Horror Classics

                                                      RANKINGS   

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1. Dracula's Castle - Score = 5.6    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 19 (Playing as Harker. Playing as Dracula? Forget it)

I don't know why I do this to myself, but I'm back to another J.H. Brennan gamebook series with Horror Classics. Credit where credit is due though, I find the central premise of this series that includes two separate adventures (one playing as the hero and another playing as the villain) to be a great idea. This particular entry obviously borrows from Bram Stoker's Dracula, and you can choose to play as either Jonathan Harker or as the titular Count. The game system at use here is thankfully not as complicated as the one found in Brennan's "Sagas of the Demonspawn" series,  but is still a bit more involved than your typical gamebook adventure. 

As either Harker or Dracula, you are given 100 Life points to begin the quest, and then roll up for your initial stats in the 5 attributes of Speed, Courage, Strength, Skill and PSI. The opponents you face in the book all have these same stats as well, and a combination of Speed+Courage+1D6 determines who gets to strike first. You and your opponent then take turns, with a hit occurring on a roll of 6 or higher with two dice. Damage is determined by then adding this number to the Strength+Skill stats of the attacker to arrive at the amount of damage done to the defender. Damage modifiers can also be included in the form of weapons or poisons that may be involved, and the combats actually go by quite quickly as a fair amount of damage is done with each successful hit. How the PSI points come into play is very interesting and I thought one of the better inclusions of the adventure. Both Harker and the Count have 3 different "super-powers" (Harker's generally allow him to do additional damage or take less damage himself and Dracula can do such things as control small animals or teleport) which they can employ at a cost of 1 PSI point per use. But even if you run out of PSI points, you can still choose to employ these powers at the cost of 20 Life points per use.  

Aside from the layout of the castle itself, which is pretty much the same in both quests (barring the locations of the secret passages which I will talk about later), the two adventures I found to be very different from one another in both their construction and playability. Reviewing each quest separately below:

Playing as Jonathan Harker: Well I'll be buggered. A Brennan adventure that is actually playable! This adventure sees you playing as famous monster hunter Harker, who after having trekked across Europe following stories of murders and mysterious disappearances, finally reaches what he believes to be the lair of the culprit of these events in the form of the evil Count Dracula, and you open the quest having just arrived at the front gates of his estate. You step out of the coach at these gates after an extremely well written prologue, and are told you have no equipment as you were robbed on the road earlier (except for some toiletries that no self respecting traveler would be without) so you will need to acquire some necessary items (a wooden stake and some garlic) in order to defeat the Count. 

The quest is laid out as a pretty straightforward haunted house adventure, with you first exploring the grounds surrounding the castle in your search for both the items you need and also a way inside. This way inside turns out to be two keys that must be obtained, and once you have collected these from the grounds you can use them to unlock a hidden door and move into the castle itself, navigating through its various rooms until you can locate the Count's crypt and take him on in a final battle. In addition to the usual collection of ghosts and zombies that you can expect to find in such a setting, there are also some more interesting encounters with characters such as the Phantom of the Opera and Grigori Rasputin (yes, apparently THAT Rasputin). There is also an encounter with an evil horse called a Nightmare and I'm surprised Brennan didn't use this occasion to insert the Headless Horseman into the adventure as well. Missed a chance there Herbie! 

As mentioned above, an additional twist to both the adventures comes in the form of secret passages that can be found in any location you enter. This is done by rolling two dice should you wish to search for a secret passage, and if you roll 10 or higher (including any modifiers for this roll you might have), then you succeed and can check a list at the back of the book to see if the section you are on contains any such passages. This idea is interesting in theory, but doesn't work at all in practice thanks to the high number you need to roll in order to find anything. You also only get one chance to do this while you are in that section. This would be ok I suppose if these secrets contained only bonuses and nothing essential, but unfortunately the Harker quest requires you to uncover a particular secret passage if you want to proceed to Dracula's crypt and the end of the adventure. The adventure contains a fairly decent free movement system (with a couple of exceptions that frustratingly leave out the one direction you actually want to head), so once you learn where this essential secret passage is, you can just keep entering and exiting the room it's in until you get the required number, but this can become really silly and very tedious. 

