Gladiators

                                                         RANKINGS

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1. Game Book No.1 - Score = 0 Skulls (Broken!)

Sections: - 
Attempts to Beat: Impossible

Oh look, it's another "tie-in" gamebook series! Taking a glance at my gamebook list from releases in the 90's, there are more than a few of these, many of them based on video games, but with some, such as this one, being based upon a TV show. The TV show in this case is "Gladiators", which was a gameshow involving contestants competing in a series of physical events against muscled-up men and women who served as the titular gladiators of the show. I can remember watching "American Gladiators" back in the 90's when it achieved a certain level of popularity among my classmates, however this 2 book series of "mini-books" appears to be based on the British version of the show, which I'm assuming from the description of the events in the book, sounds like it was pretty much the same thing, just with a different cast of gladiators and perhaps a few slightly different events. This first entry is from author Stan Nicholls, and this is apparently the only gamebook he ever wrote, which would go a long way to explaining the terribleness that was to come in this ingeniously titled "Game Book No.1".  

The book begins by explaining there are 6 events that you will be competing in against one of the Gladiators, who are chosen either by yourself or picked at random. You will be awarded a certain number of points for each event, and once you have participated in all 6, you then move on to The Eliminator, which involves no Gladiators, but is instead an obstacle course that you need to run, with how many points you earned in the events factoring in to how likely you are to succeed at this final challenge. The book then gives a bio of each of the 12 Gladiators that you have to choose from (6 men and 6 women), and I assume these all represent the actual people who were on the show at the time, as the bios contain some rather specific information on each. The bios also make note of which events each Gladiator is strongest at, which is supposed to come into play later in the game. Once you have gone through this information (and you probably don't even really need to and can just skip to the first event), you go to the first of the 6 events and play each one in turn. There are no "sections" here in the usual gamebook sense, you just make your way through the events in the same manner each playthrough. The events for the contest are: Atlaspheres, The Wall, Danger Zone (my favorite from the original show), Swingshot, Hang Tough, and Duel. For my playthrough, I decided to choose my gladiator for each event at random, making sure to never pick the same one more than once. 

At this point in the review I was planning on going one event at a time, outlining each one and what was required. That plan got shot to hell though because all the events play out the same! Each event is first described in detail about what is involved, and then starts by listing 4 different Principal Strategies that you can choose from labelled A-B-C-D. Once you have chosen that, you consult a listing based on your choice where you are informed about how the event is currently unfolding based upon your chosen strategy, at which point you make a second choice among 3 more options numbered 1-2-3. This second choice is called your Intermediate Strategy, and dictates as to how you wish to proceed in an attempt to win the event. So for each event, you will now have your Principal and Intermediate choices such as C-2 if you picked Principal Strategy C and Intermediate Strategy 2 for example. Each event then lists all the 12 Gladiators again, where you look up your choices to see how many points you scored against that specific Gladiator. Looking this up you find that you will score 30 points if you won the event, 20 points if you did so-so, and 10 points if you "lost". 

Here is an example of one of the events, "Duel", which is the event where you battle a Gladiator on high platforms using padded jousting sticks to see who can knock the other off their platform first. You are told you get 10 points for winning the event, and 5 points for a draw. The Gladiator I chose at random to face in this event was "Cobra", and it is noted that Duel is one of Cobra's best events. The initial choice of strategies are:

Principal Strategies:

A) Go in fighting as hard as you can to topple the Gladiator from their platform

B) Firmly anchor yourself and strive to stay put

C) Taunt and make feinting moves hoping the Gladiator will forget themselves, stray onto your platform, and be disqualified

D) Work to knock the stick out of your opponent's grasp, leading to their disqualification

After you pick one of the above, you turn to see the results of your choice, and these results are listed below for each of the Principal Strategies.

A = The Gladiator seems immovable

B = You take a battering, making this impractical

C = Your opponent does not take the bait

D = The Gladiator is inseparable from his stick

So let me stop right here. None of the strategies worked! And the real kicker is, the specific Gladiator you are facing hasn't even been taken into consideration yet! You could be fighting the best Gladiator at this event, or the weakest, and those results will be the same in either case. Awful! 

