Oh what a day! What a lovely day!
Life is lawless and dangerous. Survivors like you either live in scattered, fortified towns, or roam outside as bandits. YOUR mission is to cross the wilderness to the far-distant oil-refinery at San Anglo and bring vital supplies back to the peaceful town of New Hope. Even in the armed Dodge Interceptor you are given, the journey will be wild and perilous. Will YOU survive?
In the futuristic year of 2015, a deadly pandemic broke out starting in New York, and within months, have spread throughout the globe, wiping out more than half of the world's population. The world, from a peaceful utopia, descends into madness, as among the population that survives the disease outbreak, half of them valiantly attempts to rebuild the world, while the other half have instead turned to embrace a life of barbarism and violence.
Is it a coincidence that this book comes out a few years after Mad Max 2?
Freeway Fighter is the 13th entry of the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks, written by Ian Livingstone. It is the franchise's first attempt of exploration into the Post-Apocalypse genre. Naturally, your character, a former getaway driver-turned mechanic from New Hope, one of the last surviving cities of the plague, is on the side of good and the best driver New Hope has to offer.
Besides the usual stats of SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK you rolled for your character, you also have a separate stats sheet for your vehicle — the Dodge Interceptor, a Cool Car armed with machine-guns, spiked projectiles, oil slicks and missiles. You will need everything the tech department has to offer, to aid you on your quest — travel from New Hope, through the harsh desert and wastelands with blueprints and crop samples to San Anglo, an allied city, in exchange for Petroleum supplies, allowing both cities to rebuild from the apocalypse.
Will you survive the journey?
2017 saw a prequel comic mini-series.
Not to be confused with the Freeway Warrior gamebook series by Joe Dever.
Freeway Fighter provides examples of:
- 20 Minutes in the Future: Just before the pandemic, the intro mentions how the future world of 2015 saw some significant improvements to technology and society, such as almost every home being powered by solar energy. But other than the encounter with a laser cannon (and the weaponized cars everywhere), you won't see any difference between 2015 and 1985.
- Action Girl: Amber, your contact from San Anglo.
- After the End: Takes place after a deadly virus wipes out most of humanity.
- The Apunkalypse: The aftermath of doomsday turns many surviving members of the population into violent bandits and highwaymen.
- Battle Trophy: If you encounter the gunman who's dressed like a cowboy and win the duel, you'll take his old magnum revolver which is superior to your starting gun.
- Big Badass Rig: After you reach San Anglo, you leave behind your Interceptor and drive an armored petrol tanker straight back to New Hope. Like the Interceptor, it's armed with a machine gun turret and is bulky enough to smash through an armed roadblock without even a narrated fight.
- The Big Race:
- One side quest has you taking part in a Blitz Race, which you can participate in to win a petrol canister.
- Another race has you face off against a supercharged driver for the right to get through a canyon.
- Boring Return Journey: Getting from New Hope to San Anglo requires braving streets and deserts, managing petrol supplies, and fighting off bandits, highwaymen, and street gangs in numerous melee, gun and vehicular battles in your Interceptor. Getting back just requires driving directly along the highway in an armoured tanker, with only a handful of enemy encounters (one of which you just smash right through without a fight).
- Bottomless Magazines: You'll never need to find backup ammo for your pistol or the Interceptor's machine-gun. Averted for the rockets, oil slick and spike projectiles, though.
- Bulletproof Vest: You can collect one which can possibly save you from being shot from point-blank by a hijacker in the ending.
- Bullying a Dragon: Sure, you can try to barge into the car-free-zone that is guarded by a gun in a bunker, but that gun aimed at you is a Frickin' Laser Beam that'll burn right through your car and you in an instant.
- Caltrops: The Interceptor carries canisters that cover the road behind it with spikes, disabling any vehicle that runs over it.
- Cool Car:
- The Dodge Interceptor is one. Some enemies you encounter during your journey also drives these.
- The armored tanker that you use to drive back from San Anglo to New Hope also counts, as you can drive right down the highway back to your home with few worries about being stopped.
- Cozy Catastrophe: Things aren't too bleak in this setting especially compared to the Mad Max movies that influenced this book. Unlike Mad Max, there was no all-out nuclear war, so the environment isn't damaged and much of the infrastructure remains intact. The pandemic that devastated humanity has largely run its course, so the main threats are the outlaw gangs and psychos running amok. With oil production and agriculture returning, the book ends on a hopeful note that society will recover.
- Critical Annoyance: Running out of petrol mid-journey, with no backup supply, is an instant Non-Standard Game Over.
- Disaster Scavengers: Some of the bandits and highwaymen you encounter are merely these.