Speaking of entering and exiting sections, the adventure also contains a Lone Wolf style healing system that allows Harker to recover 3 Life points for every new section he enters. Thanks to the free movement system, this can be totally abused of course by just going in circles to replenish any Life you may have lost in battle. Additionally, if you can find the Rasputin character, you can have him follow you around for the rest of the adventure and he will restore some of your Life points after every combat. The real danger of failure in the quest then comes not so much from Life point loss, but from the instant deaths in the adventure and with some of the modifiers your enemies may have. There is a Slime enemy in particular that you have to go through, and while you will likely always have far more Life points than it does when you encounter it (and you usually have a large Life point advantage over all your enemies thanks to the section healing), the Slime has a modifier where it can kill you outright should it ever roll a 9 or higher on its attack. It will probably take you at least 2-3 rounds to defeat this Slime, so you will be holding your breath whenever you are making its attack roll.   

Once you make it to Dracula's crypt, he of course awakens before you can destroy him and the final battle is on. Incidentally, it's quite clear that it's nighttime during the events of the adventure, so I'm not sure why the Count would be asleep in his crypt? Perhaps dawn was imminent? Anyway, the means by which you defeat the Count is very unique, though for me at least, was also very anti-climactic. How it works is, you need to expend one of your PSI points (or 20 Life points in lieu should you be out of PSI) to use your power of "stake driving", and you then need to roll either a 6 or a 12 on your next attack to hit with this particular power. Should you succeed in rolling this 6 or 12, it's an insta-kill and the Count is immediately dead. Strangely, the book never asks if you managed to acquire the stake and garlic you were told you would need at the start of the quest, so I'm still not really sure if you actually needed to get them or not. I'm assuming you do and this was just an omission on Brennan's part (what else is new).The Count himself predictably dishes out a very high amount of damage on his turn so you will probably only get 2-3 cracks at most of taking him out. On my very first time making it to the Count, not only was I able to roll a 6, but I did so on my very first attack roll. Did I then beat him that easily? Apparently so. I consider it fate balancing out after that stupid Slime killed me so many times with its double digit attack rolls.  

Overall, this is actually a pretty decent quest with a good mix of exploration, encounters, and humour. The usual Brennan vagueness regarding rules rears its head here and there, and the secret passage system sucks, but there is some fun to be found here as well and I'm shocked I'm even saying that after playing his Demonspawn series. Maybe he has started to see the light? 

Playing as Count Dracula: Or maybe he hasn't. Sigh. Here is the Brennan I remember from that Demonspawn series. Anyone up for a totally broken adventure? No, I thought not. So, playing as the Count, you begin in your crypt having detected someone arriving at the front gate. It must be Harker right? Nope! The individual who actually arrives at the front gate in this quest turns out to be the renowned vampire hunter, Abraham Van Helsing. At first this seemed very odd to me. Why not pit the Count against Harker as that was the battle in the other adventure? The more I thought about it though, the more it started to make sense. This quest couldn't really be set up to be against Harker because the Count wasn't even aware of his presence in his castle until he arrived within his crypt. Setting this quest up against Van Helsing instead could allow for some sort of continuity also if you played the Count side of the adventure first, with the Count first defeating Van Helsing, then Harker defeating the Count. That is, if you can actually defeat Van Helsing, which I'm not sure is possible. 

