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Item - Viet Rampage

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Series: Sniper! Adventure Gamebooks — no. 1
Translated Into: Vietnami tombolás (Hungarian)
Yarost vav Vietnam [Ярост във Виетнам] (Bulgarian)
Authors: Acres, Mark
Greene, Harris (essay)
Illustrators: Chaffee, Doug (cover)
Hamilton, Todd Cameron (interior)
Date: August, 1987
ISBN: 0880384999 / 9780880384995
Length: 191 pages (150 sections, plus maps and "Photographic Satellites" essay)
Number of Endings: 19
User Summary: You're a veteran of the Vietnam War working for the CIA as an espionage agent. Your latest assignment is to return to the site of the war which scarred you in search of a fallen spy satellite; while you're there, you also hope to rescue an old buddy...
Demian's Thoughts:

This definitely isn't my genre -- patriotic, brainless war fiction is relatively stomach-turning to me, and this is definitely about as over-the-top and insulting as the genre can be; I just hope it was written with tongue in cheek, or else I'm a little frightened of the author. This being said, it's not a badly-written book, and the game design is decent (apart from the numerous typos mentioned below) -- there's consistency to the events of the story, and it definitely requires tactics as well as good luck to win. It's relatively brief, but not disappointingly so. The interior art also happens to be quite striking, and I'm surprised that such stylish work found itself in such an unlikely place; it pushes the limits of black and white printing with its nifty shading. All in all, it's probably worth grabbing a copy of this book (if it's cheap enough) just so you can gawk at the art and amuse yourself for a couple of hours. Just don't take it too seriously, or you may damage your brain.

More reviews by Demian

Errata:This book could really have used some better editing. A lot of the page numbers leading to the results of dice rolls are reversed, making good rolls lead to death and bad rolls lead to success. This really confused me at first since the same error even seems to be in the combat example in the rules! In any case, I found this problem in sections 14, 34, 47, 51 and 109. It's probably present elsewhere, so hold your place when you turn the page so you can go back and try the other outcome if the one you turned to doesn't make any sense.
Users Who Own This Item: Ardennes, domj29, Erikwinslow, exaquint (1st), firefoxpdm, jdreller, katzcollection, killagarilla, knginatl, le maudit, mlvoss, Sheridan77, sireeyore, spragmatic, waktool (US 1st printing), Zolika
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