, so what was the point of that? This whole final stretch of breaking through the roadblock just felt very weird, and the back half of the book in general seems to contain more than its fair share of "turn to" references where nothing is required of the player. Oh, and to add a final insult to injury, you don't even get to be the one to fire the Missile and blow up the roadblock, as Sergeant Haskell takes the Missile from you and gets to have the fun of firing it himself. (Because of course he does!). Talk about stealing the thunder away from the player character at such a key moment of the adventure! Anyhow, from there it is on to the safety of El Paso, where if the series formula holds, we will need to break out of at the start of book 3. 

I have to say again that the writing in this adventure is top notch, and I found myself on the edge of my seat in several places wondering what would happen next. That said, every once in awhile I would get taken out of the adventure by an odd moment where Dever seems to forget that we are supposed to be playing as Cal himself. For instance, we are told at one point as we are driving that "a sign flashes past, identifying it as Road 1987, but you fail to see this.." (Huh?). Or at another moment we are told the name of a biker, Ricky Riot, that has just won a friendly motorcycle race between the two biker gangs. (How would we know this?). As jarring as some of these moments were, they were at least thankfully spread out enough that they didn't impact my overall enjoyment of the adventure, even though I can still remember them without having to look them up even after finishing the book. The adventure also seems to suggest that Mad Dog Michigan had been beating Kate, which makes the missed golden opportunity to kill Mad Dog even more incredibly frustrating! Still, the romance between Cal and Kate is also subtlety developed more, and I think it's safe to say they are clearly now a couple. I do have to ask though, just how big is the age gap between Cal and Kate anyway? I thought she was a young teenager?

"Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with an Mexican underage girl...."

Finally, this adventure seemed like even more of a "skill check" book than the first entry, as the combat system seemed to me to be de-emphasized, with only a few fights needed to beat the book. It makes up for that with the volume of skill checks, which are thankfully toned down in difficulty, with not nearly as many of them present where failure means automatic death. There are also times where, as in the first adventure, instead of a skill check you are asked about your current Endurance score, with the higher being better. I have learned by now to keep my Endurance score as high as possible at all times thanks to these checks, and this adventure in particular seemed to contain a high volume of Med Kits that can be found, which helps to make these Endurance tests an easy win. Still, I'd much rather have this than what I had to go through in book 1! 

Ranking: I wonder if Joe Dever was given a heads up after the previous book that it was far too difficult, because this one is toned down and then some when it comes to the frustration level. This was better than Highway Holocaust by a mile, and was an incredibly enjoyable read, which helped to overcome some of the minor faults found elsewhere. It's just a shame then that the adventure is rushed to its conclusion right when it should have been at its most exciting, and I suspect that Dever may have been up against some sort of time crunch for finishing the book. Overall though, this entry has definitely restored my faith in the potential of the series after the nightmare of book 1, and I am now once again looking forward to seeing where Dever will take me. (Hopefully to the addition of car combat!)

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3. The Omega Zone - Score = 7.6   Tier = Good

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 2

So as expected, book 3 indeed begins with another breakout, as Cal and the rest of the colony holed up at Fort Bliss in El Paso find themselves once more surrounded by series arch-villain Mad Dog Michigan and his Detroit Lions biker gang, with Mad Dog by now having also gathered several other biker gangs as allies, including the Mavericks, the Angelinos, and now a Mexican biker gang as well. Still seeking revenge on Cal for having killed his brother way back in the beginning of book 1, Mad Dog's plan this time involves the employment of several large explosives he is having brought in via trucks, which will not just help him to breach the walls of Fort Bliss, but likely completely destroy it along with everyone inside as well. While the colony inside Fort Bliss once again plans a breakout in the dark of night however, this time Cal won't be coming along, as he has volunteered to be a part of a 4 man squad that will attempt to stealthily penetrate into Mad Dog's base and , using contact mines, blow up the explosives Mad Dog is having brought in to annihilate the Fort. The massive explosion and confusion this will cause among Mad Dog's forces should provide the rest of the colony with just the diversion they need to make a break for it and head further west, this time to the Arizona city of Tucson. Your team, should you survive, will then need to make your own way west to hopefully join up with the rest of the colony on the road. And I gotta say, this is a really cool way to begin the adventure.

