67) The Gates of Death

[vastariner]

Thought this needed a thread of its own.

Interesting book, it has the Legend of Zagor thing of being able to explore exhaustively, on top of the general get-to-destination thing.  And you can basically do it on different settings, there's an option at the start that puts it to hard mode as you only have one McGuffin to get through.

I was a bit confused by the writing.  It seems to be aimed at a younger audience than e.g. Night of the Necromancer.  Hence the bum-faced monster and some simplistic writing.  Although the reference to Purple Rain is surely for the old school.  I think that's a bit of a shame though because the writing is too simpolistic for my liking; only a few times does it become worth reading as literature, which is something Livingstone did well. 

So I'm not 100% convinced.  It's OK, I like the idea of a hidden city, but I definitely did not like the potions - give them proper names to fit with the seriousness of the problem...

[sylas]

What I had to say on Facebook so I'll post it here too:

It took me 3 attempts but I've finally completed Gates of Death. Not particularly hard but loooooong. There were some good encounters, some good writing. It has some replayability to it depending on whether you prefer a warrior-style progression or a more sage-style progression. And that's about where it ends on the positive stuff.

I'm sure Charlie Higson is a very accomplished writer but for the moment, I don't think he's right for Fighting Fantasy. His style often comes across as unnecessarily childish and suffers from serious pacing issues. The adventure has instances where paragraphs are looping on themselves thus ruining the flow of the story until you figure out how to get out of that loop. Other areas make little sense due to not taking assumed paths and spoiling the narrative for sounding like something random just happened. This screams lack of both proofreading and playtesting.

The overall story itself is okay though nothing spectacular. It's very forgiving in terms of your survival yet remains mechanically frustrating. I got stressed out reading this gamebook, something that has not happened since encountering Skyfall: The Black Pyramid so many years ago.
Ian Livingstone's Port of Peril I enjoyed a lot even though it's full of ridiculous moments. But at least you could tell that the author was having fun writing it. With Gates of Death, Charlie Higson was following in the footsteps of giants. He had and still has much to learn about gamebook processes, structure and design. Unfortunately the poor execution of this adventure means it's another disappointing addition to what was supposed to spark a new flame for the future of Fighting Fantasy.

Verdict: a regretful 4/10

[johnbrawn1972]

I think the screwy 'error' about the boots is a bit of a red herring. I am sure it means your spirit/attire is then transferred to the other host. It is somewhat lazy but not something to immediately start quoting Principia Mathematica.

[sylas]

Apr 24, 2018 13:03:53 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I think the screwy 'error' about the boots is a bit of a red herring. I am sure it means your spirit/attire is then transferred to the other host. It is somewhat lazy but not something to immediately start quoting Principia Mathematica.

There are plenty of continuity errors but aren't any mechanical errors that I can see. The constant loops I refer to are the ones where you end up reading the same paragraphs over and over and over until you remember the numbers that you haven't yet turned to in order to get out of the loop. A map would solve this in retrospect but it doesn't negate the fact that by visiting certain VIPs you get dumped with the same information repeatedly as if the author was worried you might not have heard it the first few times.

[vastariner]

That's true about the forgiving, perhaps too so. Plenty of times you get time travel options which somewhat jar with the difficulties in it elsewhere in Allansia.

[Zhu Bajie]

Apr 24, 2018 15:45:06 GMT sylas said:

Apr 24, 2018 13:03:53 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I think the screwy 'error' about the boots is a bit of a red herring. I am sure it means your spirit/attire is then transferred to the other host. It is somewhat lazy but not something to immediately start quoting Principia Mathematica.

There are plenty of continuity errors but aren't any mechanical errors that I can see. 

It is unambiguously established in P.122 and P.366 that you must leave your equipment behind, and then do so. It takes some very special pleading to assume otherwise.

It makes sense, as if you had your equipment you could just chuck your remaining Smoke Oil at the BBEG, which isn't so and wouldn't have been as dramatic. So either there's a special exception made for the boots somewhere (as there is for the khopesh), or it's just a mistake that you'd have this one piece of equipment without which you'd fail, and none of the rest. 

Still, it's a fun book, even though I won first time, it did make me want to go back and discover the alternative route. The repetition is a little tiresome, but I'll map on the next play-through to avoid that.

