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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:35:48 GMT
masterchief:
Do you love this book so much you tuck it under the covers at night? Did you hate it so badly you used it as loo-roll? Let the world know!
~MC~
~ Vae Victis! ~
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:37:25 GMT
lloyd:
Attempted this for the first time last night, and it's definitely not one of the better books.
Some really frustrating deaths in there, like detonating the gravity bomb by pushing the wrong buttons. I also died at the alien with the sequence of letters.
Anyway, after a few deaths i found my way to the end, and was really disappointed with how easy it was. The last entry was shocking, basically just a few words and 'the end'.
And some of those landscapes were really strange!
I'll go back through it to find out what i missed, but i must say i thought it would be better than it was.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:38:10 GMT
greenspine:
There is a logical sequence to the buttons on the gravity bomb trap, and to the puzzle with the letters. That doesn't help if you don't recognise the relevant sequences, but the fact that the answers can be worked out rather than being pure guesswork means that they're not as unreasonable as a lot of gamebook deaths.
One unfair aspect of the book is the numbered tile puzzle, which was added by someone other than the author, and contradicts advice given earlier in the book.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:39:25 GMT
masterchief:
One unfair aspect of the book is the numbered tile puzzle... Argh! Don't even go there! Bloody thing... I didn't know it was added in afterwards though, or at least if I don't remember hearing that... Very interesting, thanks Greenspine! ~ Vae Victis! ~
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:39:49 GMT
greenspine
I read an interview with the author somewhere, and he mentioned that the first he knew of that 'puzzle' was when flicking through one of his author copies.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:41:01 GMT
vastariner:
First time I played Space Assassin I got the pathway puzzle right. What are the chances? Sheer fluke.
I actually quite like this book, it's fairly sarky and the writing suitably irreverent. There are also some very imaginative touches, like the black hole device that vamooses anything in your path - the "deaths" for the victims are all different. Plus the fact that you can never actually get the atomic blaster thing that causes instant death for various reasons.
Para 400 was of course the disappointment, but then again Chapman copied what he had been given from WoFTM. Which featured a not-difficult boss fight and a one-liner to finish.
A bit underrated as a result. Remember that as these books were coming out we had no real idea of Allansia, I can't remember if Warlock! 1 had been issued, but if it had I did not have it. So in the first 12 books you had a couple of sci-fi, one on modern-day Earth and one on Orb, so identifiable as a world. There was nothing that specifically linked, say, Blacksand with the Icefinger Mountains IIRC. 13 was Mad Max, 15, 17 and 18 more sci-fi. The idea that every FF book had to be Titan based was not yet "there" so maybe some adverse opinions are formed ex post facto.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:42:46 GMT
greenspine:
Issues 1-4 of Warlock (maybe even 5) had come out by the time SA was released, and issue 1 included a map showing the relative positions of the settings of books 1-3 and 5-7.
Additionally, by this stage Deathtrap Dungeon had specifically mentioned a character from City of Thieves, Island of the Lizard King referenced DD, and Caverns of the Snow Witch had connections with TWoFM, FoD, CoT and DD. Allansia was already taking shape, even for gamebook-only fans.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:43:22 GMT
vastariner:
Only amongst the Livingstone books, though...(Scorpion Swamp I think had a casual mention of DD, but then again so did BloodSword).
Noteworthy perhaps that all the initial Steve Jackson books were in some way different and unAllansian...
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:44:24 GMT
greenspine:
Steve pushed the envelope with every new release. That's part of why I prefer him to Ian - even when his books didn't work, he was still trying something different, opening up the way for others to build on his innovations.
As regards the ending of TWoFM, I'm not sure over 100 words can be dismissed as 'a one-liner'.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:45:06 GMT
sunil060902:
I thought this was pretty easy in the end, though were some funny touches, like the talking squirrel and spider! The weird pilot was also, well, weird!
OK, I got stuck on the floor-tile puzzle. I have chea..., I mean, flicked through to find the answer but the only possibility I can think of is "a certain room important near the end" (don't want to give any spoilers away!). But is that correct? I couldn't find a reference that specifically mentions the tiles and correctly crossing over!
"Your progress has been watched, foul creature of destruction!"
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:46:48 GMT
greenspine:
WARNING! SPOILERS AHOY! WHOOP! WHOOP!
The correct path across the booby-trapped tiles is as follows:
54-8-12-49-2-81-15-22-12
These add up to 255, and the section with that number reads:
"You stride boldly across the floor, stepping on your carefully selected tiles and reaching the other side in one piece."
Fairly conclusive, wouldn't you agree?
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:49:45 GMT
sunil060902:
NOOOO! I missed that completely, I mean the reference to striding boldly across the floor! I can't even cheat properly LOL! crying
I thought it might have been 208: 54, 33, 6, 81, 22, 12, skipping 15 (I presumed you could jump over a tile).