Ah, the good old NES days....

You set off with your 4 man team, which consists of Cal along with 3 military guys: Sergeant Haskell from the previous book; a lower ranking Marine known as Knott; and finally the leader of the squad, Captain Frankland. Being a part of this team being sent to sneak behind enemy lines made me feel as though I were a part of a highly trained LRRP (Long Range Recon Patrol) team, real life squads who also work in smaller teams and infiltrate deep into enemy territory. And right from the jump, what a great ride this was (from a story perspective anyway). The adventure itself is one high-stakes sequence after another, and sees you:

- sneaking through the ruins of a destroyed town and across a bridge over the Rio Grande, all while avoiding enemy patrols. Then making your way into a stadium where the trucks with Mad Dog's explosives have just arrived, blowing them to kingdom come, and just making your escape in time using a commandeered enemy vehicle

- hiding out in an old video arcade, only to find your team surrounded by Mad Dog and his men who have tracked you down in the middle of the night, requiring you to once more make a daring escape

- deal with a group of black-clad bikers sent to chase and kill you (and the section these guys are described in is fantastic, with them travelling after you in V formation, all clicking their headlights on at the same time like something out of the movie "Christine"), whereby you quickly realize you cannot outrun them, so attempt to fool them into thinking you have met your death in a fiery crash

- the most drawn out and tense sequence of the adventure that sees you and the team being hunted down by an incredibly skilled and deadly former HAVOC sniper and assassin. Author Joe Dever wisely keeps this assassin hidden from view right up until the final confrontation between he and Cal, and up until that point there is a wonderful feeling of hopelessness and dread hanging over the proceedings, as you realize this guy is way out of your league. The final confrontation with him also takes place in the famous gunfight town of Tombstone naturally.

- an encounter with a group of survivalists that have been holed up for years in an underground bunker, and for the longest time I thought they would end up aiding Cal, but that did not end up going the way I expected. I wish there was some way to go and get payback on a couple of these guys, as they are responsible for getting somebody killed.

- an eventual rendezvous with your girlfriend, Kate Norton, where you finally get back into your roadster and which then leads into the final sequence of the adventure, a high speed confrontation on the highway with Mad Dog Michigan himself who just happens to be driving his own souped-up automobile complete with mounted machine guns. Once this final driving sequence against Mad Dog is successfully passed, you and Kate arrive in Tucson to a hero's welcome, and of course, you will need to keep heading west towards your final destination of California in the next adventure. 

In between all of the above there is the usual procedure of investigating deserted towns, looking for supplies for yourself along with parts to keep the vehicles you have stolen from the bikers in proper working order. One thing though sticks out like a sore thumb.....where the heck is the combat? I played this adventure twice, and had ONE combat encounter total, and even that occurred on my first and unsuccessful playthrough. On my next and winning attempt, I did not get in one single combat the whole time! (Combats using the Combat Ratio and Table I should say, as there are fights to be had, but they were all settled with skill checks). I thought the lack of many combats in the previous adventure felt a bit out of place, but this just feels very odd, and it is almost as though Dever all but forgot that the whole combat system even existed. What happened here?

