Fighting Fantasy #13 - Freeway Fighter

Title: Freeway Fighter

Author: Ian Livingstone

Illustrators: Jim Burns (cover), Kevin Bulmer (interior)

Published: 1985

Level of previous knowledge: I remember bits and pieces, particularly the fact that you have to choose the right route at each turn because you need to find every fuel canister along the way. Sadly I don’t remember any of the actual route at all.

Plot summary: A killer virus has wiped out most of mankind, which is divided into peaceful fortified towns and roaming gangs of barbaric savages. A resident in a town called New Hope, I have been called upon to transport food supplies to another settlement in exchange for a tanker of fuel. My journey will be long and perilous, so luckily I have a car with all the optional extras I could ask for, including armour plating and rockets.

Rules: The most notable change is the addition of the car, the Interceptor, which has FIREPOWER and ARMOUR stats. The car is also equipped with a certain amount of weaponry – rockets, iron spikes and oil spray. STAMINA is higher than usual, with 24 points added to the roll rather than the usual 12. Med-Kits replace Provisions but perform the same function. Combat is divided into unarmed, shooting and vehicle combat. For the second book in a row there are no rules for using LUCK in combat.

Attempt #1

Stats rolled: SKILL 10, STAMINA 27, LUCK 12, FIREPOWER 7, ARMOUR 30

Driving through the gates of New Hope, I entered a wasteland of ruined buildings, abandoned vehicles and wild animals. I soon arrived at a small town which appeared deserted, and hearing a gunshot in the distance, I decided to get out and explore, because heading towards the sound of a gunshot is definitely the correct course of action. Fortunately the shooter was friendly, and when I told him the truth about where I was from he gave me some useful advice – not to stop at Joe’s garage down the road because they’d rob me. Continuing my drive, my memory was sorely tested when the very next paragraph saw me arrive at Joe’s garage, which I duly ignored and drove on despite the attractive car/girl outside.

Continuing my drive, I was soon confronted by the car on the front cover of the book, complete with turret and unexplained machine gunner. Prevailing at the cost of half my car’s ARMOUR, I left the smoking wreckage of the Chevvy behind. I soon received a call from home, telling me that Sinclair, our council leader, had been kidnapped by a biker gang, and I should look out for them. Shortly after this, my petrol tank had nearly emptied and I was forced to use all my spare fuel to refill. Wondering why a) I had been provided with the most petrol-hungry car in existence and b) I hadn’t been provided with fuel for more than a fraction of my crucial journey to fetch more fuel, I drove on until I was forced off the highway by a tailback of abandoned traffic.  

Turning eastwards (and hoping I hadn’t already failed my mission by doing so) I came across an ambulance parked at the roadside. Unable to resist the idea that I might find some medical supplies, I pulled the doors open and caused a blinding explosion which sent me reeling. Realising that the person who set this trap would now be approaching, I hid under the ambulance, a trick which the highwayman saw through immediately due to the gallons of blood I was leaking everywhere. Taking my chances, I came out shooting, putting him down despite my injury. The ambulance was empty (after fixing myself up I had actually found a negative number of Med-Kits) but the highwayman had some money and some knuckledusters which I hoped would be useful.

Turning south once again, I eventually arrived at a wooden bridge, which a sign saying ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY – KEEP OUT!’. Scoffing at the pathetic attempt to intimidate me, I drove my car carefully on to the bridge, and made my way successfully to the bottom of the river after the bridge collapsed in a thunderous explosion. At least I wasn’t intimidated.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 2

Attempt #2

Stats rolled: SKILL 7, STAMINA 30, LUCK 11, FIREPOWER 7, ARMOUR 33

Taking the same route (and again losing half my ARMOUR to the Chevvy), I wanted to avoid as much confrontation as possible on account of my low SKILL score so ignored the parked ambulance and continued eastwards. Eventually I came to a roadblock built from upturned vehicles, which I destroyed with one of my rockets (rather than driving around it, which might have required some kind of ability on my part). This spooked the bikers waiting in ambush, and they sped away, firing a warning shot. Letting them go (my FIREPOWER score isn’t too hot either) I drove onwards, taking the next turning towards a place called Rockville.

