Space Assassin

YOU become the assassin sent to arrest Cyrus, a mad scientist about to unleash a plague of mutation viruses onto your unnamed home planet. Yeah, that’s right – they didn’t call the armed forces or the cops to make an arrest, and they didn’t call the assassin’s guild for a murder, they called assassins for an arrest. I guess someone’s brother worked at the assassin company, got the no-bid contract, …

Without a map of the ship you’ll wander through corridors and laboratories, onto alien planet simulations and hovering sidewalks, looking for the bridge and the boss fight to put an end to Cyrus’ madness.

Review and Opinion

Only a dozen books into the FF series, Space Assassin is a huge leap above the earlier sci-fi offering, Starship Traveller. It brings some novel mechanics that I enjoyed: body armor and pew-pew zap-gun combat.

The armor is pretty cool. When you’re hit, roll 2d6 for a chance to lose 1 armor point instead of taking the hit.

Firearm combat is also back-and-forth and is based on your Skill rather than the difference in Skills, so feels like “pew pew! missed! duck!” then a barrage of laser fire as they do the same. The damage from a gun (unless you have the crummy one) is 1d6, so if they hit there’s the extra suspense of “I’m hit! how bad is it…?” that I rather enjoyed.

It was a huge leap, indeed. But still, not really great.

The map and the game itself is, well, not much different than other FFs. It’s a mad scientist’s collection of laboratories and cryo-chambers, haphazardly assembled into nameless hallways, transit systems that lack any maps or schedules, sidewalks that are a few miles above the ground and yet in orbit, an alien planet and sea monsters, … The map and the ship’s (alleged) layout just feels random and without reason.

And then, you get to 400… and it stinks. “You drag Cyrus away. Congratulations.” What the hell? Not even a “you’ve saved everyone! the president thanks you and you take a vacation.” Nope. I guess the author got tired of his own book by this point?

Ultimately, although not a bad FF book, the theme and mechanics don’t quite overcome the senseless map, so this one doesn’t feel like a favorite in the long term.

Update: I read Cybe’s playthrough, and agree with everything they say about it, hit up their page (below) and ctrl-F for “literary theory.” Murrary’s review, too, goes into some back-story of Space Assassin and that it was written very early on. I’ve been through most of the FFs so far, and Space Assassin’s fan reviews seem to have more back-story than most.

Hints and Tips

There’s a whole side quest for the two buttons to form the Pan Dimensional Homing Device. It’s not worth it, in my opinion. It can auto-kill some enemies, but has a cost determined afterward – and half the time the cost is that Your Adventure Ends Here.

That tile puzzle on 332, I don’t know what the hint or logic was. The answer is 255.

The Zark’s puzzle (373) is OTTFFSS, which is One Two Three Four Five Six Seven. The next letter would be E for Eight.

Errors

On 141 right at the front door, if you examine the alien on the floor, you lose the option to use a grenade on the door. No explanation why.

On 54 in the room with squirrels. If you look at the crate of fruit you can’t interact with the squirrels. No explanation why.

The tile path on 332, seems to be a random choice from five-or-so different combinations, without a clue as to which one is right (except for an additional few paths that add up to over 400). If anyone knows what the puzzle is, some indication of how you would know which path is right, I would like to hear it.

In the hall of automatons (382) there are three either-else questions, but they seem like complete nonsense, just a random guess of A or B three times. If anyone knows the sense behind these, I would be interested to hear about it.

Maps

Publication

Written by Andrew Chapman

Illustrated by Geoffrey Senior

1985

Book 12 in the series

Tags to Other Adventures

1985 Andrew Chapman Cyrus Geoffrey Senior Od Science Fiction Space Vandervecken