Item - Robot World

Robot World's main idea is something which still seems relevant today. Well, it's even closer. Robots have taken over a formerly uncharted planet called Robot World, because they were originally programmed to serve humans and make it the best place it can be. But they realize humans are not perfect like they are, and therefore humans must be destroyed! (Plus, naming it Robot World was just too-prime bait to resist, amirite?) While there's no detailed philosophical discussion, this being a 120-page illustrated book mainly for kids, it still covers a lot of ground even for an adult and combines a lot of interesting things for one of the strongest entries in the series. The graphics and the 8-Bit retro futuristic stuff also work well with the overall sci-fi feel.

Your task is to hunt down the technical genius Dr. Cyberg, who is a cyborg and responsible for the colony. This takes a while. You need to outsmart the robots--and fortunately their planning and preparation skills aren't perfect. There is, as with most books of this sort, some suspension of disbelief, but it's minimal. It extends to the puzzles, too, which are purported to be hard challenges though you have at most three choices. It's a lot easier to be perfect in such situations, yet the puzzles are attractively presented and have good variety. There are a few draw-a-path-through-the-maze-without-boundaries ones, which are a neat change from the video game style puzzles, but RW also boasts the most memorable in the whole series. You need exactly twenty energy crystals to get a motorcycle working, and five caverns each contain a different number. Only three (fun narrow escapes) numbers added together work. The other two result in death. If every puzzle were like this, RW would be pretty incredible, but the presence of even one puzzle like this makes me realize how hard it is.

The trip through the swamp (with the usual cool deaths-by-predator) to find Dr. Cyberg and learn of the precautions he takes is relatively engrossing, as is sneaking around the robot town. The deaths are fun (baked into an Interplanetary Pizza, being found out--the anticipation of the details of my end was effective--and several different electrocutions including getting zapped with "recharge" volts that kill a person) and the ones in response to several bad choices make sense and are detailed. That of course leaves more pages open for the plot, or for a few really impressive pictures spanning two pages. There's even a neat sidetrack to a volcano.

Oh, also, I can't leave out revenge for Marko Khen from The Galactic Pirate in one bad ending. An unexpected funny surprise.

Knowing darn well that the adventure boiled down to making the right choice of three didn't lessen the drama for me. And while the philosophical bits from Dr. Cyberg aren't super deep, they land well at any age. You wind up with sympathy for the robots and for Doctor Cyberg, and the ending scene where you freeze all the robots is unusual for the series. Usually it's about capturing the bad guy, who proclaims they thought they had a foolproof plan.

More reviews by andrewschultz

Robots take over! Evil laugh!

The plot is hackneyed. Evil robots take over from creator?? What are the odds?

The book is okay, with the interesting idea that you have to move through the world disguised as a robot, and if exposed as a human you will die.

There is one silly sequence where you have to play a computer game, and the idea being that if you play well enough, you will short circuit the game by playing better than any machine could. However, if you make a wrong choice, it nails you as a human because you are 'less than perfect.' So, if less than perfect exposes you as a human, and perfect destroys the machine, what the heck score are the other robots getting? Always bugged me as a kid.

The big final robot is straight from Transformers, although I can't recall if the movie came before the book.

More reviews by Aussiesmurf

In Robot World, the Interplanetary Spy must free a planet that has been taken over by the Robot Revolution. Continuity is established with previous volumes, as you start at the planet on which you ended the previous volume in the series. There is a nice little call-back to The Galactic Pirate, in which members of his family take their revenge upon you in one of the death endings, which I thought was humorous. I found the plot to be a little bland, as most of your interactions are with mindless robots and not with intelligent/sentient beings. The sole exception is the cyborg scientist who created Robot World, the appropriately named Dr. Cyberg. Your mission is to rescue him and defuse the robot threat. This one gets 2 out of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

The difficulty level is a bit higher in this book; some of the puzzles require a bit more thought than those in the earlier books did. Some effort is also made to make the book slightly less linear by allowing the reader to visit a few locations in random order.

More reviews by Demian

This was always my favorite of the BAIS series. The art, with all the robots and different environments, is great, the puzzles are good, and there are a number of mind expanding futuristic ideas in the story.

More reviews by Dtar