Before my arrival a stray shot from a bazooka exploded rather close to my car. Going after the hooligans with the intention of giving them a piece of my mind – they’d blow someone up if they weren’t careful – I found myself entering the small settlement, welcomed by withering gunfire from a nearby farmhouse. Taking out the farmhouse with a rocket (I wondered if this option could be applied to every situation?) I heard cries for help, which I discovered belonged to our missing council leader, Sinclair, who was happily located in the general store and not the farmhouse I had just obliterated. Searching the buildings that were still standing gained me some fuel, a pair of wire cutters, a can of meat which I wolfed down (hope it wasn’t dog food) and a crossbow bolt in the shoulder, courtesy of a booby trap.

Moving on, I took a couple of turnings and ran out of fuel, so filled up with the canister I had recently found. Spending the night sleeping in my car off the road (leaving the car unattended seemed unwise), I drove south once more, miraculously passing unaware and without incident through a literal minefield laid by outlaws. I soon came to a dirt road which looked like it had been used recently, so I took the detour and arrived at some kind of gentlemen’s racing club. Accepting the offer to partake in a spiffing contest of driving skill (uh oh) for the grand prize of a canister of fuel, I was quick off the line, holding my advantage until my rather unsporting opponent fired a grenade under my car, which exploded and caused quite a lot of damage. I survived this setback though, and was able to overtake the chap after a bit of ramming removed more of my ARMOUR. The iron spikes I deployed to hinder his progress did not work properly, unfortunately, but the second grenade that came my way did, and sadly finished off my poor battered car, and me with it.

Conclusion: Failure. I seem to be on the right ‘track’ though. Heh heh.

Number of combats: 1

Attempt #3

Stats rolled: SKILL 10, STAMINA 29, LUCK 12, FIREPOWER 9, ARMOUR 31

Same route as last time, however this time I was more willing to engage in confrontation and therefore indulged in combat with both the highwayman and bikers, where some awful dice rolls ended up with me losing nearly all my STAMINA and a SKILL point as well as a good chunk of ARMOUR. Oddly I was told that I installed my spare wheel even though I wasn’t aware anything had happened to it. Rescuing Sinclair from Rockville was straightforward, and I continued along familiar roads until I arrived once again at the race track.

The race began well this time, my opponent’s first grenade failing to detonate and leaving me with a substantial lead. Unfortunately my iron spikes failed me again and my car took the brunt of the second grenade, surviving the impact but just barely. As we approached the finish line we approached a small bridge wide enough for only one car. My nerve held while my opponent’s deserted him, and I was in the lead on the final stretch. He closed on me quickly however, and I was forced to decide whether to block him to the left or the right. Picking the option to move right, I was told that my opponent had decided to try overtaking on the right (rejoice!) but that I had incorrectly gone to the left (huh?) and was overtaken, losing the race at the finish line thanks to a mistake in the book. Great.

Knowing failure was now just around the corner, I stopped at a garage where I paid a man named Pete to supercharge my engine. If I was going lose the car soon, I may as well do it quickly. Not thinking to ask him if he had any spare fuel laying around (it was a flipping garage after all) I sped off down the road, where I promptly ran out of fuel and ended my mission.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 4

Attempt #4

Stats rolled: SKILL 9, STAMINA 32, LUCK 9, FIREPOWER 10, ARMOUR 33

Basically a repeat of the last attempt, instead losing the race thanks to a failure of nerve at the bridge.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 4

Attempt #5

Stats rolled: SKILL 9, STAMINA 33, LUCK 12, FIREPOWER 11, ARMOUR 32

This time I tried to get smart with the paramedic highwayman, going along with his orders to come out from under the ambulance with my hands up, then attempting to throw a knife at him. He saw it coming a mile off though, and gunned me down at the roadside. At least there was an ambulance nearby.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 1 