[unknown]

Too much disappointments on here. You should be thankful that ppl are writing game books at all. One day Ian will be dead and if keep comparing other authors to him the game book legacy will slowly perish...

Much like it is now.

[sylas]

Apr 27, 2018 0:12:27 GMT unknown said:

Too much disappointments on here. You should be thankful that ppl are writing game books at all. One day Ian will be dead and if keep comparing other authors to him the game book legacy will slowly perish...

Much like it is now.

Being thankful or grateful for getting FF books doesn't change the quality of the book itself.

And you do realise the FF community is thoroughly active on Facebook with over 2000 members keeping the legacy alive and many producing own published gamebook related material? It's probably more active now than it has been for a long while.

[johnbrawn1972]

I do not want to start an argument but on page 122 it clearly states 'carry nothing' and does not state wear nothing so, straining a bit, attire is not counted. You cannot carry equipment must be the meaning so no items in your backpack can be taken. This makes sense(sort of)

There is an error when you take the seeds at paragraph 390 as it says three Seeds of Power but it then refers to Seeds of Strength but they must be synonyms to make sense in the text.

[sylas]

Apr 29, 2018 22:26:03 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I do not want to start an argument but on page 122 it clearly states 'carry nothing' and does not state wear nothing so, straining a bit, attire is not counted. You cannot carry equipment must be the meaning so no items in your backpack can be taken. This makes sense(sort of)

There is an error when you take the seeds at paragraph 390 as it says three Seeds of Power but it then refers to Seeds of Strength but they must be synonyms to make sense in the text.

Tbh I wasn't sure about that either and concluded that it was exactly as you stated. The use of the Seeds isn't clear either. The description claims that when you use them they can go beyond the limits of your power but then gives no indication that they can actually go over your attribute levels, not that that is important in the long run. I would go back and try to find a more viable answer but I've stayed well away from the book since.

[johnbrawn1972]

I think my solution was worth posting because the Deathstone makes 7/14/7 possible. A skill 10 and stamina 5 opponent and a skill 10 and stamina 10 opponent would normally finish you off.

The seeds should have been marked with 'power numbers' in time honoured gamebook fashion so you cannot cheat at the end. Also The Book Of Dead should have had a number to turn to so you cannot go straight into cheat mode.

The increases to skill are somewhat annoying. Is the Hero's Medallion to be treated like the Soul Shield? Strictly no. This is as frustrating as The Port of Peril.

Some of my acquisitions of weapons are strictly superfluous but it just seemed bizarre to wander aimlessly although you pick up the sneaky sword as a matter of course.

I agree it is too easy but there should have been more gamebook mechanics to force you to do the consecutive steps even if the difficulty level was not altered.

[Zhu Bajie]

Apr 29, 2018 22:26:03 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I do not want to start an argument but on page 122 it clearly states 'carry nothing' and does not state wear nothing

A semantic quibble about wearing/carrying isn't very convincing. Pretty sure "wearing a backpack" is common English usage, but I suppose if people believe disembodied spirits who possess new bodies wear their old shoes but not backpacks that does fix the error for those people.

[johnbrawn1972]

Apr 30, 2018 20:37:17 GMT Zhu Bajie said:

Apr 29, 2018 22:26:03 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I do not want to start an argument but on page 122 it clearly states 'carry nothing' and does not state wear nothing

A semantic quibble about wearing/carrying isn't very convincing. Pretty sure "wearing a backpack" is common English usage, but I suppose if people believe disembodied spirits who possess new bodies wear their old shoes but not backpacks that does fix the error for those people.

I cannot remember the last time I said I am wearing my luggage to the airport.

[unknown]

Sylas, I don't have facebook so how would I know.

Put links up to these self published gamebooks. Very curious.

[thealmightymudworm]

People on the Facebook page (which I too haven't really paid attention to before) will know this already,
but Gates of Death is the Children's BBC Book of the Month.
The page itself seems to be a bit confused about whether the month in question is April or May, but never mind.
This is a good thing for getting the average age of FF readers below 42.

Actually the page is informing me that I am too old to comment. I wasn't even trying to comment. 
Indeed it seems I am even too old to be allowed to like existing comments. 
God I must be so damn old. 