I was thinking it could be very cool getting to play not only as an evil vampire, but as the most famous one in all literature. It doesn't really play out this way though, as I ending up feeling more like a put upon underdog hero than anything else.  And why is that? Well, because quite simply the Van Helsing character here is portrayed as a sadistic lunatic. He has somehow managed to plant traps and creatures all throughout your castle (hadn't he just arrived when we first woke up? When did he do all this?) and also taunts you by leaving insulting messages all over the place for you to find. It becomes clear fairly quickly that he could easily dispatch you anytime he wishes, but in true comic villain style he instead chooses to actually give you a chance to defeat him instead. His traits here really make him come across as The Joker to the Count's "Batman" (heh heh).    

So as the Count, you begin in your crypt and start your hunt for Van Helsing, who is somewhere on your estate. You soon learn that you must locate 12 (!) keys that are scattered all over the castle and its grounds. These keys open 12 locked doors on the upper floor of the castle. In each of these 12 rooms is a representation of one of the 12 astrological signs that you will need to deal with (you must fight a ram for Aries, a giant crab for Cancer, etc) whereupon defeating each of these representations you are awarded a medallion. You then need all these 12 medallions to open the final locked door which leads to Van Helsing. Phew. Yes, this all makes as little sense as it sounds. Again, how the heck did Van Helsing set all this up? 

Trying to gather all the keys is an absolute nightmare. Several of them are hidden in rooms that require you to enter or exit the room going in a certain direction in order to find them. With many of the rooms having 3 different entrances, this results in an extremely tedious amount of going around in circles trying to figure out if you need to enter the room going east-to-west, or west-to-east, or north-to-south, or south-to-north in order to be able to access the section you need in order to find a particular key. What a mess!

But here is the real kicker, unlike Harker who gained 3 Life points with each new section he turned to, the Count actually LOSES 2 Life Points with each new section due to lack of feeding. With how far you have to travel and all the circling you have to do in order to find the keys, your Life points are going to drain away right quickly. You do have the ability to suck the blood of an enemy during combat (I assume it has to be an enemy that actually HAS blood?) should you roll a 6 or 12 on your attack, which I have to admit is a very cool idea, but I found it wasn't nearly enough to help staunch your flow of ever dwindling Life points.  

Your only real chance of surviving is finding the secret passage that leads back to your crypt. Should you do this, you are told that back in your crypt your Life points are replenished to their maximum. The problem here is that you are only told this should you return to the crypt via the secret passage. Should you use your Teleportation power to return to your crypt, this Life replenishment isn't mentioned. You can't even go in and out of the room containing the secret passage in question to look for it again because leaving the room where the passage is located dumps you someplace else and doesn't allow you to go right back in! Cripes! 

The only chance I think you'd have in defeating this adventure would be to use your Teleportation ability to return to your crypt whenever your Life points were low, then assume that the crypt restores your Life to maximum regardless of how you arrived there (why would it matter if you teleported or used the passage?), then teleport back into the castle to pick up where you left off. You are only allowed to teleport from your crypt to 3 different places within the castle however, and you would have to do this so many times that the tedium and frustration levels would be through the roof. And I'm still not sure you could win anyway because reading ahead to see what the final battle with Van Helsing was like (I never even came CLOSE to making it to him in over 30 attempts) he looks incredibly powerful with a multitude of deadly spells he can use against you. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he is apparently a sorcerer too. Brennan back to form with this broken mess. 

The cover of this book can't be ignored. Christoper Lee called. He wants his likeness back. 

On the subject of the humour contained in both adventures, which is extremely subjective in most cases of course and which can be hit or miss here as well, I surprisingly found that most of it hit its mark. Moments such as Dracula looking through cupboards in the mortuary hoping that he doesn't come across his cousin, who he locked in one of the cupboards hundreds of years ago during a particularly intense game of "Ring o Roses" and who he never let out, and who is presumably still in there and likely in a very perturbed mood. Or as the Count attempting to arm himself for the fight against Van Helsing with a choice of revolver, spear, or mace. I have to admit, picturing Count Dracula using a revolver makes for some interesting and amusing imagery. The humour doesn't hit in all cases though, as there are some encounters such as a vampire apple (a dreaded Granny Smith no less) and an animated garlic onion that go too far into absurdity for my tastes. The book is well written though and that's at least one thing that Brennan's adventures have going for them.

