Looking at the adventure sheet, you'd think Creature of Havoc, another adventure from Steve Jackson #1, is a simple, classic romp through Allansia - you'd be quite wrong, as I was.The first sign this isn't any ordinary FF adventure is the 20-page introduction; if you thought parts of The Phantom Menace were interminable, you ain't read nothing yet. The frustration of having to read The Hobbit before you can launch into the Lord of the Rings is capped off with the phrase, on the 20th page: 'Much of what you have read will be of little help to you...' Well, fuck you too, Steve #1. I've already used up half the time I've allocated to playing this book reading an intro which is mostly useless. Save it for the novels!
Anyway, in short you're some kind of beast, you're not really sure who or what you are, but you're probably the result of experiments that seem to have come right out of the new X Files flick (which by spooky coincendence, I saw earlier today - highly recommended). You can kill enemies with a single blow, provided you roll a double, which is pretty awesome.
So despite the long, expansive (yeah, that's what we'll call it) intro, I start the adventure wandering in some kind of dark corridoors, soon finding an injured dwarf. Trying to wake him up, I crush him to death... oops. I see. I don't know my own strength. He's carrying a piece of leather hide, with writing I can't read, which my character decides on his own is useful, and some shiny, round pieces of metal, which aren't. Apart from character development and immersion into the world of Creature of Havoc, I'm not sure why I'd find a piece of leather interesting and coins not so... but alright, I'm playing along.
But any goodwill I might have towards the book is ruined over the next quarter of an hour, during which every single move is decided either by the book or dice rolls. Not just tests of luck or or skill, which would still be random but keep the game part of the book individual to each player to a small degree, but things like 'roll 1-3, you go west; roll 4-6, you go east'. Throw in a few fights, and already we're three-quarters of an hour into starting Creature of Havoc and we've made but a single decision as to the fate of our character.
At some point, suddenly I'm able to choose where I go - but it's still all random decisions of east/west, open/don't open, etc. I look at a parchment written in what sounds like a mixture of Tolkien Elven and Welsh, get cursed by a zombie, find an orb.
Ah, the orb. It speaks to me, and I'm beginning to think I can read this: 'Did you think you could theif the orb of Zharradan Marr?' The rest of it's a little harder to decipher, so I leave... the orb seems evil.
The next place I randomly wander into burns me to death. Yep, that about sums up the book.
So, there are promising flashes in Creature of Havoc - the fact I think I could actually start to read the Elven/Welsh, the slow shift towards being able to actually choose what my character could do, and I assume that intro is useful for something. Surely!
The book also has more than the usual 400 pages, so perhaps Steve was going for something a little deeper than the usual hack-n-slash or was looking for a different way to expand an adventure than the usual extra-rules method. It seems like one with depth that perhaps I didn't get to encounter; perhaps I was a little harsh on Steve #1 earlier.
So much like the previous book I covered, if you've got the time, Creature of Havoc might just be one of the better FF gamebooks, but as a once-off, it's frustrating and random.
If you're wondering why I skipped book #23, it's because I don't have it. Anyone care to expensively lend a copy to someone (probably) on the other side of the world?
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