Attempt #6

Stats rolled: SKILL 9, STAMINA 33, LUCK 12, FIREPOWER 11, ARMOUR 32

This time the highwayman was unable to dodge my knife throw and I congratulated myself on an easy win only to discover that I would be bizarrely denied the opportunity to loot his corpse and instead jumped straight back in my car and drove off. Grrrr. After that things progressed as normal until I reached the race track, where I was finally able to win the ultimate prize – a canister of fuel. Getting out of there before things turned ugly I moved on to Pete’s garage where I had him install the supercharger, hoping it would come in more useful this time.

Later on I came across my own car from a previous attempt, overturned by the roadside. Harvesting one of the wheels, I casually reached into the glove compartment and was bitten by an unfriendly rattlesnake, which apparently had fallen in love with a length of plastic tubing. Its romantic efforts were ruined when I shot the dastardly thing in retribution, and took the subject of its affection with me.

After a brief altercation with a pair of astronauts on a motorbike and sidecar which an oil slick dealt with quite effectively, I refilled my fuel tank again, knowing I still had to find more in order to reach my destination. With that in mind I searched an abandoned police car by the roadside, but found the tank empty and a locked trunk which I was unable to budge. Further down the road I was confronted by a couple of members of the local Roman re-enactment society, driving a pickup truck that had been converted into something resembling a chariot. Before I had the chance to point out that double-barrelled machine guns were somewhat rare in ancient Rome they engaged me in combat, where I was sadly forced to destroy their impressive (and hilarious) creation.

Further south I came across a sign pointing east, advertising car engine and body repairs. Shrugging, I headed in that direction and arrived at the garage, where a man tried to extort the princely sum of 200 credits for his services. Unable to afford the price, I continued driving until I arrived at a tunnel entrance blocked by a bus. For some reason not suspecting any kind of trap at all, I wandered casually up to the bus, wondering if it could be moved out of the way. To my surprise (or not) a man leapt out of the bus and tried to extort money from me for the privilege of entering the tunnel – failing that, a duel with pistols would do. Reflecting that I had now at least entered the 19^th century, I reluctantly agreed to the duel, which I won. The man thanked me for shooting him in such an honourable fashion, and warned me about potential landslides up ahead before reversing his bus out of the way and allowing me to continue.

After successfully avoiding the landslides, I came to another roadblock where some men informed me that I would be forced to turn back the way I came unless I could beat a chap called Leonardi in a race. Wondering why everyone was so determined to prevent me travelling along a public road, I reluctantly agreed to the race, winning by a hair thanks to the supercharger I had fitted. Further down the road, half expecting to find a pot of gold in the middle of it, possibly guarded by kimono-wearing, assault-rifle wielding Japanese women on motorised rickshaws, I came across an abandoned truck, from which I was able to siphon some much-needed fuel.

Stopping for a refill and some minor repairs, I headed south through the increasingly unpleasant desert landscape. Eventually I came across a flaming Corvette, and its ex-driver, a woman named Amber who had been attacked by a gang of road warriors, who for unexplained reasons had destroyed her car but left her alone. Apparently she was from San Anglo, my destination, and explained that the town was under constant attack by the gang, called the Doom Dogs, who were determined to massacre everyone living there (except her, obviously). I gave her a lift, and we came up with a plan to break into the gang’s camp and sabotage their vehicles.

Sneaking into the camp with the help of my wire cutters, we attached mines to the Doom Dogs’ cars and ran for it. The explosions started much sooner than expected and we were chased back to the car, barely making it in time before a huge armoured car came into view. Engaging in vehicle combat with the intimidating station wagon, it soon rammed a spike into the side of my car, pinning us in place. Then a voice demanded that we either have a shoot-out or I fight ‘The Animal’ in hand-to-hand combat. Opting for the former, we were remarkably successful and won without more than a slight graze – however the bare-chested Animal then emerged from the car and went into full berserk mode, charging at me and locking me into a bear hug before I could react. How he thought this was a sustainable form of attack I wasn’t certain, but Amber soon knocked him out with a spanner and we tied him up, leaving him for the rest of his gang to find.