Ranking: The huge caveat on this score is that it's based on the Harker side of the book. The Dracula side, as written, I believe to be severely broken (wow, what a shock for a Brennan book!). So, the book makes it into the OK tier based upon the Harker adventure being both playable and a decently done haunted house quest, with some very good humourous moments sprinkled throughout. I would just recommend considering the Dracula adventure to be a "broken bonus" quest even though it takes up half the sections in the book. 

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2. The Curse of Frankenstein - Score = 6.4    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 7 (Playing as the Baron) 

                               6 (Playing as the monster)

So the second, and final, book in this series is based upon Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and gives you the choice of playing as either the Baron Viktor Frankenstein, or as his monstrous creation. This one begins with yet another well written prologue detailing how the monster escapes from the Baron's castle. The Baron, tracking him to nearby shipping docks, is too late to stop the monster from boarding a ship heading north, but decides that he must set out in pursuit. The adventure itself then begins when your character, either the Baron or the monster, reaches the Arctic, whereupon they then set out to find the other. 

The game system here is basically the same as the previous book, with both characters beginning with 100 Life points, and randomly determined Speed, Courage, Strength, and Skill stats. One big difference though is in the new PSI powers that each of the characters have, which is to be expected. The Baron's powers include Monster Making, which creates a small monster to fight for him, and Body Armour, which halves the damage he takes during combat, and both of these abilities could come in handy at various times. However, the Baron's third power, Mad Science, I found to be untrustworthy and never used it, as what happens when you use this power is determined by random roll, with you just as likely to do damage or cause outright death to yourself as to your opponent. The monster's powers include Terror Strike, which generates an automatic miss from your opponent in that combat round, Blood Lust, which increases your damage output for a round, and the humorously titled Love Affair, which gives you a 50% chance of bypassing a combat outright (except against the Baron himself, who is immune). Because all of these, with the exception of Mad Science, were useful to varying degrees, they had me thinking carefully about which one would be the best to use in a given situation. 

The layout of the map between the two adventures contains differences (as it did in the Dracula book), although both maintain the desolate and icy setting and atmosphere. Dividing up the adventures for review below:     

Playing as Baron Frankenstein

This adventure is essentially split into two map parts, with the first seeing you exploring the icy wastes searching for your monster. These wastes are laid out in a grid style format, and there really isn't much going on here. Roughly 80% of the areas are empty, and while much like travelling the swamps in "Monsters of the Marsh" from The Legends of Skyfall series, this might be realistic in terms of travelling across the Arctic, but it doesn't exactly make for thrilling gameplay. And Brennan isn't going for realism here anyway. Far from it. While the Dracula book was a horror gamebook with a good deal of humour, this adventure is a fantasy gamebook with slight elements of humour. There are some environment specific encounters here for sure, such as a polar bear and a Yeti (I KNEW there would be a Yeti in a snow-set adventure! I plan on writing a paper on this one day called "Do Yeti's Eat Yellow Snow?"), but the adventure is also full of completely out of place encounters, such as a genie straight out of Aladdin, and a couple of ancient Roman centurion guards (huh?). This strangeness is dialed up once you reach the second map part, which involves a Lost City half buried in the snow to which the monster has fled. You explore the city by using a provided hub map which allows you to visit any of the various buildings in any order you like, which has been a staple of Brennan gamebooks so far and something I generally enjoy.  

As the Baron, you get to begin the adventure with your choice of 5 different items from a list. Sounds good and like something that should lead to a degree of experimentation. But instead, with the exception of the medicine that restores 2D6 worth of Life points, the rest of the items are totally useless! An ice pick and rope sound like they would be useful things to have in an Arctic setting right? That may well be true, but I was never once asked if had any of the items from the list or came across anywhere to use them. I wonder if Brennan just completely forgot about these items, because the whole process is almost meaningless. Just pick the medicine, and to quote Metallica, "Nothing Else Matters". 