[unknown]

Anyone read Murderous Mire? I hear its a blast. Better than Gates of Death.

[thealmightymudworm]

May 5, 2018 4:17:47 GMT unknown said:

Anyone read Murderous Mire? I hear its a blast. Better than Gates of Death.

Nope, never heard of it. 






(thanks)

[Zhu Bajie]

Apr 30, 2018 21:08:29 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

Apr 30, 2018 20:37:17 GMT Zhu Bajie said:

A semantic quibble about wearing/carrying isn't very convincing. Pretty sure "wearing a backpack" is common English usage, but I suppose if people believe disembodied spirits who possess new bodies wear their old shoes but not backpacks that does fix the error for those people.

I cannot remember the last time I said I am wearing my luggage to the airport.

I thought this conversation could not possibly get any more dull, but here we are. I cannot remember mention of luggage in Gates of Death, nor are backpack and luggage synonyms, but if believing they are helps you enjoy the book more, that's fine. Besides, backpacks are usually just as strapped to the body as shoes are.

[johnbrawn1972]

May 15, 2018 11:22:57 GMT Zhu Bajie said:

Apr 30, 2018 21:08:29 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I cannot remember the last time I said I am wearing my luggage to the airport.

I thought this conversation could not possibly get any more dull, but here we are. I cannot remember mention of luggage in Gates of Death, nor are backpack and luggage synonyms, but if believing they are helps you enjoy the book more, that's fine. Besides, backpacks are usually just as strapped to the body as shoes are.

In the spirit of the above:

I have never heard anyone say I am wearing my luggage to the airport.

I have heard people say I am carrying my luggage to the airport.

Hence you would say I am carrying my backpack to the airport along with the luggage which I am also carrying.

When my girlfriend says to me what should I wear I have never said to her wear the little black dress with court shoes and wear the backpack which will go down a treat at the casino. I would not tell her to wear luggage either.

If your hands or feet or head are inserted into your backpack as you walk along I will instantly grant you are wearing your backpack. Please show me a link on Youtube where they are walking around(say an airport) with their heads inserted into their backpacks. I wait with baited breath.

Clothes are items of apparel.

Luggage or backpacks are equipment in the spirit of Heidegger.

[lordomnibok]

May 15, 2018 11:22:57 GMT Zhu Bajie said:

Apr 30, 2018 21:08:29 GMT johnbrawn1972 said:

I cannot remember the last time I said I am wearing my luggage to the airport.

I thought this conversation could not possibly get any more dull, but here we are. I cannot remember mention of luggage in Gates of Death, nor are backpack and luggage synonyms, but if believing they are helps you enjoy the book more, that's fine. Besides, backpacks are usually just as strapped to the body as shoes are.

I am beginning to find this debate quite amusing. I was put off by the writing style at the start of this book, hence I abandoned it in favour of a classic green spine revisit, but you've inspired me to give it another go just to see who I agree with. Might crack into it next week.

[greyarea13]

Finally got around to reading and playing The Gates of Death and, perhaps surprisingly, I really enjoyed it (from the multiple perspectives of gameplay, being a fan, and as a writer of Advanced Fighting Fantasy for Arion Games). Charlie Higson has obviously read his copy of Titan, because all the world building going on is awesome and appropriate without being intrusive (apart from the demon invasion!). One monster represents a low blow for humour and a missed opportunity for something better, but overall I feel it's no worse than Port of Peril and actually somewhat better in many places. Gameplay is decent and one thing that really impressed me is that what would be instant deaths in a Jackson, Livingstone or Green book, actually advance the story in this one, and often in entirely unexpected ways. There are some errors and looping issues, but overall this is a great addition to the series and unafraid to tackle canonical themes that previous writers left well alone. Would definitely buy another FF book by Mr. Higson if he wrote one. Recommended!

[bloodbeasthandler]

I’ve read it once and intend reading it again soon.
Echoing some of what's already been said, I liked the way it tied in with other gamebooks and locations in Titan. I liked the interactions with other characters and the story overall. I liked a lot of the humour in it.
But it’s too generous with the clues and information.
I would have like to have seen codewords or items used to manage the ‘loops’.
I do not like the style of the illustrations and was thinking how much it would have been better if say Russ Nicholson had been commissioned to do them.
Overall I really rather enjoyed it.
I've got a twelve year old son enjoying some of the old green spines. At some point I'll put it his way and see if he likes it.