You now get to make your Intermediate Strategy choice. I chose Principal Strategy C above (giving me the result "your opponent does not take the bait"), so I am now given the options below:

Intermediate Strategies if Principal Strategy = C

1) Take a head on approach and go for the kill

2) Step up your policy of provocation and feigning

3) Fall back into defensive mode and try to hang on

Hmmm, ok. Well I was told that Cobra is one of the very best Gladiators at this event, so the first option doesn't seem wise. The third option doesn't seem very helpful either, as that sounds like you are playing for a draw instead of trying to win. So, I decide to go with the second option, more out of process of elimination than anything else. The final results and the score you get for each of these Intermediate Strategy choices is shown below:

1 = Cobra triumphs by not falling for these ploys = 10 pts

2 = Just maybe = 20 pts

3 = Sitting tight could be your best option = 30 pts

What the frack? Ok, so I was right in not taking the first option, although I'm not sure how attacking head on is a "ploy". The second option, which is the one I picked, got me the middle amount of points, but what the hell is "just maybe" supposed to mean? The third option turned out to be the best one, but that makes no freaking sense. How did I "win" just by sitting tight? And why would I even have gotten 10 points for losing by choosing option 1, when the description of the event before you begin tells you that you get 10 points for beating the Gladiator, and 5 points if you can just hang on for a draw?   

I wish this was the exception, but all the events are like this. First of all, the descriptions of the events clearly tell you how many points you get for winning each of them, which appears to be the actual amounts awarded on the TV show, NOT the amounts awarded in this gamebook. Also, why would I get any points at all if I clearly lost? The Principal Strategies for each event are also pretty much the same. You will have slight variations on a brute force approach, a defensive "play it safe" approach, a misdirection approach, and a cunning approach. The Intermediate Strategies aren't much better, as they are also pretty much similar variations to what I just mentioned, although they at least have some basic descriptions about the actual event itself and the situation you currently find yourself in. Now, I assumed the idea was to base your decisions for the event on the strengths and weaknesses of the Gladiator you are currently facing, however this did not seem to have much bearing on how well I did either. In one event I decided to use the brute force approach against my opponent, who was one of the smallest yet fastest gladiators, which felt like the most prudent course of action, only to find myself losing the event anyway and getting the minimum 10 points. If I were to go back and map out all the different results, who knows, it MAY come into play that over the long run these decisions matter, but it felt rather random to me as to how many points you were awarded in each event, and the whole thing is described in such a boring manner that I can't see too many people wanting to play through this more than once anyway, especially when you get to the godawful endgame.    

And ohhhh boy, that endgame. If I thought the preceding events were too random, I hadn't seen nothing yet. This is so bad it almost beggars belief. You first total up your 6 scores from all the events (I got 120 total points from the 6 events in my playthrough for example), and then begin the final challenge. The Eliminator has 5 "stages" to it (monkeybars, treadmill, etc.), and for each stage you roll one die. Should you roll a 1-2 you then subtract 30 points from your score, should you roll a 3-4 your score does not change, and should you roll a 5-6 you then add 30 points to your score. Yep, basically you roll a die 5 times and let the results determine your final score. Terrible! Is this really the best they could come up with? The author should be ashamed of this. But hold on a second, it gets EVEN WORSE! Once you have finished the Eliminator, you will now have your final totally random score, which you then compare to the chart on the last page of the book to see if you are the champion or not. In order to have won the game, and the tv show I guess, you need to score over 600 points. Massive problem! Because by my calculations the maximum score you can get is 330! (30 points max for each of the 6 events would give you 180, plus 150 max from The Eliminator). And even that would require you rolling a 5 or 6 five times in a row for The Eliminator! Talk about pulling numbers out of your ass!      

Ranking: Garbaggio. If you were ever looking for a prime example of a "cash-in" gamebook, this would be it, and I think the author had no idea at all what he was doing. Having 6 different events and 12 Gladiators to battle in each one should have meant that replayability was the book's greatest strength. Unfortunately, the events are not described in an interesting manner whatsoever, the Gladiators you draw for each event doesn't appear to matter much at all which makes them all but interchangeable, the endgame of "The Eliminator" is in the running for the worst final sequence I have ever seen, and to top it all off the scoring system is f#&@ed up beyond all hope, making it impossible to win. Even if it HAD been possible to win, this still would have scored very, very low (maybe half a skull at most). It's pretty bad when the best thing about this are the pictures of all the actual Gladiators in the middle of the book (and man are there ever some 90's hairstyles going on in these photos). The only saving grace for me in this experience is that it was all over relatively quickly. This is incredibly random, incredibly boring, and incredibly awful.

