In the Tradition of Terrible Books: A "Choose-Your-Own" Adventure PART 1

The Choose Your Own Adventure:
"Sniper! Blast out in Lebanon" Adventure Game Book by Dana Kramer and Marc Acres

In the tradition of Jayne's AWESOME posts about books that are soooo terrible, but entertaining, Darci and I decided to co-write a post with our room-mate about a book I've had sitting about for quite some time. I believe I came across it during college in an ex boyfriend's bookshelf, and I have to thank him for providing us with the most hilarious three hours I've had in a long time.



Anyways... we all know how bad the Choose Your Own Adventure series were, but they were written for young adults so a lot could be excused in the way of cheesy dialogue and easy-to-figure-out decisions. Well, this book was written for ADULTS. Yeah, you read correctly...ADULTS. This is a book written for adults that comes across with the wit of a twelve year old, the racism of the middle ages, and it's a fucking choose your own adventure that you need DICE to play.

Okay, calm down, this book hadn't even been opened yet and we've already panned it as the crappiest crap we have ever seen in our entire lives as a gamers. Oh and by the way, this terrible book sells for 35 Euro on Amazon.com....if you want to take my copy off me for that much money I would be more than willing to part with it.

Our story goes like this...

Jason Malone is a merc with a mission. We are charged to find David Saxon, our kidnapped compatriot. Even his name sound beefy and macho. He says words like compatriot. Yeah. That's some serious badass right there.

The story is made urgent by expressing a pressing time limit, and the objective is to stop the "Middle Eastern Powder Keg" from going kablooey. Soooo this book was written in 1987 and contains a flimsy story, innocents killed left and right with no remorse, prevalent racism, and overall this is totally dated and full of not-at-all PC international relations, and views about the middle east. Wow. Moving on...

You can’t read this book if you are not a spy, like, a really good one. James Bond has pictures of you in his locker... you are that freaking good.

You need dice to read this book. You don’t have them yet? Oops! Too late, you’re already dead! You should have already known you would need to have two d6, a pencil, paper, imagination(s), and LUCK. You don't have LUCK? Well you are fucked, sir.
A quote in HUGE LETTERS introduces us to our story: "TRUST NO ONE. BELIEVE NOTHING. NEVER SIT WITH YOUR BACK TO A DOOR." Check your mail with rubber gloves, shoot all trespassers, and other paranoid nonsense...
This book has rules. It’s an experience. We're going to need a sharp pencil.

The dialogue goes something like this, “KILLING IS A FACT OF LIFE…THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND MOST PEOPLE IS JUST THIS: I REALIZE THAT FACT, I DON’T LIKE IT, BUT I REALIZE IT.” mmmm....eloquent. Also, you are fictional sir, you can't spout out facts! He also wants all of us to know he is a B.A.M.F; it says so in his file.

So we get sent to Beruit, and we're in our hotel when our bellboy brings us "a large trunk" full of equipment. Here we would like to note that a military fanboy obviously wrote this, as no one could carry all this crap unless they had a magic, extra-huge bag of holding, or they were a scary militant version of Mary Poppins. Hmm...reminds me of something... "Hello. I am an Henry Killinger and this is my magic murder bag." Hee Hee.

Also, the bell boy brought that bag in! Is he named Lou Ferrigno?!?

Our gift from “the government” is a fountain pen, that fountains DEATH! Shiny.
We decide to go out at night for recon. We at least get to bring the Death Pen, a knife and a gun which fortunately, we “notice” in the mirror there is no “tell-tale bulge” in our pant leg when we walk. ROFL, sweet. No bulge so the ladies will stay away, We're too dangerous.

We booby trap the door in the most infantile way... WITH HAIR! We wet a piece of our hair and we put it against the door and if anyone comes in the hair will be gone when we get back. What if there's some seriously OCD maid who wipes down our door? What if it blows away in a sudden hallway tornado? The possibilities are endless!

We now get some seriously un-necessary knowledge from the author. “The stairs are disappointingly boring.” – Really? Damn those stairs for being so damn boring! Maybe if they weren’t so boring this book would be a little bit more fun by now. More useless information is then given about the lobby…bla bla bla…....stain in front of our door....bla bla bla...

Finally we are outside. Really? It’s been like seven pages and we just got outside. Wow. Where the fuck are we going with this?
The streets of Lebanon are described as racist-ly as possible. You know, there are no normal people out at night, just the military, and scary people with guns. Stain in the streets. Yeah…that’s realistic in a popular city like Beruit where the nightlife is actually quite active. Sure, whatever, this was written in 1987 by someone who had never left their couch, and the internet didn’t exist yet, so whatever. We're still stuck on those fucking mundane stairs because they are ruining this book for us, apparently.

So you start smoking a cigarette and exploring the city. You are trying to figure out if you are being tailed. There is some guy who looks, according to the author, “dark,” and then describes, in full racist detail, a Middle-Eastern man who could just be out for his nightly walk. But of course, this must be the tail. We can’t tell you how much racism in novels angers us…but we can tell you that it is un-measurably so to the point where we want to hurt these authors for their terrible writing, racism, AND un-natural, military fan-boy fetishes.

We are finally prompted to a stealth roll, and apparently we survive. We're not really sure how but it seems pretty difficult to die in this game/book/whatever the hell this thing is supposed to be. So now we have to choose whether we want to jump him, question him at gunpoint, or let him run away. Brian decides that we should jump him because it’s obviously the most dangerous and stupid thing to do, and we want the most hilarious dialogue possible, anyways. Besides, isn’t our character MADE OF DANGER? WE TRUST NO ONE! We NEVER sit with our backs to doors. We use words like “compatriot!” and our bellboy is fucking Lou Ferigno! We are BLAST MCHARDCHEESE!!! Wait…wrong post. Sorry, we got carried away there for a moment.

Hold on for this next one, because it’s going to hurt. “You pounce like a hunting panther, grab him from around the neck from behind, and drive a”…..let’s just say Judo Chop, into his head. Wait…Really? REALLY? This is just terrible. We need to put this down and we'll come back to it later because OH MAN it's hurting our brains.

Signing out,
Lady Jones, Darci, and Brian