'Things seem weird, even by Deadpool’s standards, when Matt “Daredevil” Murdock offers him a profitable – nay, straightforward! – contract. No chaos, no unpredictability, no funny business… C’mon, Murdock, that’s just not Deadpool’s style. Sensing something is up, Deadpool grabs an innocent bystander off the street to confuse any semblance of predictability the universe is trying to force on him. Good-hearted mischief spirals into a sinister plot full of impenetrable bank vaults, crime lords stroking their (lack of) moustaches in very evil ways, and an assortment of offensively stylish suits that are begging to be blown up, Deadpool discovers his choices are no longer his own – they’re yours!'
One of my favourite books when I was growing up was Trial of Champions one of the Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own adventure books. I wasn't the best reader growing up, and struggled quite a lot, but the format of the book made it a lot easier for me, and I was sucked in to the idea of getting to shape the story, and to read it multiple times with different outcomes. Sadly, it seems to be a thing that seems to have fallen out of favour somewhat.
Perhaps it's the rise in popularity of board games and tabletop role playing, but there don't seem to be many books made in that style, and those that are being released are re-releases of older books. The Marvel Multiverse Missions Adventure Books are a new series from Aconyte Books that's going to be bringing these adventure books back; and they're bringing some Marvel characters along with them. One of the first of these releases puts you not in control of a costumed hero, but just a regular person living their lives peacefully in New York. However, when Deadpool decides to rope you into helping him out on one of his missions the fun really begins.
One of the things that this book does that's really clever is to not put you in the shoes of the hero. I don't know if this will be the same for the other books in the series (and think that it would be fun to play as She-Hulk in her book), but for this book it makes things all the more enjoyable. Why? Because Deadpool is too weird a character to take control of. He does strange things, he says bizarre stuff, and he acts pretty wild most of the time; and trying to put a regular person into that kind of character feels like a tough sell. Instead, we get to go along as a passenger, perhaps even a glorified sidekick.
So, readers take on the role o a regular person who's job it is is to kind of just point Deadpool in the right direction and hope things go well. To this end you'll get presented with choices about where to go. There's smuggling going on, so you can choose to check out the docks, to search underground, or see if the illegal weapons are being brought in via air. Over the course of the investigation you'll be presented with different leads to follow, different methods to try and achieve your goals; and depending on the choices you make you can have quite different experiences. I played through the book twice, and ended up sending Deadpool to completely different locations each time.
But this is also a game book, and you will need a pair of six sided dice and a pen and paper in order to keep track of everything. The combat system isn't too difficult, and anyone with experience in complex board games and TTRG's should get on fine with it. There were a few times where it felt like I got a lot of info thrown at me in regards to combat choices and outcomes, but as long as you keep your notes well and stay on top of everything you should be fine. And yes, even on the ebook version it remembers your last entry and you can go back and check out the different options like I know we all did as kids.
I didn't know what to expect from this book, and was excited to see how the team at Aconyte would pull off this challenge. Making any book is hard, but a book that's multiple stories in one and also involves a game system is even harder. So I am absolutely impressed that the book is so well executed, and so much fun. You Are (Not) Deadpool is a book that fans of this format are definitely going to want to check out.
No comments:
Post a Comment