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2. Game Book No.2 - Score = 💀💀 1/2 - Two and a Half Skulls

Sections: 350
Attempts to Beat: 2

We have another author here, Alistair Hemming, with only one gamebook credit to his name, but thankfully this effort was much better. "Game Book No.2" returns to a more traditional format of gamebook, being divided up into 350 sections, however the 6 events along with The Eliminator remain the same, and are even played through in the same order. Unlike the previous book where we could find ourselves going up against any of the 12 Gladiators, both male and female, here we get to decide the gender of our character, which then informs us if we will be going up against the male or female Gladiators. The downside to this approach is then that it doesn't really matter what Gladiator you are going up against, as you have no say in it anyway, and thus the bios and strengths and weaknesses of each of the Gladiators is not included this time. We do however in this book get to begin with some stat generation, as we get to roll for our values in the following 5 attributes of: Stamina, Agility, Upper Body, Lower Body, and Luck. Any of these can then be tested in the typical "skill check" way as we compete in the events. You might also be asked to test your attributes against those of the Gladiator you are facing, and this is usually bad news, as the Gladiators generally have sky high stats. Two of the attributes bear special mention, those being Stamina and Luck. Your Stamina will drain as you go through each event depending upon what transpires, and should it ever reach 0, you are then too tired to continue and lose the event. Thankfully though, your Stamina is returned to its maximum level between the events as you wait in the backstage rest area. The Luck attribute is a blatant rip-off of Fighting Fantasy, as you are told that every time you roll against it, you lose a Luck point, whether successful or not. As I would soon find out, it's a huge shame that you have to roll for all these initial attributes instead of allocating a certain amount of points yourself, because this gamebook as it stands is heavily luck based (and I don't just mean in regard to the Luck stat).  

I will say though that the gamebook does give you somewhat of a chance to improve one of your attributes, as the first 20 sections of the book are a Training sequence, where you can try and add a point or two to an attribute of your choosing, although you risk losing a point as well. This whole Training sequence can also be skipped, and you can just go to the start of the first event should you wish. I will also say that there appears to be an error here, as if you choose to skip the Training, you are told to go to section 20, where you are awarded +2 to your Lower Body attribute for some reason, before going to the start of the first event on section 21.  

I played through the gamebook twice, once as a female contestant (where I suffered a humiliating defeat) and once as a male contestant (where I pulled out a narrow victory). Once you have chosen your gender, you are given some background information on the contestant who will be opposing you, and you will be going up against Jayne if you play as a female and Stuart if you play as a male. I found it a bit amusing that you are told you will need to remember what you have learned about your fellow contestants for strategic use during the game, but as it turns out this does not matter in the slightest, as you play the 6 events against Gladiators and not the other contestant, and in the Eliminator there is nowhere to use any of this information at all either. As I planned to do with the first gamebook, I will briefly go through the 6 events and what was required of each.

Atlaspheres - This is the event where you enter a large metal "hamster ball", and attempt to roll it onto various pods in the arena which will award you points should you successfully do so, and you will be told to mark down how many points you score as they happen. Your fellow contestant is trying to do the same thing, and there are also two Gladiators in similar balls who are in the arena attempting to prevent you from getting to the pods. Of all the events, this one played out the most like your typical gamebook, with a combination of choices and skill checks required to successfully score points. I found it rather difficult to score points on my two playthroughs, because you are usually required to pass 2 separate skill checks to make it onto one of the scoring pods, and I found myself routinely failing one of them. In fact, with both my female and male contestants, I scored 0 points in this event. Another thing to note is that should you make it to the closest pod when you begin the event, you are automatically disqualified. This was actually a rule on the TV show (I guess they thought it made it too easy if you just headed for the closest one at the start), but this rule is not mentioned in the gamebook, so that if you are unfamiliar with the tv show, losing this event in such a manner would feel rather unfair. At the end of each event, you add up how many points you scored and keep a running total. You are also told how many points your opponent scored so that you have an idea on who is leading as you make your way through the events.

