Steve Jackson
Reviewed by Mark Lain
When the
release of this book was first announced it immediately became probably the FF
book that’s publication I looked forward to the most. A book where you get to
play the monster was a prospect to relish and the image of charging around
wreaking the havoc of the title whilst indiscriminately killing everything in
sight for no apparent reason was a nice antidote to the usual business of
playing a good guy adventurer. What would eventually see print was not quite
what I, or (I would imagine) many other FF fans, could have anticipated.
The first
thing that strikes the reader as a little bit out of the ordinary is the
Introduction. Normally in FFs this is no more than three or so pages long and
sets out exactly how YOU came to be in whatever situation the book requires you
to be in. In CoH, rather than an
establishing shot, we are instead presented with a 19-page mini-story
explaining the nature of the Trolltooth Pass and its surrounding environs, as
well as potted biographies of the key people who have been instrumental in
shaping life in the area (quite literally in the case of Zharradan Marr!) but
there is no mention of where YOU might fit into it all. (As an aside, for
anyone who has read Jackson’s novel The
Trolltooth Wars, many aspects of this back story (and, in some ways, parts
of the adventure too) will seem familiar, but CoH came first and sets the scene for the novel that followed –
clearly SJ had big plans for the characters that came from CoH and it’s pretty obvious that the two books were intended to
flow together.) Interestingly, in typical SJ style, much of the information
given in the intro is misleading but that only becomes apparent much later on
as, on paragraph 1, the initial Act of the adventure proper begins and YOU find
yourself waking up to a living nightmare devoid of identity or awareness of who
or even what you are meant to be, almost as if you are being born. Then begins
a voyage of self-discovery as you gradually become more and more sentient, pick
up snippets of information, and find your way to your eventual double-goal of
vengeance and, probably more importantly, of determining your true identity.
This book has
what must be one of the densest and most satisfying plots of any FF, which,
through constant changes of location, ongoing aims, and self-awareness, remains
compelling and pretty intense throughout. Indeed, as long as the book is, it is
difficult to put it down and, having beaten one area, you immediately want to
move on to see what it will throw at you next - this is the most fundamental
sign of a successful gamebook, not to mention a good story book in general and
the fact that you want to read on and discover more of what it has to offer,
along with the sheer determination to try to unravel the mystery due to the
fast pacing and overall desire to find out what you are, sets this well above
the average benchmark for a “decent” gamebook. And it is certainly very long,
both in game/plot terms as well as in literal terms. With a paragraph count of
460 this is amongst the longest FFs ever and the adventure itself has an epic
scale to it, although it can be roughly divided into two halves (the dungeon
part, then the “outdoors” part) and leaves you feeling exhilarated once you
reach the end, rather than exhausted and grateful to have got it over with (a
problem that certainly blighted the later, more large scale, FF books.) The
dungeon section takes up a large chunk of the book and is monumental in its
scale and design, with decision points that often offer all of North, South,
East, and West as options as you wind your way about its labyrinthine passages
trying desperately to find the exit. I have to admit that, as a child, I could
never crack it and get out into the outside world, and this is certainly a more
adult book in terms of actually being able to get anywhere, although there is a
lot of fun to be had as a younger reader just from lumbering about eating
everything you meet and being unusually strong! So this is one for everyone
then and I appreciate this fact.