[peasantscribbler]

I recently acquired Gates of Death, and I’ve played through four times. I had low expectations, but the book was generally meeting these until I got to the end game. I did not enjoy the end game at all. My first impression was that the end game was horrendously designed, but, with a little closer analysis, I realized that the overall design isn’t that bad, just marred by major flaws that make it nearly unplayable for me. I also realized that it wouldn’t be all that hard to fix the flaws. Here’s what I would do.



1. No Turning Back:

SPOILER: Click to show

I believe that the end game should be the end game. Once you’ve reached this stage you should just play on, even if you don’t have everything you need from the temple. I would allow you to turn back from your initial entrance to the cavern of the gates (section 163), but I would eliminate every other option to return to the temple from the cavern after that.

2. Fix the Space-Time Continuum:

SPOILER: Click to show

I’ve accepted that looping backwards from a demon portal might involve an element of time travel, but time travel isn’t really indicated when your spirit returns past the gates after a defeat. Sinna should not be alive again if he has already died (more on this in a moment). Fortunately, I think there is an easy fix. After your initial entrance to the cavern of the gates (section 163), every option to “investigate the fresh body” should be accompanied by the caveat “(if you have not done so before)”.

3. Weakwater is Weak:

SPOILER: Click to show

Anyone who has read page 122 of the Book of the Dead and knows that one must be killed by the Obsidian Giants to enter through the gates as a spirit should be given instructions on how to throw the fight (i.e. which section number you must turn to at the beginning of the fight in order to purposely lose). It shouldn’t matter if you are a highly skilled fighter--you still shouldn’t need Weakwater to purposely lose a fight to low skilled opponents. However, I wouldn’t eliminate Weakwater all together.

4. A Serendipitous Discovery?

SPOILER: Click to show

If you don’t have a Seed of Knowledge when you encounter Sinna, then you should turn to a section in which he dies in front of you and you find an unlabeled vial of liquid on him. Drinking the liquid will lower your skill to 2. This way, you have an excellent opportunity to accidentally discover that losing to the Obsidian Giants is a good thing, which I think would be a good way for the book to reverse your expectations.

5. You Can’t Take It With You:

SPOILER: Click to show

The Book of the Dead tells you that you can’t carry anything beyond the gates as a spirit (unless it belongs to Ulrakaah), but the book leaves it somewhat ambiguous as to whether you can bring things with you or not. It strongly implies that you can’t bring the Holy Man’s seeds with you, as it requires you to have eaten them on the other side. On the other hand, you need to have magic boots to avoid being stomped on by Ulrakaah, so you must be able to bring these with you. I would make it unambiguous that you cannot take any of your belongings past the gates (except the khopesh because it really belongs to Ulrakaah) with explicit instruction in section 366. I would replace the question of whether you are wearing magic boots with a skill test to avoid Ulrakaah’s stomp. Of course, if you used Weakwater instead of the Book of the Dead to get this far then you would have very little chance of success, but I think that makes sense in game logic.

[peasantscribbler]

I missed one flaw that is pretty important to fix: 

SPOILER: Click to show

the book doesn't indicate how many stamina points you have if your spirit reunites with your dead body in the cavern after failing beyond the gates. I guess I would have it restore your stamina back to its initial level.

[soulreaver]

This book is easily in the running for "Worst Fighting Fantasy Book Ever".  Which means it's very interesting to review and try and find out why!
It's hard to talk about what's wrong with this book without going into some detail, so there are probably unmarked spoilers ahead.


Book and Cover

The cover for this book uses a 'porthole' style cover, showing only a small illustration.  The rest of the cover is coated in shiny silver foil.

I personally really dislike this style of cover, and it's all the more annoying that there is a perfectly fine full-body, full-colour version of the porthole illustration by Robert Ball that could have been used instead (see 2.bp.blogspot.com/-E9VaVM9B5SY/WsPglHhlVlI/AAAAAAAABmw/ihgJNASiBRE9e88XlpJqr4UoDvpf77tVgCLcBGAs/s1600/Ulrakaah%2Bby%2BRobert%2BBall.jpg).  Instead they cropped 90% of the image away, never to be seen in the book.  Robert Ball deserved better.

