Chooseco, $6.99, ISBN 978-1-933390-12-3
Sci-fi, 2006
War with the Evil Power Master – best title ever for a gamebook – brings back your characters from Prisoner of the Ant People. You have since been promoted to primary unit commander of the Lacoonian System Rapid Force. Don’t ask what that means, RA Montgomery uses many fancy names here, but who knows what they all mean. Your Martian friend Flppto is back too, playing the wingman as always. This time around, the Evil Power Master is back, and he’s destroying planets in the Lacoonian System one by one. Why? Because the enemies of the Lacoonian System are jealous, that’s why!
It has provoked the anger and envy of those planets denied membership in the System. Some were rejected because they were dying civilizations. failed experiments in life. Still other planets were excluded because the Lacoonian Congress felt that they had greater potential for evil than for good.
In other words, the “good guys” are xenophobes who formed a cool clique using eugenics and racial profiling as a basis, excluding everyone that does not meet their idea of acceptability. Nice one, “heroes”. So, you and Flppto must now take down the bad guys so that eugenics and xenophobia continue to reign in the universe. Are you ready?
Similar to the previous gamebook, this one is random and incoherent, only with the “slapped along from start to finish” feel intensified a hundred times more. Practically every other turn of the page, regardless of your decisions, lead to some bad endings. You can argue that it makes sense to have only a few good endings around, as the Evil Power Monster is supposed to be a tough cookie. But the endings are mostly horrible. One has the Evil Power Master’s voice interrupting a scene with a short monologue that is ALL CAPS and then it’s the end. Another ending sees you confronting the Evil Power Master in what seems to be a football game of some sort, only to have him run away at the last minute before you can do anything, the end. One ending simply sees a laser coming out of nowhere to obliterate you.
Everything here defines the word “half-assed”. Is Mr Montgomery even trying?