The opening
dungeon is the part of the book where you feel most like a monster, but also
most like you are evolving very quickly, so the suggestion that you might not
have always been quite so monstrous begins to come through from an early stage
and the plot hits you from the get-go. In design terms, getting this concept
across is no mean feat, and there is a sense that the very first few stages are
a little rushed. You start by having such animalised instincts that even
decisions on what route to take put you at the mercy of dice-rolling, but this
quickly disappears as you develop reason, followed by the power of
communication (although you are required to decipher a coded language in the
dungeon part so you are still expected to play the role, as it were) and the
ability to “use” items to your advantage. In the main, I feel that this is
probably as well-handled as it could be, given that too much instinct-based
material would leave you feeling that the dice, as opposed to the player, were
calling all the shots and that you had very little influence over your
progress. Equally, this would make the book so difficult to master that it
would probably become frustrating at too early a stage to really grip the
player on an involving level so the fast change from stupid monster to
something semi-aware of what’s going on was unavoidable in gameplay terms, so
we’ll forgive this. Interestingly, even in the final stages of the book you
still cannot quite curb your animal instincts (your rage, in particular) so, in
spite of your development, you are expected to still play the part of an
“animal”, which is a nice touch of coherence and adherence to theme.
Escaping the
dungeon is a major achievement and requires you to crack two puzzles inherent
in the design of the book: the language code, and the hidden section gimmick.
The language code revolves around you initially being unable to understand the
human tongue (you yourself are mute, incidentally, and remain so for all of the
game, although you can grunt and gesture to try to get your message across if
you need to) which, in the dungeon section, is presented in what initially
seems to be gibberish form. Once you gain the power of understanding you are
told how to decipher the code, but the player must do this by using a
three-point set of rules which are in themselves a little baffling until you
get used to reading the gibberish which eventually becomes quite
straightforward to understand once you’ve adjusted your eye and mind to it. The
very earliest bits of speech can only ever be understood on subsequent
playthroughs or by back-tracking, but they are of little real relevance. The
really important language clues come after you have learned the secret and you
MUST work out what each message you find from thereon means otherwise you will
miss some key details that you cannot win without knowing. Incidentally, it’s
worth mentioning that a really nice bit of attention to detail comes when part
of one message is in Orc language that cannot be decoded – in other words, you
have learned the human tongue, and only that. Pretty sophisticated stuff! The
hidden section gimmick was, by the time CoH
came out, a Steve Jackson standard game mechanic, but its deployment this time
is better executed than in either of its previous outings (#10 House Of Hell and #17
Appointment With FEAR.) Structurally, the approach is closer to that in HoH than the version in AwF, but the CoH approach is more fully-developed than either of these. Gone is AwF’s totally obscure use of hidden
sections where you were left to randomly guess when to use a maths clue to find
the optimum next section that made beating the book almost impossible, but the
reliance on hidden sections is not as lethal as it is in HoH. CoH has more sparing
use of red herrings than HoH had and
you do not die almost immediately having missed a clue this time around. On the
flipside this does mean that, if you miss a secret section, you can head off
down completely the wrong path only to fail 20-odd sections later which can be
a bit disheartening, but it does at least allow for some gameplay scope once
you’ve missed what SJ wanted you to find. It also gives you the chance to map a
bit more of the dungeon out for future reference and mapping is absolutely
essential in this book due a) to the scale, and b) to be able to unravel all
the interlinking and looping paths. In the dungeon there are four stages where
hidden sections can be found, but only three use the word prompts that you are
told to watch out for (unless you have the Wizard edition that rectified this,
that is.) This has been the subject of considerable speculation – most regard
it as an error and that is certainly possible given FF’s general propensity for
printing mistakes, but there is also a school of thought that suggests that
this is just another intentional trick by SJ that you have to overcome. My
perspective is somewhere in-between the two: the section in question (213)
certainly does not have the lead-line that we are told to look for, but this is
the third of the four hidden section clues and is the key one for being able to
get anywhere close to escaping the dungeon (although there is more maths needed
to actually get out of it completely) but, once you realise that the jewel that
finds secret passages for you only works when you are told you are in a dead
end, this can signpost that it’s time to try to add or deduct 20 from the
section you are currently on, so, if you are reading the text closely enough
this is not a terminal problem. If you do miss this section on early
playthroughs (which you almost certainly will), and reach the fourth of the
four secret passages, you will be trapped in the fourth area and die which will
sooner or later suggest to you that you have gone too far and that what you are
looking for lies somewhere between the sitting ducks that are secret areas two
and four. For me, error or no error, the missed opening line in paragraph 213
is irrelevant – the player should already know to look for signposting or more
subtle prompts given what has gone before in this book, so I can accept this as
it is. This book is extremely difficult, this is a fact that we cannot escape,
so we can only expect the most important success or failure moments to be tough
to beat.
