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