Mini-Reviews:
Fighting Fantasy : Blood of the Zombies (FF60)
Fighting Fantasy : House of Hell (FF10)
Picked these two up when on sale a week or two ago, for a bit of a nostalgia trip. I can't say that I have any major complaints about them at all; both are quite well done and polished. The weakness that both of these have would be in the quality of the original gamebooks. Frankly, they are nice to have on the phone; but I would rather go with a different way and have a better selection of titles;
Forest of Doom (FF3) is also now available; but again, not one of the better books if memory serves me right.
House of Hell I remember from back in the day; and has an interesting 'Fear' mechanic which makes it stand out and kind of unique; but I think
Beneath Nightmare Castle (FF25) handled that better. The problem here is that it is arguable a weak entry in the series, with a convoluted pathway that must be done in a certain order (if I recall correctly)
Blood of the Zombies I actually find to be quite average; if not one of the more poorer FF books I've ever read. A very simple combat mechanic
*, very linear pathways, and it is hard thanks to the combat system; volume of enemies; and the number you have to go through; especially with a starting Stamina/Health of 20... and not much in the way of bulking that up.
* Combat: Your attack equals dice roll(s) with a +/- modifier dependent on weapon. (e.g. Penknife = 1d6-3; Baseball Bat = 1d6)
Zombie attacks generally equals number of zombies. So if you have Stamina 20; versus 10 zombies with a baseball bat...
- You roll a 4, kill four zombies
- Zombies attack you for 6 damage (Stamina is now 14)
- You roll a 2, kill two zombies
- Zombies attack you for 4 damage (Stamina is now 10)
- You roll a 5, kill the last four zombies
And that is (generally) how the combat system works. Of course, that could work out differently such as:
- You roll a 1, kill one zombie
- Zombies attack you for 9 damage (Stamina is now 11)
- You roll a 2, kill two zombies
- Zombies attack you for 7 damage (Stamina is now 4)
- You roll a 3, kill three zombies
- Zombies attack you for 4 damage (Stamina is now brown bread)
All in all?
Both are good, polished apps and I have no complaints about the apps; more around the selection of the titles that they chose to go with.