The spine comes with silver foil too.  Oddly enough however the foil on this book seems to be more durable than many of the other Scholastic Fighting Fantasy books and doesn't rub off nearly as easily.  While I don't like the reflective covers, I guess at least this one doesn't turn worse looking quite as quickly.

As with all the Scholastic Fighting Fantasy books, the quality of the paper is poor.

I should note that I do appreciate Scholastic putting the actual author's name on the cover (unlike the "Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone present" credits from Puffin).  While I suspect it was done for cynical reasons (eg, they secured themselves a 'celebrity author' in Charlie Higson and wanted to reap the benefits by putting his name prominently on the cover), authors do deserve to have their names on the covers of the books they write.  Glad to see that this is being done.

Internal Art

The internal art for this book is by Vlado Krizan, and to put it simply, it's not very good.  It has a very angular, flat and cartoonish style, and seriously lacks in detail.  Unlike the old pen-and-ink drawings used by Puffin, these illustration are not just bold black-and-white, but rather use greyscale shading.  It's hard to tell how much of this is due to the low paper quality used by Scholastic and how much of it has to do with the original drawings, but the result makes the drawings look muddy - their lack of detail is actually something of a blessing here, as detail likely would have been lost.

Interstatial images are to the same standard and are completely unmemorable.

Similar to what they did with The Port of Peril, Scholastic attempted to make the pages of the book look like crumbling/burnt/stained parchment.  It feels like this was toned down a little bit in this book, but it still doesn't look particularly good since it's also greyscale and only done in intermittent splotches.  It just makes the pages look 'dirty' as a result.

Story

The Gates of Death puts the player in the shoes of an assistant monk sent from the Cauldron Isles to Allansia to try and cure a plague that is turning infected people into Demons.  The protagonist is given a number of 'smoke oil' flasks, which is the only cure for this plague and they are asked to find the High Priestess of the Temple of Throff, hidden in the Invisible City.

Things go wrong pretty quickly when all the boats sent from the Cauldron Isles are wrecked in a storm, leaving the protagonist and their mentor the only survivors, who wash up in possibly the worst place possible: Port Blacksand.

They must get out of Port Blacksand, travel to Salamonis to try and find some guidance - and then survive the demon-infested city - follow the tracks of a previous adventurer who was seeking the Invisible City, then find the city itself.  Once in the city they must find various helpful people, who reveal the cause of the plague and what must be done to stop it.  The final step of the journey is passing through The Gates of Death and destroying the demonic entity responsible for the plague.

The overall thrust of the story is decent enough: stopping a plague isn't a common Fighting Fantasy trope, being a monk from an island of healers is an original idea, and fighting some big evil demon thing is a time-honed classic finale.  The quest is clear from the get-go and the only major twist is the reveal of the big bad near the end, which gives the journey purpose.

However, where things start to fall apart is in the execution.  The prose is simple and not very descriptive.  The tone is also all over the place: often it tries to be humourous, but does so in very purile ways (eg, bad puns and even instances of toilet humour with farting, belching etc).  There is a particularly infamous "Bum-Faced Monster" that can be encountered (repeatedly in fact, more on this later), which probably manages to be the single lowest point in Fighting Fantasy history.  The best way to describe the writing is that one gets the sense the author is not taking the story seriously.  This might be ok, except that it gels very poorly with the darker parts of the story: for example, this story with the bum-faced monster is the same that features a mother that has been turned into a maddened demon serving up food for her terrified children and, depending on your earlier choices, leaves you only with the option of leaving the children to their fate or killing their mother.  The plague is actually horrific and otherworldly, not only transforming people into demons but also opening gateways into other worlds and causing the rain to turn purple, yet the actual horror of all this is presented clumsily, with not nearly the impact that it deserves and comes across as tone-deaf.

Although the book is ostensibly set in Titan and there are plenty of locations visited and names dropped (the protagonist visits both Port Blacksand and Salamonis, and numerous Titan gods are mentioned), it really doesn't FEEL like Titan.  Titan tended to be a semi-realistic, often violent, monster-infested land of adventure.  However, the Titan in this book feels more like a Saturday morning children's cartoon version of it.  Things are more colourful, characters more flat and unrealistic, and monsters and situations less scary.