As mentioned, the adventure is excellently told, and Dever once again shows his talent for setting up situations that ooze with tension, fear, and excitement. (Ok, with the possible exception of the section where Mad Dog Michigan literally shakes his fist at a building you are hiding in, which is a bit "Looney Tunes"). Any problems I had with the adventure therefore mostly manifested themselves in some of the gameplay decisions. In addition to the aforementioned lack of combats, there were also times where I began to question if some of my decisions actually mattered. For example, at one section you will find yourself catching sight of one of the survivalists out in the forest, making his way back to his bunker with a clutch of dead rabbits in his hand, and you are asked if you want to call out to him, or quietly stalk him instead. However, it doesn't matter at all which you pick, not even narratively, as if you call out to him he turns and makes a run for his bunker, and if you try to stalk him he notices you and makes a run for his bunker, with both options leading you to the exact same section after only a couple of sentences either way. What was the point of that? In addition to those situations, there are at least a couple of times where you attempt to take down a pursuing clan biker by making a tricky shot with one of your guns. Now you would think, and rightfully so, that this would require a skill check of your Shooting attribute, but no, as long as you just choose to use your gun, you automatically hit the bad guy and continue on. What if my only shooting weapon was a shotgun? How did I make that tricky long range shot with that? For that matter, what is the point of even having a Shooting attribute if you are not going to use it in situations such as these? Sections like this just make the book feel as though it was rushed to completion.     

And I don't know what it says about me, but in my case the most unbelievable moment in the whole adventure occurs when Captain Frankland asks you and the rest of the squad to VOTE on a course of action: should you attempt to break through a roadblock standing in your way, or detour around it. Should you choose the break through the roadblock option, the vote ends in a 2-2 tie, and Captain Frankland FLIPS A FREAKING COIN to decide which side will get their way. Hang on a second. The military leader is going to flip a coin to decide what to do??? Ummmm, no. The military defends democracy, it doesn't practice it. It wouldn't matter if you, Haskell, and Knott all voted for the same thing, if the Captain wanted to do something else, then that's what you all would be doing. And it's not like Captain Frankland hadn't been taking command and running your team like a military unit up until this point either, as he certainly had been. I have to say, I lost a lot of respect for this guy after this coin toss fiasco! #end rant  

Wait a minute....when did Two Face take over command of the squad?

I was also very surprised by the low difficulty here, and anything taking less than 20-30 attempts is still coming as a shock after the first book. The rules state that should you have beaten the previous adventure, which I had, you get an extra 4 points to allocate to your attributes. Knowing that the adventures up until this point seem to have prioritized the Stealth and Driving stats, at least in terms of skill checks that might kill you outright should you fail them, I decided to pump these two up, which seems to have paid off. This book also repeats something seen in the previous adventures, in that once you start getting near the end of the mission, instead of passing a straight up skill check, you are often asked to add your current Endurance score to one of your attribute scores, and if the combined total is high enough, you automatically pass the check and make it past the obstacle in question. I learned my lesson earlier in the series here too, and kept my Endurance as high as possible at all times (prioritizing finding and taking Meals and Water with me, as loss of Endurance through not having a Meal or Water when asked to eat or drink cannot be recovered by a Medi-Kit). Using this approach, I was passing most of the checks near the end of the adventure with ease. I actually came very close to beating this adventure on my very first attempt, making it all the way to the final highway confrontation with Mad Dog where I was asked to make a roll whereby as long as I rolled anything other than a 0, I would have passed and beaten the adventure on that very first try. But of course, I ended up staring at my ceiling for a good few minutes after indeed rolling a 0. Gotta love those rolls with a 10% chance of instant death! Anyway, I had no problem making it back there again on my second attempt, getting to try a few different things along the way (so maybe failing the roll was a blessing in disguise), then held my breath hoping to not roll a 0 again, and thankfully found myself staring at a 6 this time, which ultimately led to victory in the adventure. Phew!  

Ranking: While the story was fantastically engaging, and even more Hollywood-esque than the previous adventure, the gameplay seems to have taken a step back. I still rank The Omega Zone slightly higher than Slaughter Mountain Run, as I feel the improved story did just enough to offset the decrease in gameplay. But boy, going back and rejigging this one (an actual car combat that uses a game system as opposed to skill checks against Mad Dog Michigan would have been great!) could have made it so much more. Even so this is up there with some of Dever's better efforts from the "Lone Wolf" series, and I look forward to seeing how the saga concludes. I'm betting that Mad Dog Michigan didn't really perish at the end of this book!