"Your progress has been watched, foul creature of destruction!"
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:50:11 GMT
greenspine:
If you can jump tiles, another combination will also take you safely across the floor.
MORE SPOILERS! DON'T READ ON IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
54-8-12-49-104-16-(jump over 9)-12 also gives a total of 255.
I imagine it might depress Andrew Chapman to find that more attention is being devoted to an idiotic puzzle added to the book by someone else than to any of what he wrote.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:50:40 GMT
sylas:
That's a lot of time spent on this apparently pointless puzzle. Jumping over tiles doesn't seem like a good idea. You'd be wise to do so only IF you knew the correct result, but you wouldn't know it unless you cheated (properly).
Two Words
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:51:04 GMT
kieran:
I really like the rules in this book - the Armour score, equipping your character etc. Pity they were never used again. It has some very entertaining encounters too - the pilot in particular. I don't like the "planet on a ship" segment - it's a nice concept, but is essentially a dull maze. Also there's so many paths through the book and the writing, while effective enough, is quite terse meaning the book can seem to be over before it gets going. A fun book but not really a classic.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:51:36 GMT
greenspine:
Armour is probably the most misunderstood attribute in all FF. The number of times I've seen people criticising the book because you can raise your Armour above 13 and 'become invincible'... Clearly they haven't bothered to read the rules properly, and thus failed to spot that Armour, like Luck, decreases with use.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:54:31 GMT
hynreck:
This is the second of those books that I never owned when I was young. I was never a big fan of FF sci-fi, ever since renting Starship Traveller and finding it so-so. I have a vague memory of renting Space Assassin, but couldn't recall anything inside the book, so maybe I get mixed up. Probably I wanted to rent it, or buy it, but never ended up doing it.
Cool cover by the way, and the illos inside are not bad either. Not my favourites, and some subject matter are... on the weird side, but that's not really the artist fault if the text and descriptions are weird, I guess.
I must say I like the overall system for weapons and armour. The weapons in particular; loved the variety. I felt like it could have been pushed more perhaps, used more, I don't know.
The story suffers from what I'd call too much ideas at once. Imagination is nice, and serves well those type of books (any books, really) but here the story could have use restraint. What is basically a dungeon in space is too much crammed with unrelated encounters and weird traps or puzzles having really no place inside a ship. Why would a burly guard ask me a question instead of just pulverising my ass?
The author probably wanted to put as much of his fresh ideas into the book as possible, but at the price of making the world it is set in a very improbable one indeed. It's mostly all done with a sense of humor, mind you, which help swallowing the pill. But for all the varied ideas stuffed in the book, a lot of it seems padded. Apparently the book was too short when offered for publishing? I'm guessing that would explain all the boring labyrinth we were left with, like the planet inside the ship, which uses way too many sections for it's own good.
Ultimately, the mission felt real short and I reached the end thinking I missed a great many things, which could potentially mean good replay value, something I might explore in the future. I was kind of surprised by the last encounter. It wasn't memorable but it was interesting to see an end boss being somewhat beatable, not some impossible beast to beat. A nice change. After all, because a certain villain is your main target shouldn't mean he is automaticaly the ultimate badass. It should fit the story. Too bad the rest of the Vandervecken doesn't stick to that theory.
Speak in extremes, it will save you time.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:55:15 GMT
oakdweller:
What we have here is essentially a dungeon crawl, only it's dressed up as a vast spaceship. During my replay my memory of particular sections was far more vivid that it had been with Talisman of Death, even though Space Assassin is by far the weakest book of the two. (Must have something to do with the strange boy that I was as a child). After reading so many negative things about Space Assassin I was expecting the replay to be a chore, but there are actually quite a lot of aspects and moments which I enjoyed. This review is going to be a lot more positive than I was expecting it to be. Although I'm usually more interested in the prose than I am in any swanky combat systems, I enjoyed using my assault blaster a lot. Subtracting a die-roll of STAMINA instead of the usually automatic two points was really satisfying, especially as you have to engage in hand-to-hand every now and then, using the standard rules, to provide a bit of variety. I often find fights against more than two foes at once rather wearing, but the assault blaster rules made these fly by (most notably the six simaculara on (71)). Not that I met it this time around, but I also remembered the novelty of fighting the deity (308) with its six different weapons. Such tabulated fights would be a turn-off if they were used all the way through a book, but as stand-alones they just serve to make such encounters a bit different. The weird nature of some parts of the book have marked it down for some readers. Surrealism is harder to pull off successfully and intelligently than most members of Joe Public realise. There is such a fine line between the realms of psychologically disturbing/intriguing, fun silliness, amusing eccentricity and... stupidity. For me, Space Assassin didn't once fall into the stupid slot (at least with the parts that I encountered this time around). The six-limbed