Speaking of playthroughs:
ROBOT COMMANDO
Another book I managed to complete in my younger days. I was a big fan of this one back then: the premise is absolutely ridiculous but it's got giant robots against dinosaurs, how can that NOT be awesome? I seem to remember it's also not that difficult to complete with several paths to victory - a solid antidote to Trial of Champions then.
The plot is as contrived as it can be: I live in Thalos, enemy state of the Karosseans, where we use mecha for most tasks including dealing with the native dinosaurs population. One day everyone in Thalos falls asleep due to some dastardly unexplained plot by Minos, the leader of Kaross and only I am left awake to stop the impending invasion. It's all just a vague setup for me to wander around a deserted land in a battle robot and I'm totally fine with that. I'm also totally fine with me, a simple Dino-rancher, deciding that it's time to be taking on the entire Karossean army and saving the world.
I've got the choice of two robots at the start: a tough, all round humanoid robot designed for dino-herding or a light flyer. I seem to remember usually taking the former, so this time I go with the latter - it should be useful to quickly get somewhere a bit more useful. My robot of choice is Dragonfly class and literally looks like a giant dragonfly with rubbish armour and no combat bonus at all. I've also got 5 crappy medkits (1 stam each!) and a sword, because in this future society everyone still carries one of those, I guess. I decide my first port of call should be the City of Knowledge - perhaps there will be something there to help me in my plight. En route I battle a Pteranadon, which luckily has terrible stamina as my dragonfly robot has effective stamina 5, and defeat it before landing and making my way to the college of medicine where I read up on a compound that cures all sorts of sleeping sickness. I immediately make some - I've now got a litre of this cure, which should be enough to everyone in Thalos, but it gets super unstable once opened so I have use it all at once on everyone. More troublingly one of the ingredients I used (essence of Man Trap Flower) was unstable and may need to be topped up with a fresh dose. I'm not really troubled by how I'm going to add this to the compound when I already can't open it because I'm so hugely overconfident. I'll sort that out later!
After a scrap with some giant lizards I head to the college of war where my weedy robot is immediately shot down by a Karossean Myrmidon (essentially a Decepticon plane / robot transformer). Testing my luck, I scramble from the burning wreckage and hide until the Karossean stupidly climbs out of his robot and I nip in whilst he's wandered off and take over. This robot RULES with high stats and the ability to switch forms, even though I don't know enough about the controls to fully get the benefit of it. I then head off to a museum where hoped to get info on the Karosseans but the only useful bit of info I get it that they often settle tribal disputes with hand-to-hand duels.
My next stop is the City of Jungle where I'm hoping to get the other reagents for my cure. I transform my Starscream mech from plane to walker and enter the jungle on foot, quickly find the Man Trap plant, pick the flower and drop it into my cure capsule to complete it, before I have to fight the Man Trap in an epic plant vs robot battle, making short work of the foul flora. The jungle is hard going on my robots armour however and when I spot Karosseans are in the city it's time to leave.
I now decide to fly to the exciting sounding City of Pleasure, which sadly turns out to be mainly arcades - for the men and women of Thalos, Southend seafront would be the place to party! Here I accidently shoot myself playing Zap the Karossean but I do get a tip about something exciting... back in the city of knowledge - bah!
My only choice from here is the City of Industry. Here I pop into the Robot Experimental Centre and find a transponder helmet that better allows me to control my mecha, boosting my skill by +1 if it's below 11 (it is), get hit on the head by a book losing 1 stamina, and then bashed about by an experimental battlesuit for another 2 stamina damage.. ouch. A skirmish with a guard robot leaves my stamina pretty depleted by now so I use a couple of substandard medkits before beating a retreat but not before snagging an experimental missile. It's then back to the City of Knowledge, where I snag the one-use experimental Invisibility Cloak that I found out about in the arcade! Then I fly to the coastal City of Storms where at the weather bureau I discover a huge storm is due to hit Thalos soon - and if I can release my compound into it from The City of Worship I could potentially cure everyone! Result! I also replenish my medkit stock here (and then use them all up)
From here I can head straight to the City of Worship. The storm is rolling in, so I pilot my craft high into it - taking damage as I do so - and release the compound into the storm. As the rain washes across Thalos it wakes everyone up (I know, this still doesn't really make sense) and the Karosseans retreat. I am a hero and Thalos is saved!
As suspected I still enjoyed this - in fact I enjoyed it enough to play it again and try a different route that I was more familiar with, whereby I ended up fighting (and losing to) the Karossean leader in a giant battle tank and from a bit of reading there is also a third route to victory where you duel the Karossean leader with swords. It's a pretty easy book - I didn't really have any issues on my first go - and you can return to the city locations pretty much indefinitely although each time you do you risk an additional combat - although you can't go back to the in-city locations once you've been there. It all adds up to a non-linear experience with plenty of scope for exploration.
The robot side is well handled: combat is nicely straightforward compared to some other more complex books - essentially the robot has a stamina of its own and may or may not give you a skill bonus., and the robots stamina is generally on the low side meaning you may need to switch mech every once in a while. There's plenty to choose from on the way through the book, although many of them suck.
Where it falls down is that the plot itself is really stupid and the book lacks a bit of atmosphere - Thalos must be a wasteland because I was zipping about barely encountering anyone, including the invading Karosseans (incidentally, something I liked about them was that they are always described / depicted as having beards, which presumably is the Star Trek way you can tell they are evil). In fact the Karosseans are completely useless and fully deserved to be defeated via a deux ex machina.
I'd rate this one as fun, but not top tier.
Dinosaurs vs robots though!