This is really unfortunate, as some of the ideas in here are actually good.  We meet an interesting recurring character who isn't an adventuring companion but who potentially shares part of the protagonist's journey (though her character seems very inconsistently written, going from a somewhat mysterious but confident and capable figure to a damsel in distress who clings to the hero's arm in fear at the drop of a hat).  There is a real sense, particularly early on, of the protagonist being a simple monk whose sheltered life has left them very underprepared for the realities of adventuring.  At the same time, it hints at a parallel side-plot of two (very different) adventurers who are ahead of the protagonist, trying to complete the same quest they are.  They don't succeed, but their efforts tie into yours and it creates the sense that there are more 'heroes' out there than just the protagonist.

Lastly, I really appreciate the fact that the book actually gives two different paths early on by which to reach the endgame: one path is designed to let you use smoke-oil and other magic potions to resolve most encounters (though you still have the option to fight if you need to).  The other puts you on a more difficult (and darker) path, forcing the hero to work for Lord Azzur.  This path gives them the game's best weapon right off the bat, but removes the option of using smoke-oil and doesn't give nearly as many magic potions, thus leaving the protagonist with little option but to fight most opponents - since many of those opponents are humans that have turned into demons, that means killing a lot of unfortunate plague victims. Though the actual horror of this isn't capitalized on nearly enough, it does quite effectively paint Lord Azzur as a calculating villain with his own agenda whose presence hangs over the whole adventure from then on.

Gameplay/Structure/Errors

Most of the rules for Fighting Fantasy are handled normally here.  Stats are generated the normal way, though your starting equipment is not standard adventurer fare (the hero is a monk after all) and notably does not include a weapon.  The most significant difference is that it provides rules for all the different weapons you can find in the game (including being unarmed, like you are at the beginning) - these include potential modifiers to the damage you inflict and your Attack Strength, with some of them having bonuses against certain creatures.  It's handled cleanly, using Attack Strength rather than Skill modifiers, and in my opinion isn't overly complex - the only disadvantage is that it spoils the details of all possible weapons you can find before the adventure even starts.  It might have been better to have those rules in the paragraphs where you actually find the items instead.

Limited-use potions play a significant part of the adventure.  Smoke-Oil can be used to instantly defeat plague-infected Demon enemies without killing them.  Depending on which path you take through the game, you'll either have enough to skip basically every single demon combat, or only a single bottle.  Other potions (with stupid names like "Collywobbles" and "Thick as Thieves") are designed to get you past specific encounters - picking the wrong potion might reduce an opponent's Stamina or have no effect at all, while picking the right one will usually win the encounter.  Again, the path you take through the game will determine if you start with a good stock of potions or not.  Having the snake-oil and potions means you potentially have very few fights, while lacking them means you'll have a lot more - but also will have such significant Attack Strength and damage bonuses that the fights aren't particularly hard.  This book is actually relatively easy to complete thanks to the numerous options to avoid combat and the numerous combat bonuses that you can get, with only the final enemy likely to pose any challenge at all (and even then, you'll inevitably have significant Attack Strength bonuses helping you out).

Decreasing the challenge further is the fact that there are very few instant death paragraphs (the Salamonis section probably being the most likely place to run afoul of them), and that there are items available that let you 'rewind time' back to a previous point in the adventure.  This is handled particularly clumsily: even though you lose any items you may have picked up since you rewound, it does not affect things like your gold, provisions, and potions, and fully restores your stats.  Since you can pick up more of those 'rewind time' items after using one, and use it to go back again, you can easily exploit this to get infinite potions, gold etc.  It's almost as if this mechanic was implemented, then the writer(s) realized they had no way of reverting those things to what they were earlier in the narrative, and rather than thinking harder about how to make it work instead shrugged their shoulders and said "oh well".