Perhaps the biggest surprise to me, this being a Brennan gamebook and all, is the relative ease of this adventure. The "heal 3 Life points with each new section" that was present in the Harker quest from book 1 is the main reason for this, although I did begin to wonder about the wording here. The rules state to heal with each "new" section, so does this mean you only get the points if it is the very first time you read a section and then never again after that? Seeing as how it seems this mechanic exists to convey how you would regain health with the passage of time, I believe you are meant to get the 3 Life points any time a section is entered, but I could certainly see the other definition to prevent this from becoming abused. Unlike the Dracula entry, there really aren't any tough combats in this half of the book. There are a couple of fights where if the enemy rolls a 12 at any time on their attack, you are instantly killed, but most of the enemies have relatively low starting Life point totals, and are killed off quickly enough that this isn't too much of a threat (although you could be unlucky enough to feel otherwise). So the main thing you really need to worry about here is avoiding the instant deaths. The rules also aren't clear on what to do when facing more than one enemy, and seeing as how there are a few situations that can see you fighting half a dozen enemies at once, this is an important distinction. Because of how the combat system works, even a low skilled enemy can inflict a fair amount of damage should they hit you, so I believe you are supposed to fight them one at a time. But then again, this is Brennan so who knows. 

From a design standpoint, this is a key hunt through and through, and while it's entirely standard and breaks no new ground whatsoever, I still found it mostly enjoyable if nothing special. You first need to find a key within the icy wasteland area that will allow you entry to an abandoned hut that contains the map to the Lost City. Once you have the map, you can then travel to the city, where you now need to find 3 more different coloured keys. Each of these keys opens a different temple, and inside each temple you must face a trial. Once you complete the trial, you are granted a treasure, and once you have all 3 treasures you can proceed to the final temple and the completion of the quest.  

Unfortunately, the ending of the quest is a massive letdown. After travelling who knows how far by ship in search of the monster, along with the journey across the frozen wastes and then all you had to go through to locate him within the Lost City, there isn't even a final confrontation with the creature as he is already dead when you find him! Apparently the monster was not as fortuitous as you, and was killed by a group of albino ape-like creatures that reside under the Lost City. (Are these supposed to be Morlocks?) Obviously your monster didn't manage to acquire the necessary gifts for the "Morlocks" that you did, so they murdered him. This completely robs the player of what should have been a great final showdown between the monster and his creator. A showdown that Brennan and his writing skills should have had a field day with. What a huge missed opportunity! Instead, we have one final fight with an extremely lame "Guardian" character before being allowed to reclaim the monster's body and leave victorious (although how in the world the Baron is supposed to get out of the Arctic alive with no means of passage, much less transporting a huge cadaver with him, is left unexplained). 

Playing as the monster

So in doing a bit of role reversal once again, this half of the book sees us playing as the Baron's ghastly abomination that has been cobbled together with body parts harvested from various corpses. There are once again differences as to how the two adventures play out, though not nearly as much as in the Dracula book. There is no Lost City to visit when playing as the monster, and the whole adventure occurs within the icy wasteland and the ice caverns, the latter of which is more fleshed out here. The book also does not introduce a new antagonist like the Dracula book did with Van Helsing, as the monster begins the story by realizing that the Baron is hunting him, so decides to find the Baron and kill him first. Unlike the Baron half of the book though, the Baron here is not alone, and has brought some henchman along with him that the monster can run into and have to fight. So you once again begin by setting off in any direction you choose in the icy wasteland, this time in a game of cat-and-mouse with your creator to see who can kill who first. 