The Wall - Pretty simple here, you scale a 10 metre high wall with hand and footholds, getting a 10 second headstart on a Gladiator who will then ascend behind you in an attempt to catch you and pull you off. This played out similarly to the previous event in design, with a mixture of choices and skill checks, although it felt much shorter to me, and appears to take half the number of sections to get through as did Atlaspheres. My female contestant was caught by the Gladiator and pulled off the wall, netting me 0 points. However, my male contestant, who was also caught by the Gladiator, managed to hang on long enough to score 5 points as time ran out and the whistle sounded. 

Danger Zone - Alright! I used to love this event. In this, a Gladiator stands atop a platform at one end of the arena manning a "machine-gun" that fires tennis balls. The Gladiator also has a target hanging above their head. You need to enter at the other end of the arena and make it to various "firing stations" as you approach the Gladiator's position. The firing stations not only provide some cover from the Gladiator who is trying to hit you with the tennis balls (and if they hit you even once, you lose the event), but they also provide a launcher that fires a foam projectile, which you attempt to use to hit the target above the Gladiator. Should you hit the target, you automatically win the game. You also receive a bonus point for each of the weapons you manage to fire, regardless of whether it hits the target or not. This event plays out a bit differently from the first two, as when firing a projectile you are asked to roll against your Agility stat, however just rolling under the stat is not enough, and you must roll a certain amount below the stat in order to hit the target, with this amount decreasing as you get closer to the Gladiator's position, indicating how your chances of hitting the target should improve the closer you are. However, in between the firing stations you roll one die for the Gladiator to see if they hit you with a tennis ball, and with a 5 or 6 meaning they hit, you can find yourself out of this event right quickly through no fault of your own, although you might be able to spend a point of Luck to avoid this. This was the fate that befell my female contestant, who only managed to get 1 point for firing the first projectile. However my male contestant got lucky enough to make it to very end of the course and successfully hit the target, garnering me the full 10 points for a victory. 

Swingshot - I hated this event. In this one, you are on a bungee cord where you must "bounce" upwards where you can grab a different colored ball from a rack. Each color, yellow, blue, or red, is worth a different amount of points, and must be deposited in a cylinder on the floor to score the associated points. And of course, there is also a Gladiator out there, also on a bungee cord, attempting to stop you from doing this. Before you begin, you are told to roll one die and add 2, and this is the number of "attempts" you will get to grab and deposit a ball. You then roll against your Agility stat to see how high you jump (and thus which colored ball you manage to reach) and also to determine what happens next in terms of the Gladiator impeding you. This whole thing just felt completely luck based, with no input from the player at all on anything, and if you happen to have a low Agility score you are in real trouble. Not to mention the complete randomness in determining how many chances you get at it, which is probably the most important thing. My female contestant once again crapped out in this event, scoring a 0, while my male contestant at least managed to score 7 points, mainly because I was lucky enough to roll up the maximum number of jump attempts. 

Hang Tough - Another one I hated. Here, you swing out on a series of gymnastic rings hanging from the ceiling with a Gladiator doing the same from the other end. Your goal is to either try and swing to the Gladiator's starting platform, which awards 10 points, or swing to the middle of the field of rings, called the scoring zone, where if you can hang on until the whistle blows you score 5 points. The Gladiator is of course, trying to pull you off the whole time. This event is over right quick, as in my experience you get to make two choices, then one attribute test and that's it. You do at least have the strategic option of either going for the 10 points or the 5, although I'm not sure why you wouldn't always go for the 10, but this felt like the author knew they were running out of sections so needed to wrap this one up quick. Either that or they really couldn't think of much to do with this event from a gameplay perspective. In any case, my female contestant managed to "Hang Tough" and actually score some points for a change with 5. However my male contestant was pulled off the rings and scored a big fat 0. 