Speaking of loops, this game is full of them, and they are awful.  Many areas (particularly Salamonis and the Invisible City) let you wander around freely, but no effort is made to keep track of your previous actions, so it's possible to find the same monster over and over again, meet the same person (for the 'first time') over and over again, talk to a dying man over and over, and pick up the same items/rewards over and over again.  What is particularly infuriating is that there is evidence that this wasn't completely lost on the writer(s) - there are at least two 'key items' that track something that you might have done (a frog and a trowel) but they are implemented so poorly that they create whole new problems of their own and there are many more instances where the need to track your past actions is completely forgotten.  To book even seems allergic to the simple phrase "if you have not done so already", leading to ludicrous situations like having a monkey feed you an infinite supply of bananas until you max out your Stamina.  In other books this might not be as egregious, but since this book sometimes does need you to be able to take same action more than once when exploring, it can be hard to tell where the 'if you haven't already' is meant to apply and where it's not.

There are also ways to skip certain parts of the adventure, or take alternate paths.  While this is great in theory, the actual prose assumes that the player has taken specific paths, and stops making sense if they haven't.  You might find the protagonist recognizing (and being recognized) by a familiar person that they've never actually met, or apparently finally finding someone that the protagonist had never actually heard of for a purpose they've never been told about.  It is maddening.

The central quest falls apart as well: although you were tasked with giving a flask of Smoke Oil to the High Priestess of Throff, in terms of the actual gameplay design, this is actually entirely optional.  The only thing you get in return is some background and information that isn't needed to finish the gamebook... yet if the protagonist doesn't have any Smoke Oil to give her, it's one of the very rare instances where you get an instant game over paragraph, as though giving the oil to he priestess was necessary, when from a gameplay perspective it really isn't.  Things fall apart even more as we approach the endgame: we need to suffer a crippling stat penalty that almost certainly was meant to be for one combat only, but never actually gets removed by the text, we can potentially hit 0 Stamina and be resurrected but without any idea of how much Stamina we now have.  When we enter the final fight, we are conveniently presented the weapon we need to defeat the villain just right there ready and waiting for us (which also renders the 'Lord Azzur' path particularly bitter, as the only advantage it gives you is another copy of this weapon early on in the game, when you don't realize that you'll get a second one here), and of course, the worst one of all:

SPOILER: Click to show

to confront the villain, the protagonist must pass through the Gates of Death into the real of the dead.  The prose makes it completely clear that doing so requires them to die and leave their body behind, with only their soul passing through the gates, where it will possess another, different body.  These same sources also reveal that the only thing the hero can take with them is something that belonged to the villain - ie, the ultimate weapon in the game, one of which they can get from Lord Azzur and the other of which is conveniently waiting on the other side of the Gates of Death.  The text even stresses that the hero needs to have eaten certain seeds and gained their magical powers BEFORE they go into the realm of the dead in order to use those powers - which makes sense as they would no longer be carrying the seeds themselves at this point and wouldn't be able to eat them then and there.  And yet, at the eve of the ultimate battle, the book checks if the hero is wearing magic boots.  Well, they won't be.  They'll still be attached to your body on the other side of the Gates of Death, along with everything else you were carrying that doesn't belong to the villain.  And thus, since it's impossible to have any magic boots at this point, the protagonist inevitably get stomped to death.

The writer(s) seem to have forgotten their own story at this point.  Literally the only way to win is to ignore what the text tells you.  I slapped my forehead so hard at this particular equipment check that the sonic boom shattered every window in a three kilometer radius.

Overall

The Gates of Death is painful to read, generating a sense of embarrassment and questioning one's life choices.  It's an overly-long, ugly-looking book.  It's poorly written, with major tonal issues, toilet humour and with awful design problems.  It feels like Charlie Higson wrote this book with little real idea of what Fighting Fantasy is (or was?) and no idea how to pull it off properly.

What's worse is that there is some potential here and some glimmers of good ideas, but everything is so badly presented and implemented that all of that ends up becoming an own-goal: morally challenging choices are presented in a tone-deaf way, characters that could have been interesting are wasted, and the ability to move about freely and take alternate paths utterly breaks the plot if actually used by the player.

Final Note

Writing this review made me think back on "Sky Lord" and its reputation for being a truly terrible Fighting Fantasy book.

I actually kind of liked Sky Lord.

[CharlesX]

This review puts into words what an awful gamebook this is better than I could. Which is weird because I'm planning to do a Unique Answers Game on it when the current one is over. Guess I just felt sorry for it.