Feeling optimistic about the mission, we entered San Anglo and were greeted enthusiastically, given a hero’s welcome and a comfortable bed to spend the night. The next morning I awoke to the sounds of the Doom Dogs attacking the refinery. They managed to blow the doors open with an exploding truck, and then swarmed through the gap, terrorising the citizens. Attempting to rally them to action, I failed to shout loudly enough at them and they surrendered to the Doom Dogs without resistance, putting an end to my hopes of completing my mission.

Conclusion: Failure. I came this far to fail a SKILL check where anything other than a double 6 would have been fine…

Number of combats: 7

Attempt #7

Stats rolled: SKILL 10, STAMINA 30, LUCK 7, FIREPOWER 8, ARMOUR 31

This attempt ended during the Blitz race, after my car, already battered by the encounter with the Red Chevvy early on, failed to survive being rammed repeatedly by the yellow Ford.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 3

Attempt #8

Stats rolled: SKILL 8, STAMINA 30, LUCK 11, FIREPOWER 7, ARMOUR 29 

Lost the Blitz race again after chickening out at the bridge.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 4

Attempt #9

Stats rolled: SKILL 9, STAMINA 29, LUCK 7, FIREPOWER 8, ARMOUR 33  

A poor LUCK score led to a couple of new experiences this time – one was being shot with a bazooka outside Rockville and the other was meeting an outlaw straight out of a spaghetti western and stealing his Magnum. However, the mission ended much as usual, in another fiery Blitz race explosion.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 4

Attempt #10

Stats rolled: SKILL 11, STAMINA 28, LUCK 7, FIREPOWER 12, ARMOUR 33

A combination of poor LUCK and terrible dice rolling meant my car failed to survive the Blitz race yet again.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 5

Attempt #11

Stats rolled: SKILL 10, STAMINA 34, LUCK 10, FIREPOWER 11, ARMOUR 34

My decent stats weren’t enough to get me through as the Animal’s station wagon out-manoeuvred me and its pointed ram bar penetrated my car door, killing me instantly.

Conclusion: Failure.

Number of combats: 7

Attempt #12

Stats rolled: SKILL 12, STAMINA 27, LUCK 10, FIREPOWER 11, ARMOUR 31

This time my stats were rolled by allocating 7 dice however I liked.

Managing to reach San Anglo once more, I was this time able to rally the defenders and avoided the defeat by meek surrender which occurred on a previous attempt. Capturing one of the Doom Dogs I held him at gunpoint and was able to persuade them all to leave nicely. Hurrah!

After repairs to the gates were carried out I jumped into the fuel tanker and began the long journey home. Given the choice of spending the night in the fuel tanker or a dodgy-looking motel, I opted for the vehicle again as leaving such a large amount of a precious resource unguarded in a car park seemed like a poor idea. The next day saw me attacked by a pair of would-be hijackers on motorbikes. One of them soon paid dearly for the attempt when, in a masterclass of multitasking, I used the roof-mounted machine gun to destroy his bike while continuing to drive the fuel tanker in a straight line. He did, however succeed at bursting one of my tyres, causing the tanker to veer wildly and come to a stop with me stuck in the cabin. The other biker called me out for a duel, which seemed like the best option at that point. Fortunately I was still quick off the mark and successfully dropped my opponent.

Continuing the journey, I encountered very little resistance on the way back to New Hope, where I soon arrived with the fuel tanker intact. I was hailed as a hero and offered the hand of Sinclair’s daughter in marriage. Or I just imagined the last bit.

Conclusion: Success!