Duel - Ah yes, this is the same event I provided a breakdown for in my previous review, involving a jousting battle using padded pugil sticks. This event was decent enough, with a return to the gameplay of the first 2 events, providing a mixture of choice and skill checks as you choose which area of the Gladiator's body you wish to attack next. A bit reminiscent of the Cyclops fight in "Seas of Blood". My female contestant suffered yet another brutal defeat, getting knocked clean off the platform and scoring 0 points, while my male contestant managed to battle the Gladiator to a draw, earning 5 points for the effort. 

So after finishing all 6 of the events, you total up your score. You are then provided the total score of your opponent (just in case you weren't keeping track as you went along), and are then required to do some math before going onto The Eliminator. Between you and your opponent, whoever scored more points will get a head start in the final obstacle course. The amount of the head start is converted into seconds by giving a half second lead for every extra point the leader is ahead by (ie. if you scored 10 more points than your opponent over the course of all the events, you would get a 5 second head start in The Eliminator obstacle course). You then need to keep track of who is in the lead and by how much time as you go through The Eliminator, with it being broken up into 6 stages, and in each of these you can either gain or lose time relative to your opponent, with the goal obviously being to make it to the end of the course ahead of them. I will say this, as flawed as I thought some aspects of this gamebook were, I thought this tracking of the time difference to be a brilliant idea. Too bad it kind of screws itself over near the end, but I will get to that shortly. 

The Eliminator - Ok, so the 6 stages that make up this obstacle course are: Cargo Net, Hand Bike (or Monkey Bars for the female contestants), Rolling Beam, Cargo Net #2, Zip Line, and Treadmill. Each one involves a skill check against one of your attributes, with failure usually resulting in lost time to your opponent, and success normally granting gained time. You are also told to deduct Stamina points as you go along, whether passing or failing various tests, which makes sense thematically, but comes in costly later. Failure at the Rolling Beam in particular is rather harsh, as it costs you a whopping 10 seconds of time, but the real fly in the ointment is the final stage, the Treadmill. Here, you are asked to perform a skill check against your Stamina score (and remember, you have been decreasing it as you go through the Eliminator), with failure meaning you don't make it up the Treadmill, but also that you need to deduct 1 point from your Stamina score and you also lose 1 second of time. You then keep trying, deducting 1 Stamina point and 1 second with each failure, until you can make it. Well, if you have a low Stamina score when you get here, which you likely will, that could be it for you barring a lucky roll because this becomes a "Stamina roll death spiral". And if you can't make it up the Treadmill, you automatically lose the game. My female contestant suffered this fate, failing the Stamina check several times in a row until her Stamina was down to 1, making success impossible. Although she wouldn't have won anyway, because she was already behind in time to her opponent, and there is incredibly no way to make up time on the Treadmill! So in other words, if you make it here behind on time, don't even bother with the Stamina checks, you have already lost. I thought this same situation was going to befall my male contestant as well, but I luckily was able to roll a 3 when my Stamina was at 4, and because I was also ahead on time, I managed to pull out the victory. Still, that could very easily have gone against me right at the end, and I would have lost despite having outscored my opponent in the 6 events, AND having outpaced them during The Eliminator up to that point. I get that the Treadmill wiped out a lot of contestants on the actual show too, but I'm playing a gamebook here, and I am essentially being asked to "pass a Luck test" right at the end of a gamebook to even have a chance at winning.    

  

One of my bigger complaints from the first book was in the boring manner in which the events themselves were described. Thankfully, there are some better narrative descriptions going on this time, and we even get included in on what goes on backstage between events, if only briefly. I do have to say that I found the writing here to be incredibly cheesy, but then again I suppose the game show itself was often cheesy also, so that it actually fits the gamebook rather well.  

For some reason, I get the "Baywatch" theme in my head whenever I see the Gladiators.

Ranking: Much better than the first book, although that isn't saying much. This is more of a typical gamebook experience, and although I can appreciate experimenting with the format, I think in this case the book was better for it.  My biggest complaint though is that it felt too heavily luck based, with the Treadmill in particular almost ruining the whole thing. And if you happen to roll up low Stamina and/or Agility scores, good luck to you, because you are going to need it. I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the show though, and for the only gamebook this author ever wrote, this was a decent enough effort. That said, I'm not surprised there were no more books in the series after this one, as I'm not sure where else you could really go with the concept.