This adventure provides a unique and humourous twist, in that the monster begins with an inventory of spare body parts (head, heart, liver, intestines, and left foot), which each provide a certain amount of Life point recovery when "plugged in". An interesting idea, but this combined with the 3 Life point recovery for each section (which applies to both playable characters in this book), means you have a ridiculous amount of ways to heal. I will say though, that this is a far better situation than playing as Dracula and losing Life points each section, so thankfully Brennan didn't import that idea over when playing as the monster in this book. You also once again have a choice from among a list of starting items to pick from, but unlike the Baron adventure most of these can actually come in handy, and you will even need a particular one should you wish to complete the quest. Much like the previous adventure however, this is another key hunt (or coin hunt if you will), as you must obtain 3 octagonal coins that are hidden and scattered throughout the map. These coins are needed to open a door within the ice caverns that you must pass through in order to proceed to the end game. There is also a hidden password (split into two parts) that can be found, but for the life of me I'm not really sure what the point of it is. This password allows you to bypass a couple of troll guards in the ice caverns (and what they are doing there is never really made clear), but you don't really need to do this as you could just take a different route through the caverns and go around them, which makes the fun in hunting down the password something of a wasted effort. The huge missed opportunity from the Baron adventure where there was no confrontation between him and the monster is rectified here though and then some, as this adventure culminates with a battle against the Baron aboard his ship that would be right at home in an action movie. It's a shame there wasn't something similar in the Baron quest, as this sequence (from a story standpoint at least) is one of the highlights of the book.   

I also found the humour contained within this half of the book to be of much higher quality than that of playing as the Baron. Admittedly there was one moment when playing as the Baron that give me a good chuckle, that being when Brennan lampoons the typical gamebook situation of not being able to backtrack. This occurs when a piece of earth rises up behind you for no apparent reason after you pass a certain point which prevents you from going back the way you came, whereupon your character merely shrugs and continues forward. But other than that, the humour on the Baron half of the adventure was quite muted and was in overall stark contrast to the Dracula book. Playing as the monster however sees the humour return to those previous levels, and was very well done. Granted, the monster side of the book provides more opportunities for this, what with your character having to worry about body parts falling off, and everyone he meets reacting in horror at his appearance, but good on Brennan for taking advantage of it the way he did.

I will say though that there does seem to be some inconsistency regarding the intelligence level of the monster, as at times he is made out to be very stupid or inexperienced (like you would see in the Frankenstein movies), but then at other times he is able to solve riddles and apparently knows things such as the cultural history of the indigenous native peoples of the Arctic, or what fine suits they make on Savile Row. Additionally, Brennan also goes somewhat overboard with the coded messages in the adventures (boy, he really loves these doesn't he?), and the logic in solving the messages is pretty much the same for all of them. I did wonder over a couple of them as to why they needed to be in code? (A warning about a dragon springs to mind. Why would you seek to warn others of a dragon's presence, only to then hide that warning in a coded message?) One of these messages also contains one of the most blatant examples of self-advertising you will ever see, which isn't doing anything to counter my suspicions that Brennan only got involved in gamebooks purely in order to cash in on the craze at the time. Oh, and this book contains yet another take on the "one person always lies and the other person always tells the truth" riddle. I feel like I have seen a variation of this riddle umpteen times in gamebooks already. Time for something new fellas! 

Ranking: The design isn't anything all that special, and I'm not a big fan of the combat system, and you can find yourself wandering around in what feels like a lot of wasted sections, but this is a decent enough key hunt helped out by some entertaining humour, particularly when playing as the monster. The difficulty level felt about right for what this is, and I can't believe I'm saying that about a Brennan book. If you had asked me before I began this series if I would prefer the horror/comedy Dracula adventure set in a haunted castle, or the fantasy/comedy Frankenstein adventure set in the Arctic, I would have bet money on the Dracula adventure coming out on top every day of the week. But surprise surprise, I have to say now that the Frankenstein book is the clear winner here. Albeit, having both halves of the book actually be playable is a big help in that regard.