- Discard and Draw: Reaching San Anglo means you have to exchange your Interceptor for the armoured tanker required to transport the petrol back to New Hope.
- Exact Words: A Blitz Race is no-holds-barred, but forbids the use of guns and rockets. Unfortunately for you, your opponent's car's Grenade Launcher counts as neither.
- Expy:
- Your hero is Mad Max by any other name, and the Animal (leader of the Doom Dogs) is Lord Humungus.
- While Mad Max is the main influence, your tricked-out Cool Car — with its machine gun, rockets, and oil slicks — is also reminiscent of Spy Hunter.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Amber will tag along and help you sabotage the Doom Dogs' vehicles near the end.
- Honesty Is the Best Policy: When you're faced with a highwayman who asks where you're from, lying that you're a lone road warrior will cause him to mistake you for the guy who killed his wife and son. Telling the truth that you're from New Hope will gain the city a new builder and some advice for your journey ahead.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Downplayed in this book; while you can eat food you find along your journey to restore STAMINA, your default method of STAMINA restoration, instead of the usual provisions, are your Med-kits.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of your last opponents is a Station Wagon with a massive spiked beam lodged in its front. It will attempt to inflict this trope on you.
- MacGuffin Escort Mission: The whole purpose of your mission is a trade deal with San Anglo, in which you transport blueprints and crop samples/surplus grain and seed supplies to the refinery in exchange for a tanker-full of petrol. Downplayed in that the enemies you encounter along the way couldn't care less what you're transporting other than your credits and maybe your car.
- Made of Iron: Your character's STAMINA Stat is 2D6 + 24, or 12 points higher than the usual FF protagonists. This is to adjust for the fact that firearm combat can deal 1D6 worth of damage with a successful shot.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The leader of the Doom Dogs, called "The Animal", wears a luchador-style mask.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "The Animal" and his gang, the "Doom Dogs".
- Non-Standard Game Over: More than usual amount for a gamebook, as it's possible at various points to run out of fuel, bringing your quest to a non-lethal (but definite) end.
- Oil Slick: The Dodge Interceptor has bottom canisters which spews crude oil for making pursuing vehicles crash.
- One-Hit Kill:
- The Dodge Interceptor has 4 rockets, which can instantly kill any opponent that crosses your path, and is the only other weapon other than the Interceptor's machine gun you can use in regular vehicle fights.
- On the villains' side, if you don't back away from the barricade where you see the barrel of a strange gun, then you and your car get sliced to ribbons by a single shot from a laser rifle.
- Outlaw: A highwayman is inexplicably dressed as a cowboy, complete with Stetson hat, cowboy boots with spurs and western wear. Have we mentioned that this book is somehow set in 2015?
- Post-Peak Oil: Running out of petrol with no backup? You're screwed!
- Power Fist: The Animal faces you with studded gloves, which you can match with a pair of knuckledusters.
- Pyrrhic Victory: If you encounter a rat-wielding madman on your way back to New Hope, his rat bites will infect you with the plague. So as to not infect the populace, you leave the tanker and a note outside the city before walking off into the desert to die.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Should you succeed in your journey, the ending narration will state that society will be able to rebuild itself someday.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: In a setting with many enemies carrying assault rifles, LMGs and SMGs, your character sticks with a revolver of average calibre. The only time he gets a new weapon is if he beats an outlaw who carries an old Magnum revolver.
- Schmuck Bait: Not as much as the other gamebooks considering the lack of cursed treasure, but be wary of the buildings you encounter along the way; some may be friendly repair shops, but others may house dangerous hijackers.
- Sidequest: Partway through your journey, you get notified that New Hope's council leader, Sinclair, has been kidnapped. You can find him partway through your journey, but it's not necessary for a successful mission.
- Synthetic Plague: What causes society to collapse in the first place.
- Ten Paces and Turn: It's possible to meet a strange masked man who's blocked off a tunnel with a bus and forces anyone wanting to pass through to have such a duel before he'll move it.
- Vehicular Combat: The other third of combat between regular hand-to-hand and shooting, and the Dodge Interceptor is more than up to the task. You face everything from Chevys with machine gunners, to armored cars, to pickups-turned-chariots.
- Weaponized Car: They're all over the damn place in this book, armed with machine guns, ram-bars, grenade launchers...
- Wrench Whack: If you choose to take on the Animal's bodyguards in a shootout, after it's over the Animal himself will ambush you, at which point you fight him briefly until a few pages later Amber whacks the Animal unconscious with a wrench. It's a good way to avoid an otherwise difficult boss battle.