Number of combats: 8

Review

Writing: A post-apocalyptic setting is new to the Fighting Fantasy series and while there’s nothing particularly deep here, it sets the scene quite well, with a specific mission that makes sense given the times being lived in. Pretty much everyone you encounter during the book is motivated by greed – in a society where resources are scarce it makes sense for people to be out to get whatever they can, whatever the cost. The characterisations don’t go much further than that and are pretty thin, even when you meet the brief sidekick Amber and the barbaric Doom Dog leader, The Animal, which are quite one-dimensional characters, but then we shouldn’t expect too much from a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Overall it’s pretty fun and engaging in parts – the Blitz race for instance – while a bit dull in others (oh look another abandoned car to investigate).  A shameless Mad Max rip-off that doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

Writing: 3/5

Artwork: Some of the art is extremely simplistic in places and while not terrible, doesn’t really depict the post-apocalyptic world in any kind of memorable way. The cover isn’t bad but has a slightly odd flat quality to it which doesn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Artwork: 2/5

Design: In true Ian Livingstone style, we have a mappable multi-route layout, throughout which are scattered the items necessary to succeed in the mission. The main problem is finding three canisters of fuel during the book. The first requires the correct choice of road heading south after coming off the highway near the beginning of the book – there are about six options here and only two of them can result in finding it (and then not necessarily). The second requires you to win the Blitz race, which is fairly hard unless you have extremely good car stats and haven’t already suffered too much in previous combats. The third, annoyingly, requires not only that you take the correct road (out of two options), but that you also make a choice that loses you a SKILL point, in order to find an item which will help you obtain fuel later on.

I’m not sure how I feel about the fuel mechanic, notwithstanding the fact that it makes little sense to even start driving without nearly enough fuel to reach the destination. On the one hand we wouldn’t want the book to be too easy, but on the other, considering that the first fuel canister can only be found by taking one of two of the six available routes, it seems a shame to restrict the content of the book in such a way that some of the encounters are only found along ‘wrong’ paths which result in defeat shortly after. This isn’t uncommon in Fighting Fantasy however, and doesn’t seem as severe as it is in some other books. It doesn’t quite suffer from ‘one true path’ syndrome, but it’s pretty close.

Apart from the fuel situation the book is quite easy to complete if you have decent stats – but you do need to have good SKILL, LUCK and FIREPOWER to have a good chance of getting through, and perhaps ARMOUR too. There are quite a lot of SKILL and LUCK tests, the latter being a bit problematic especially when you’d rather not waste LUCK testing to see if you lose 2 ARMOUR or gain 4 STAMINA and would rather save it for life-or-death situations, however there are ways to regain LUCK as well which are welcome.

I would have liked to see a bit more excitement on the journey back home – the single encounter wasn’t bad but the rest of the journey is waved off as a series of incompetent ambushes and blockades which the reader doesn’t need to know about. It seems like a missed opportunity to not have a desperate race for New Hope with enemies all around, especially when the book was 20 sections short of the usual length.

Design: 3/5

Fairness: Other than turning down the wrong road and missing out on fuel there are very few situations where random choice leads directly to defeat and instant death paragraphs are usually the result of failing a test of some sort, or making poor choices. The difficulty depends mostly on your stats, and finding the fuel canisters. The fact that one of them requires you to unavoidably lose a SKILL point to find an item which helps you get it later is a bit unfair and might cause you to ignore the item on a future playthrough until you discover what it’s for.

Fairness: 3/5

Cheating index: 1 Razaak 

Average enemy stats

Successful path: 9 enemies, SKILL/FIREPOWER 8.1, STAMINA/ARMOUR 13.6

Entire book: 39 enemies, SKILL/FIREPOWER 7.9, STAMINA/ARMOUR 12.6

Instant death paragraphs: 24

Any player can win no matter how weak initial dice rolls: Although there are no unavoidable combats against exceptionally difficult opponents I doubt anyone would survive this adventure with minimum stats simply because there are so many tests which can result in failure or crippling loss of the car’s ARMOUR. Therefore if the book had made this claim (it didn’t) then it would be a LIE.

Final thoughts: Freeway Fighter is a fairly enjoyable post-apocalyptic romp, and if you persevere with it, just about engaging enough to get you through to the end.

Final score: 6/10