Item - Doors to Doom

This is an above-average book brought down by some serious flaws. While reading through for the first few times, I really enjoyed myself. The book offers a change of scenery by sending Mario and Luigi into the worlds of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. in addition to the usual Super Mario Brothers stuff, and the puzzles are almost all genuinely challenging and interesting. The problem comes from the book's overall structure. There's no coin-collecting this time around, but points are accumulated as the story unfolds. At the very end of the story, you need at least 410 points in order to win. However, after extensive mapping and head-scratching, it seems to me that the highest possible score is 370, and even this is only attainable by intentionally answering one puzzle incorrectly and then looping around before giving the right answer. Of course, since there are loopback opportunities, it's possible to count points more than once and thus score infinite points; perhaps this is what the author intended, but if so, it's a pretty cheap shot. In any case, I was prepared to herald this as the best book in the series so far, but this design flaw, combined with a rather anticlimactic ending, prevents me from giving this adventure the praise it would otherwise deserve. Good stuff, but sadly not quite good enough.

My High Score - 370 (no points counted more than once)

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