The external
act of the book replaces the language code trick with normal dialogue text. We
have evidently beaten the part of the book that required us to decode the
language. This symbolises two things: firstly, that YOU are now even more
sentient which is important for both plot development and in feeling the
character we are playing, and, secondly, that we are now expected to untangle
some other sort of game mechanic, that being even more elaborately and cleverly
disguised prompts to use numerical clues which are, again, signposted in a
balanced manner and do not bring back nightmares of HoH or AwF. Yes, the red
herrings, inter-looping mazes of paths (and in a particularly cruel moment you can
end up accidentally going back into the dungeon!), and long treks towards death
are all carried-over from Act One, but the emphasis now is on interaction with
NPCs and, as best as possible, completely avoiding anywhere on the map on the
inside cover that would normally be assumed to be important to visit (Dree, the
Forest of Spiders, and the Bilgewater will all kill you), plus the more
intriguing-sounding places that get mentioned in the long backstory that also
seem important (Stittle Woad, the Rainbow Ponds) are totally inaccessible and
don’t even feature in the plot of the game! In fact, the whole concept of this
book is one huge puzzle that gradually reveals itself over multiple
playthroughs and becomes all the more rewarding for each additional piece that
you discover. The structural highlight for me is how your companion (Grog the
Half-Orc) is managed. Firstly, the way you acquire his company seems totally
counter-intuitive, especially as the rewards for not saving him seem better,
but this is just another red herring for you to overcome. More importantly, you
will fail if you do not have him with you and an interesting technique of
alternate paragraphing comes into play when he is with you. Rather than the
usual “do you have a companion with you?” question prompt (which makes cheating
very easy and would be out of context here) we are instead asked to read
sections that end in a 7 followed by another section that is that one minus 52
then proceed from there. This normally means Grog gives us some advice to avoid
perils, but it also eventually means he dies instead of you. OK, so our
companion winds up dead as usual, but at least his presence adds considerable
value to the structure of the game in a design sense. If I have one qualm with
the use of hidden sections in this book overall it is in the second to last
code that we have to crack where we meet a key NPC shortly before finding The
Galleykeep, as it is totally unclear that you have found him, but we’ll forgive
this one slip in what is otherwise SJ’s best secret section exploitation
overall.
Another
interesting idea that ties together red herrings with the labyrinthine looping
design is the three moments where you can literally get stuck in an endless
loop of paragraphs, all of which will eventually make you die of Stamina loss
rather than reaching an instant death section. One is a never-ending series of
combats with Quimmel Bone who resurrects every time you kill him, the second
involves an endless queue of Chaos Warriors who come at you one after another,
whilst the third is a futile catalogue of attempts to break down the door to
the outside world. It takes a while to realise that you are stuck in an
infinite loop each time until you notice that you keep being switched between
the same few paragraph numbers, but this is an original take on the “you are
dead” failure ending as you keep trying to convince yourself that there is a
way out of these traps.
On the
subject of instant deaths, the way your character functions adds considerable
depth to your belief that you are a large monster of some sort. Notwithstanding
the regular references in the text to your tough hide, sharp claws, big fangs,
growl, and back spines (which all certainly add colour to your believing in
your role), you have a natural instinct to feed and, instead of having
Provisions which would not make much sense here, you are frequently given the
option to eat the carcasses of foes you kill. Some require combats, others
(weaker foes) can just be killed outright without a fight, and some taste
better or are more nourishing and will reward you with higher Stamina bonuses
than others (and decayed ones will poison you.) You are particularly fond of
eating Hobbits which, whilst a little immoral, definitely adds another layer to
your role-playing. Due to your strength and your thick hide, wounds in combat
will only reduce your Stamina by 1 which is another realistic touch, and this
also gives you an understandable edge in most battles (and most combats are
contextually pretty easy, too, which is another good inclusion.) Additionally,
you have the power of Instant Death whereby, if you ever roll a double in
combat you hit your enemy so hard that you kill them instantly. Realistically,
this could happen quite a lot which is another convincing aspect, but it must
be said that combats are not a main focus of this book and act more as a
support function to give some FF context to the proceedings. Incidentally,
there is one stage of the book where doing something particularly wrong can
cause you to lose your Instant Death ability, so even that is not totally
untouchable!
Your general
size and strength advantages may suggest that this will be an easy ride in the
stats sense and, all things considered, it generally is, but I don’t believe
that the book is intended to focus on this aspect. Instead, the puzzles and
codes are the book’s main design purpose, whilst making you feel alienated and
bewildered is the effect it should have on the reader, which it does in an
impressive way. Stat bonuses are frequent and generous (some of them are red herrings,
though) and only a few items are needed, but this is not an item hunt, instead
it’s an information hunt as you try to work out who or what you are. Instant
deaths are used sparingly for the overall number of sections and exist to close
down a dead end or wrong turn rather than to just make you die for sadism’s
sake. There’s even one secondary win section where you sort of win, but haven’t
found the optimum ending. Again, this adds more to the re-playability and plot
expansion on show here. However, let’s not under-estimate the true difficulty
level created by the structure of this book. This is easily one of the absolute
hardest FFs of all, although it does generally seem fairer than most of the
ultra-hard offerings in the series due to the signposting and your size
advantage. Structurally this book is an exceptional achievement and it is no
surprise that SJ would not write another FF gamebook after this one – where
would you go with the design ideas from here? I have to assume that he decided
to quit whilst he was ahead and move into expanding the FF franchise at this
point as it would have been hard for him to follow this with anything other than
an inferior book (or maybe the best gamebook of all time that never happened?)
SJ often
interjects elements of black humour into his books and there are some apparent
here, especially in the actual creature encounters that you are faced with and
how some of them interact with you. The more inventive encounters don’t
actually involve combat and are, as we have said, generally fairly easy bar a
Sk 14 St 14 Master Of Hellfire that can appear at the very end, but you might
as well let it kill you because you have gone the wrong way if you meet it! Amongst
the highlights for me are the Chattermatter (a talking trap in the employ of
Zharradan Marr), the Jabberwing (an amusingly abusive crow relative), and the
Shadow Stalker (an evil version of the problem Peter Pan had with his shadow.)
There is a moment early on where you can meet another of Marr’s hideous
creations, the Devourer, which is quite tough but still within your
capabilities to beat if you have decent enough stats, and is pretty disturbing
in the image of it. Incidentally, contrary to what I first thought, the
creature on the cover of the Wizard edition is the Devourer and not you, and is
even more hideous in colour.
So, combats
are fairly easy, but the design and mechanics make this book extremely difficult.
I don’t have a problem with this though as I can accept the challenge of
extreme difficulty as long as the plot is well-paced rather than plodding and
the adventure is original and imaginative, which this certainly is. However,
this book is not without its problems, even if most of these are ingrained in
the concept itself. Firstly, you are NOT a Creature Of Havoc. The title is
misleading. If anything you are to be pitied and you certainly feel drawn into
your character partially through empathy with its plight. Yes, you have a few
issues controlling your baser instincts, but that just adds gameplay. Secondly,
it eventually transpires that this is not really a “you play the monster this
time around” book at all, but you have to reach the very end to find out
what/who you really are and the plot reveals just how well-designed it is when
the end links directly to the beginning (and certain parts of the intro.) The
biggest niggle for me, though, is that although this is arguably the best FF
book ever, all things considered, it is not especially representative of the
series as a whole (ie no adventurer with sword, backpack, and a Potion going on
a riches or assassination mission.) Yes, structurally, design-wise, and
plot-wise, this is an awe-inspiring achievement that exudes quality, but it is
also very off-the-wall due to its subject-matter and approach which puts it
into the small “exceptions to the norm” category of FF books.
I think it is
important that we define the meaning of “the best FF book ever”, as this book
is not my favourite (that accolade would go to any of Deathtrap Dungeon, City Of Thieves, or Spellbreaker, depending on my mood at any given time.) For me,
there is a distinction to be made between the words “best” and “favourite”.
Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane is
generally regarded as “officially” the best film ever made, an assertion that I
would agree with due to its technical brilliance, the revolutionary impact it had
on film-making and cinematic story-telling techniques, and its compelling-ness
from start to finish. But, I have only seen it twice and I am not driven to
casually watch it as entertainment. Creature
Of Havoc is technically brilliant, pretty revolutionary in terms of how to
design a gamebook, tells an excellent story, and is very compelling to both
play and read. However, my favourite film is either Blade Runner or Star Wars.
I have seen both hundreds of times, pretty much know them off by heart, but
will happily watch them over and over just to fill an empty few hours. They are
not high art though, unlike Citizen Kane.
And that’s the point I’m trying to make. I am impressed by CoH and am in awe of it, but I can only play it so many times. Once
the secrets are unlocked, it loses something of the feeling of achievement. DD, CoT and Spellbreaker are all books I can, and have, played umpteen times
and never lost the sheer enjoyment of the experience. The difference is
important – CoH is the greatest FF of
all time in my opinion, but it is not the most enjoyable or ultimately
re-visitable.
I briefly
mentioned the confusion caused by the Devourer image on the cover of the Wizard
edition (which is a very impressive and scary image) and a similar thing
happened to me with the original Puffin version. For a long time I thought the
green creature in the big chair on the cover was YOU, but it is not, it is Zharradan
Marr, a fact which only becomes apparent when you finally meet him. ZM himself
is the third of the really key baddies in FF (after Zagor and Balthus Dire) and
this book rounds off their three intro stories, which would then lead into
seeing all three brought into play in the final culmination of the Trolltooth
Pass story arc that appeared in The
Trolltooth Wars novel. The Puffin edition is one of the rare FF covers that
shows us the final denouement rather than a random obscure cameo moment and
really sets the tone of terror and bizarre-ness that pervades this book.
Changing the cover for the Wizard version takes something away from this
effect, but at least the Wizard cover is also effective for once. Internal art
is by the usually very prehistorically-oriented Alan Langford, who has adapted
well to the more conventional Medieval fantasy settings and peoples of this
book. There is no real stand out art here, but it is all well-rendered and
suits the text. Incidentally, you can see yourself in silhouette/shadow in
three of the pictures, but they give little of your identity away. The text
itself is very thoroughly written with unusually long paragraphs to add depth
and interest to the game and its plot. There is a sense of disorientation
throughout, and the repeated emphasis on your bulk and your ongoing evolution
makes the story very rich and full, as well as very logical and well-paced.
This book is
a remarkable achievement in terms of how to create and present a gamebook, but
it also reads just as well as a novel, perhaps a little too well. There is
little doubt that this is the best FF book of all time but, as I suggested
before, it works differently to the others and does not match the idiom of the series
in general. It is also one of the toughest of the series, but for different
reasons to the usual ones. Get it, be impressed by it, spend ages trying to
beat it, but can you really go back to it once you’ve cracked it? Definitely a
one of a kind gamebook.
an excellent, belated and most welcome review, thanks
ReplyDeleteI really agree with your thoughtful review. I appreciate CoH much more now than I did as a kid, where the dice-rolling choices at the start, ad-infinitum attempts to leave the dungeon (and, to my then-mind, thereby start the story) and general lack of rampaging disappointed me!
ReplyDeleteFantastic review again! Really enjoying these. Any chance of a Master of Chaos review in the pipeline?
ReplyDeleteThere is indeed. In fact, it was nearly the next one but I had a last minute change of what I wanted to re-play this weekend just gone so instead it's a little further down the pipeline now!
DeleteGlad you're enjoying the site incidentally :-)
Nice read. Definitely one of my favourite books as well. I never could figure out why the answer to the poem is the jug of water door though!?
ReplyDeleteWater dissolves ice and douses fire, Rebecca.
ReplyDeleteCreature of Havoc is so much better than the Trolltooth Wars. The latter was plagued by dry writing, unlikable characters and deus ex machinae.
Are you sure that's Marr on the original cover? I always figured it was Darramous (a half elf and one of the undead).
ReplyDeleteI think it's Marr - you see him in his study when you work out where his portal to the Netherworld is.
DeleteDefinitely Marr
DeleteIt was illustrated with the intention of being Daramouss, but Steve Jackson liked the image so much that he rewrote some text/descriptions to have it be Marr instead - I used to have the FF poster book (i left it at school as a 15 year old :/) and this bit of trivia was in there, I believe
DeleteJalp vfuth jsobppk, abvt iStf vfoJbcks pnajsebic pmplftf abbst brd.
ReplyDeleteLove your analogy of this being the best FF book, but not necessarily the best for YOU, especially the tie-in to "Citizen Kane" and one's own personal movie tastes. There is a difference between "objective best" and "subjective best."
ReplyDeleteLoved this book though it tore me apart trying to solve it. The Quimmel Bone and Chaos Warriors loops were particularly frustrating, especially as I really wanted to whack the former into sawdust. But the search to acquire identity (and language), and the "creature's" love of fresh hobbit are nice touches and add a flavour (pun not intended) to this book that not all other FF books have. You really feel like you are THE CREATURE and can cause havoc! (maybe the "Havoc" was the struggle in your mind)
Another excellent review.
completely disagree i hated this book with a passion when i go though my complete FF collection playthroughs i always SKIP IT
ReplyDeleteLove the review.
ReplyDeleteLove the Gamebook.
Please can you do Secrets of Salamonis and Shadow of the Giants.
Would love them.
It didn't really work for me.
ReplyDeleteYou can't "explore" the dungeon in the way that you can explore somewhere like Castle Heydritch in VotV. Rather, you are forced to follow a single linear path that if you deviate from even slightly, you either die instantly, or miss a key item and are blocked from accessing a subsequent section.
So... each time you play, you revise your approach and try again. There is no rational reason for why you do this... generally your choices amount to "do you want to go through the big door, or the other door?" or "do you go left or right?", so your only reason for making the choices you do is because you the player have meta-knowledge of what happens to the Creature when it goes the other way. This is frustrating and immersion breaking without having an explicit reason why your character remembers the dungeon and how to avoid its arbitrary and undetectable traps and wrong turnings. IE. you find a Vapour that lets you make rational, willful choices, but you don't really get to make any because the book offers you nothing to base such choices on.
This is in contrast to Black Vein Prophecy, where you are an amnesiac trapped in a recursive time loop. Given that your character resets to paragraph one on making a key choice incorrectly, it makes perfect sense that you experience the game with deja vu and attempt to course correct against options that went wrong in previous attempts, which makes exploring different outcomes of decisions feel gratifying and intriguing.
CoH just feels lacklustre and annoying compared against that kind of story structure. I think the choices made need to feel more meaningful and to have more careful signposting for it to do what it says on the tin (which is handled quite well in books like Beneath Nightmare Castle which subtly nudge you in the right direction despite high difficulty and lots of alternative paths to explore).
Steve Jackson's writing is too sparse and bland for my tastes too... he's like Luke Sharpe but with decent game design.