squirrels are cute eccentricities which have a reason to exist on a biological research ship. The "fierce little Easter eggs" were not something that I encountered this time, but remember very well from years gone by and are - again - cute/fun. The chatty spider who thanked me for its crab snack was a mildly amusing diversion. The 'carrot man' cleaner and his twin cats were the only characters that I met who came close to being too silly, but they were brief. The design of the Vandervecken was OK as far as 'dungeons' go, no lesser or greater than than The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was actually. However... (and it's a big HOWEVER), I somehow avoided both the 'planet' and the annoying puzzles. The book was quite obviously describing me travelling on bridges and walkways which passed over the planet, but I must have been lucky in avoiding the way down. I only remember the Easter eggs people and some odd compass directions from the planet and don't recall the puzzles at all, but going by others' frustrations with both then perhaps this is a key factor in the book's pleasure potential. The illustrations are by far the best of all the sci-fi books, avoiding the amateurness of Starship Traveller, the dullness of The Rings of Kether and whatever the hell is going on in Sky Lord. My favourites here include the carnivorous plant, which is like a nasty tentacled pumpkin; the mutants on 185 and I also quite like the sparkling deserted computer rooms (281 and 381), but I'm not quite sure why. Extra marks have to be awarded for the sublime silliness of the flying Furby on 318.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:56:12 GMT
vagsancho:
Hi. Does anyone know how to solve the problem given by the alien in the paragraph 15: which is the letter that follows the sequence: UDTQCSSO and also the explanation of this problem?
Razaak's apprentice
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:57:09 GMT
champskees:
Numbers. Luckily i'm Italianish.
Uno
Due
Tre
Quattro
Cinque
Sei
Sette
Otto
Nove
Therefore the letter is N.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Oct 3, 2013 1:57:32 GMT
balthus:
Works with Spanish too (although I'm not Spanishish). Uno Dos Tres Quattro Cinco Seis Siete Ocho Nueve
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Post by a moderator on May 24, 2014 13:44:04 GMT
My TUFFF playthrough:
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vagsancho
Knight
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Post by vagsancho on Jul 23, 2015 15:49:15 GMT
A very good Book. Not fantastic However. I do not identify myself with the FF books from Chapman. A thousand miles from Livingstone.
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vagsancho
Knight
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Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 11, 2019 10:31:32 GMT
I hate the unceasable part that begins in 381 in the spaceshutle. Never ending part. Very irritating. 381 is forbidden.
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Aug 12, 2019 0:00:44 GMT
This book is a mess...but an enjoyable mess.
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Post by dragonwarrior8 on Aug 13, 2019 12:22:56 GMT
I think Chapman really shot himself in the foot in one respect. The best part of the book to me was the tank battle which even has its own detailed set of rules at the back of the book. I can only imagine how long all this took to set up. Then its not even on the required route.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Aug 13, 2019 13:57:14 GMT
I think Chapman really shot himself in the foot in one respect. The best part of the book to me was the tank battle which even has its own detailed set of rules at the back of the book. I can only imagine how long all this took to set up. Then its not even on the required route. Always found that a bit odd - open one door and get into a lengthy mini-game, open one of the others and pass on none-the-wiser. It's a fun enough mini-game but there's absolutely no gameplay reason to seek it out once you know how to avoid it. The same is largely true of the lengthy "planet on a ship" segment - you can skip the whole thing entirely and there's no real advantage to going through it.
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Post by Wilf on Aug 18, 2019 20:34:33 GMT
I think Chapman really shot himself in the foot in one respect. The best part of the book to me was the tank battle which even has its own detailed set of rules at the back of the book. I can only imagine how long all this took to set up. Then its not even on the required route. Always found that a bit odd - open one door and get into a lengthy mini-game, open one of the others and pass on none-the-wiser. It's a fun enough mini-game but there's absolutely no gameplay reason to seek it out once you know how to avoid it. The same is largely true of the lengthy "planet on a ship" segment - you can skip the whole thing entirely and there's no real advantage to going through it. Unless you want the Pan Dimensional Homing Device.
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kieran
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Post by kieran on Aug 18, 2019 21:38:23 GMT
Unless you want the Pan Dimensional Homing Device. Do you really need that though? To be honest can't quite remember what it's used for.
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vagsancho
Knight
Posts: 809
Favourite Gamebook Series: CRYPT OF THE SORCERER
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Post by vagsancho on Aug 19, 2019 7:53:39 GMT
When i was a little boy in some very distant christmas i remember wining for gifts two different fighting fantasy books: space assassin and temple of terror. I remember quite well how excited i was for the difference of the books. Space assassin i liked it, ciro was an interesting evil guy. Temple of terror however, was completely of an other level, a tremendously special quest, i have felt every single bit of that desert and every single bit of that abandoned city. Very good book indeed.
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