I sometimes compare Gates Of Death with Rhianna Pratchett's Crystal Of Storms, in the sense Crystal Of Storms has also got several flaws - loopholes, amateurish writing, lopsided difficulty (in this case a bit too hard, not too easy). But Crystal Of Storms pretty much fits into the FF universe, or for that matter it feels like a gamebook written in the '80s and '90s. The flaws aren't anywhere near on the scale of Gates Of Death, which is just awful in every regard, the quality of writing, artwork, consistency, 'plot', and most importantly, gameplay.

I don't know how much art matters to you (it does to me) but the art in Sky Lord wasn't bad, like the higher-quality paper. You could say it (the text of Sky Lord) was mid-grade s**t between two sheets of chocolate.

 

[kieran]

Nov 8, 2022 1:23:37 GMT soulreaver said:

I actually kind of liked Sky Lord.

I think your review hits the nail on the head as to the major difference between Sky Lord and Gates of Death in pointing out the latter's inconsistent tone. Sky Lord is wacky from beginning to end, Gates of Death can't decide what it wants to be.

Really liking these reviews by the way. I only skimmed your reviews of Shadow and Secrets so as not to spoil the books too much but would love to read similarly in-depth reviews of the older books.

[soulreaver]

Nov 8, 2022 17:01:07 GMT kieran said:

Nov 8, 2022 1:23:37 GMT soulreaver said:

I actually kind of liked Sky Lord.

I think your review hits the nail on the head as to the major difference between Sky Lord and Gates of Death in pointing out the latter's inconsistent tone. Sky Lord is wacky from beginning to end, Gates of Death can't decide what it wants to be.

Really liking these reviews by the way. I only skimmed your reviews of Shadow and Secrets so as not to spoil the books too much but would love to read similarly in-depth reviews of the older books.

It's funny, I actually more or less wrote something similar to what you did regarding Sky Lord having a consistent tone as my Final Note... but then decided to delete it and replace it with what you see there now on the basis of my review being for Gates of Death and not Sky Lord.

I rather enjoy writing these reviews, but they do take quite a while and I can only really do them properly if it's a book I've read recently.  Then again, I am going through my collection.  I might do some review for older books too if I get the chance.

[petch]

Poor old The Gates of Death. It seems to be taking a bashing from a few quarters recently, and I don't mind being one of the few dissenting voices in the crowd admitting that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I like Higson's prose style; he has a distinct voice that's fresh and funny. I can understand others finding his irreverent tone grating - it gives it a very different feel to other books in the series - but I enjoyed his unothodox approach. It's clear that he's used to writing child's fiction, and there are other books in the series where I find that the feeling of them being aimed towards juvenile audiences pull me out of the adventure a bit, but I didn't find that to be the case here, perhaps because it's that kind of knowing, self aware way of writing kid's lit that gives little nods to the grownups who may be reading it too - 'here's one for the mums and dads' types of thing.

I didn't mind the tonal shifts either, I actually thought they were handled quite deftly. Sudden segues from comedy to horror or vice versa can heighten, or give relief from, one or the other if done skilfully, and I thought the comedy was funny and the demonic horror was suitably effective.

And as for that most heavily criticised moment of the book, the appearance of the infamous bum-faced demon? Well, I know humour is a subjective thing, but as we advance in years we're supposed to grow out of finding scatalogical jokes funny so this is probably much more of an indictment of my own sad lack of maturity than it is legitimate praise of the book, but I found it fucking hilarious.

The Gates of Death is very, very far from perfect and most of the faults and flaws that have been pointed out on the forum are entirely warranted, but for me it's not the train crash that some others find it to be either.

Still, I enjoyed your thoughtful and well written review soulreaver even if I didn't agree with all of it (but I am with you on Sky Lord though - I liked it too!).

[kieran]

Nov 14, 2022 10:36:13 GMT petch said:

And as for that most heavily criticised moment of the book, the appearance of the infamous bum-faced demon? Well, I know humour is a subjective thing, but as we advance in years we're supposed to grow out of finding scatalogical jokes funny so this is probably much more of an indictment of my own sad lack of maturity than it is legitimate praise of the book, but I found it fucking hilarious.

I have a similarly puerile sense of humour but for some reason, the BFM didn't do it for me. Maybe it's because there was no real context or setup to it, or anything more to the joke than 'Ha ha, bums!'

It had none of the sophisticated subtleties of this scene from South Park: