You will believe a man can fry your brains.
Appointment with F.E.A.R. is a Gamebook by Steve Jackson in the Fighting Fantasy series. It is especially noteworthy for taking on a very different subject: instead of the usual Heroic Fantasy settings, it is set in a Comic Book-inspired superhero setting, though still in a place called "Titan" (Titan City, to be precise).
You are Jean Lafayette, a.k.a. The Silver Crusader, a masked vigilante who underwent a genetic experiment as you were born, and the effects started to show just as the scientists behind all this gave up on seeing the effects. Having either Super-Strength (with Flight), Psychic Powers, being a Gadgeteer Genius or blasting Pure Energy, you embark on a fight against crime in the city of Titan!
Evil organization Federation of Euro-American Rebels, or F.E.A.R., led by the sinister Vladimir Utoshki a.k.a. the Titanium Cyborg, is bent on world domination. The Silver Crusader must stop F.E.A.R. the day their leaders are to meet, or else it might be The End of the World as We Know It.
The book is slightly longer than a normal Fighting Fantasy book with 440 references compared to the standard 400, thanks to each super-power requiring discovery of its own unique set of clues to achieve the good ending. A 200-reference sequel not written by Jackson but using the same rules, Deadline to Destruction, appeared in an edition of Warlock magazine.
In 2014, the book was adapted for an electronic format by Tin Man Games, and released on iOS and Android. This particular version of the game features a limited form of character name and appearance customization on top of the choice of superpowers originally in the book. The book is also available on Steam as part of the Fighting Fantasy Classics package.
Appointment with F.E.A.R. provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: While the original book was happy to make numerous subtle references to official superhero properties, the mobile game version is upfront about having a parodic nature. This is especially apparent when it comes to naming your character, where you have no way of inputting one of your own. Instead you have to choose from a list of random and thoroughly silly names for your hero, such as The Consummate Warning, The Incomparable Romance, The Indifferent Thoughtstealer, The Average-Sized Basket, etc.
- Bald of Evil: Vladimir Utoshski.
- Beam-O-War: You get into one with the Ice Queen if you have ETS, her ice powers vs. your heat ray.
- The Beastmaster: The Ringmaster, a supervillain. The hero learns that he has escaped, but because the plot branches based on the player's choice of superpowers, there's a 50:50 chance he won't show up later.
- Big Bad: Vladimir Utoshski / Titanium Cyborg
- Big First Choice: The choice of powerset can have quite significant effects on the plot, primarily changing where the clues to the all-important meeting are found.
- Bound and Gagged: Several instances. A few Innocent Bystanders end up tied up and gagged by bad guys. In one case, you do this to a villainess once you defeat her.
- Brought Down to Normal: The Silver Crusader needs to find a gadget that can deactivate the Titanium Cyborg's power suit to have a chance of winning a fight with him.
- Busman's Holiday: Lafayette can hardly go shopping in the mall or relax on the seashore without some supervillain or big danger coming by...
- The Cape: That's the kind of superhero the Silver Crusader is supposed to be.
- Captain Ersatz: The book is full of them:
- The Scarlet Prankster is a CE of The Jester (Marvel) or the Joker (DC).
- The Creature of Carnage is definitely an Hulk CE.
- The Silver Crusader himself, as well. Picking Super Strength/Flight makes you very much like Superman, while Gadgeteer Genius plays out a lot like Batman.
- A non superhero-themed CE appears in the fanzine sequel, where you fight a human-housefly mutant hybrid. The textual description of his transformation even sounds similar to the Cronenberg film.
- Cast from Hit Points: Using Energy Blast or Psi-Powers burns Stamina.
- Cat Up a Tree: A good deed you can do on the way to a real emergency in one of the fanzine sequels.
- Chainsaw Good: Chainsaw Bronski is a criminal whose weapon and tool of choice is, as you'd guess, a chainsaw, though if you attack him, it says he wields an electric knife in the fight. The illustration for the 2018 version changes his weapon into a knife with the teeth of a chainsaw to accommodate both.
- Chinese Launderer: He seems to also serve food if you ask him to. This location was changed to a martial arts school in the mobile game version, seemingly to go for something less potentially offensive (although the 2018 reprint leaves it a Chinese laundry)
- Clark Kenting: In the mobile game, when in their civilian identity, your superhero character sprite will simply be shown wearing glasses over their face, while still wearing their costume. Sometimes with a hat.
- Damsel in Distress: Several, although children and men are just as likely to need rescuing as the women.
- Denser and Wackier: The mobile game version leans a lot more heavily into the camp of Silver Age superhero stories than the actual book does. There's a lot more comical banter between characters, attack options during combat are purposefully silly, and the player doesn't get the option to name their character: instead of even having a generic name like the Silver Crusader, they have to select from lists of randomized, and completely absurd, hero names.
- Dub Name Change: Many translations change the name of the titular F.E.A.R. into some other name that forms an acronym that has a similar meaning in the language the book was translated to, even if the name it stands for something completely different. Some examples:
- Portuguese: M.E.D.O. (it forms the portuguese word for "fear" and stands for "Movimento de Especialistas na Destruição da Ordem" (Movement of Specialists in the Destruction of Order)).
- Italian: M.O.R.T.E. (meaning "death"; it stands for "Macro Organizzazione per il Ristabilimento del Terrore e dell'Eversione" (Macro Organization for the Reestablishment of Terror and Subversion)).
- Spanish: T.E.R.R.O.R. (meaning, well, "terror").
- French: M.O.R.T. (like in Italian, an acronym that means "death").
- Either "World Domination", or Something About Bananas: At one point you have the option of taking a weird note with random letters on it. If the Crusader has the ETS power he can use a device to decode it. Most of the results are nonsense ("My newspaper is covered with plastic nodules"), but one, presumably the real message, contains a vital clue.
- Enfant Terrible: While strolling around Titan City Mall as a civilian, you might chance across a child attempting to shoplift a chocolate bar. If you decide to stop him and give some words of advice, the child will suddenly pull out a gun and shoot you on the spot.
- Event Title: The dreaded terrorist syndicate known as F.E.A.R is holding a meeting between their higher-ups, and you've got an appointment with these guys.
- Featureless Protagonist: Although this is one of the few Fighting Fantasy books in which you play a named character, the text is careful to avoid stating their gender and the character has a Gender Blender first name. The text illustrations also takes care not to show the full figure of the Silver Crusader, having the cape hide most of their body when they're shown flying.
- Averted in translations where the language always comes with gendered nouns/adjectives; in French, for example, the Silver Crusader is by default referred as male.
- Flying Brick: One of the four superpowers you can choose from, and the one that makes the game easier to beat because you automatically have a superhuman Skill score. However you are not at a Superman level of invulnerability - you can be shot dead by an ordinary handgun with a single shot or roasted by a vehicle mounted flamethrower or killed by a laser cannon.
- Fun with Acronyms: F.E.A.R itself (it stands for Federation of Euro-American Rebels).
- Guide Dang It!: As is usual for one of Steve Jackson's Fighting Fantasy books.
- Heroic Bystander: If you are fighting The Poisoner and are unable to attack him, a hostage you rescued earlier will come to your aid and kill the Poisoner by blowing his brains out with a revolver. Doubles as a
Moment of Awesome. - Hopeless Boss Fight: Without the Circuit Jammer, the final battle with the Titanium Cyborg automatically ends after 3 turns, taking you to a reference that details the Titanium Cyborg beating you to death. Though considering his Skill score of 18, compared with your maximum of 13, the chance of winning this version of the battle is absolutely negligible anyway.
- It's a Wonderful Failure: Contains one of the darkest bad endings that you can possibly get in a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. F.E.A.R destroys several major cities with their orbital death ray to demonstrate their power, starting with the one you're in.
- Karma Meter: You win and lose Hero points depending on your actions, although they don't have any impact on gameplay beyond Replay Value to try and get a higher score.
- Kill Sat: F.E.A.R turns out to have an orbital death ray which it plans to use to hold the world hostage, as you find out in the bad ending, where they announce their intention to wipe out several cities as a display of power... starting with yours.
- Lighter and Softer: When you fight enemies, you merely capture them as opposed to killing them. That's not to say that deaths don't occur in the book, just not when Silver Crusader wins any fights. Of course, you're a superhero. You can kill them, but you lose hero points. This is something of a hollow punishment when you consider that hero points are very rarely important. Gameplay-wise, almost never. They're really meant as a way of keeping score so you can compare one playthrough to the next.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The members of F.E.A.R. when you defeat Titanium Cyborg
- The Many Deaths of You: You can be incinerated by a flamethrower, killed instantly by a laser cannon, shot dead, have your mind shredded by a psychic opponent or be obliterated along with the city if you fail the quest.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: You will meet a mad scientist who has created a four-armed man and a tiger-headed one.
- Mugging the Monster: You being the monster (or superhero in civvies at the time), of course. You can choose whether-or-not to fight them off, although fighting them off leads to your secret identity being revealed and you having to retire from the superhero gig.
- Multiple Endings: The location of the F.E.A.R. meeting (and the people who have the clues you need to find it) changes according to which superpower you choose.
- Mummy: One of the supervillains to be fought, described as an Implacable Man.
- Mutant: Being one is the source of your power, since in-utero genetic experimentation is rather common in the setting - a number of your villains are mutants too, such as Mastermind.
- Mysterious Informant: Several.
- Mythology Gag: The name of the present-day setting, Titan City, references the world of Titan in which the usual Fighting Fantasy gamebooks take place.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Usually causes you to lose hero points, except for one case where your powers actually kill somebody and nobody calls you on it.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed:
- No Fair Cheating: Crosses over with Developer's Foresight at the end of the book, when you're trying to find the F.E.A.R. meeting. Each superpower gives you a different endgame, with the meeting being held at a different time and place, but all of the endings have options for all four superpowers to avoid spoiling which ending goes with which superpower if you don't already know. Using the wrong superpower for that ending ultimately leads to your death.
- Nonstandard Game Over: The ending listed under Mugging the Monster is perhaps the most esoteric way to fail in any Fighting Fantasy book — nothing bad has happened yet, but word of your secret identity will soon get out from the two muggers, so you have to give it up.
- Noodle Incident: At some points in the story, some supervillains are mentioned that the Silver Crusader previously fought... but nothing more is told about them, such as the Beastmaster and the Ocean Behemoth.
- No OSHA Compliance: When the Crusader tries to stop some laboratory apparatus from exploding, one option is to just grab the fire extinguisher. Except it's been years since anyone did the regular maintenance and it doesn't work.
- Oddball in the Series: Most books in the Fighting Fantasy series are about Swords and Sorcery, while this one takes place in a comic book Superhero world. Also for all but eliminating inventory items, and instead collecting clues the player can use to prevent crimes.
- Pastiche: Of Silver Age superhero comics.
- Playing with Fire: The Fire Warriors can generate flames from their hands, and even engulf their bodies with fire. You come across a quartet of them terrorizing a department store and vandalizing the clothing section with their flames for shits and giggles.
- Plot Coupons: The clues to the date and time of the F.E.A.R. meeting.
- Pun: The very last sentence if you get the good ending."You can honestly say that you've saved the world from F.E.A.R. itself."
- Also a lot of puns from the supervillain fights in the mobile game. The Ice Queen uses every ice pun possible, on Schwarzenegger's Mister Freeze level.
- Powered Armor: A little misleadingly, the Titanium Cyborg who's the book's Big Bad isn't actually a Cyborg with implanted mechanical parts. The Silver Crusader can encounter him in disguise earlier in the book, and it's evident from that he's a normal man who wears a mechanized suit of armor. Mainly in how he turns a killer robot loose and runs off. Whereas when he takes on the reader as the proper Final Boss while wearing his armor, he's rightly confident he can take the Crusader.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: Titanium Cyborg, leader of F.E.A.R, is the most powerful enemy in the book and the Final Boss.
- Red Herring:
- If you choose Super-Strength as your power, one of the clues you can obtain actually contradicts all the other clues. Deceptive, cunning villain or sloppy editing? Your call.
- One of the clues you can obtain involves your old enemy, the Ocean Behemoth, escaping prison and is out for revenge, and you made a mental note to explore Titan Harbor as soon as possible. Except at no point in the adventure did you encounter this character - his name was thrown around just to mislead you.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Fear The Serpent, supervillain in a snake suit who has an actual poisonous bite!
- Run or Die: In a number of situations, if you go into a fight without having the right power(s), the Silver Crusader will die if you don't run away (or at least choose to go into a fistfight, instead of using their power which would guarantee death). One example is going against Mastermind, if you have any power other than the Enhanced Technological Skill (ETS) - you'll automatically die if you don't run away. If you do have ETS, you have developed an alpha wave emitter that torments Mastermind into submission.
- Shout-Out: Many!
- "Wayne Bruce"? "Drew Swayne"?
- "Clark Street" and "Metroville"?
- It's possible to buy your boss a Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit or Dungeons & Dragons set, or a copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. You can also consider buying a variant of the "Whack Man" video game.
- Peter Laboratories and Parker Airport appear in the same paragraph.
- Not to mention "Wisneyland".
- A stage production of "Rats".
- And a combined example in the name of your boss, "Jonah White".
- The football player "'Streak' Gordon".
- You can meet "Lieutenant Wojak".
- Someone has broken out of "Woodworm Scrubs Prison".
- There was a smash and grab at "De Lager's Jewellery
" and you can also visit "Verging Records" (where you buy a copy of Willer, the new album by Michael Blackson), and "Ephiphany's the famous Jeweller". - At the airport you can find the "Xavier, McCoy and Summers" hangars.
- You can find a packet of "Karlsborough" cigarettes.
- Really, you can make a drinking game out of these. (Richard Storm, anyone?)
- In "Deadline to Destruction" note it flat out just has one of the ETS gadgets be a web-shooter the Silver Crusader made in imitation of his "comic book rival", Spider-Man!
- Skewed Priorities: One of the more baffling choices you can make in the book - one early encounter have a chainsaw-wielding maniac on the loose, just as you're petting a random stray cat, at which point the book actually gives you the option to 1. stop the maniac who's threatening an old lady with his weapon 2.bring the cat to an animal shelter. The real hell of it is, prioritizing the cat is the only way to get one of the clues to the F.E.A.R meeting in one path.
- Story Branching: The game plays out totally differently depending on which superpower you choose, as the F.E.A.R. meeting will have a different location, date, time, and a password or other specific information (such as which airport hangar the plane where the meeting is to be held is in), and the clues will always be held by different supervillains.
- Superhero Speciation: Four different powers to choose from, before your adventure begins. And four different paths leading to the conclusion.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Because you're a superhero, you're supposed to capture the villains, not kill them, and they give up at 2 Stamina. For this same reason, the Silver Crusaders carries no weapons if the reader chooses E.T.S.
- Threatening Shark: When you go to the beach, guess what danger comes from the sea?
- Ungrateful Bastard: If you defeat the shark by blowing it up with an Energy Bolt, it will explode and chunks of its flesh will land on the beach-goers... who will then criticize you harshly and calling you out for tormenting a "poor fish". This will dishearten you quite a bit. And you won't win any HERO points!! And you will miss a clue you'd get from a more grateful mother of the kid you just saved!
- Unwinnable by Design: The one story path that is common to all playthroughs is having to get the Circuit Jammer (although it can be with a different person depending on which superpower you have and / or choices you make). If you don't find it, then the final battle against the Titanium Cyborg is this.
- Water Source Tampering: What the Poisoner will be trying to do if the Silver Crusader tracks him down.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The Psi powers will prove to be the most useless, even downright dangerous one. Check this one if you want a challenge!
- Even more true in the mobile version, where picking that power sticks you with a crummy Skill score of 8, the lowest of any power choice.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Rather than instantly losing the final fight if you don't have the Circuit Jammer, you actually get to fight the Titanium Cyborg... only to automatically lose (and then die gruesomely) after 3 moves.note
- Yellow Peril: The only Asians to appear in the book are shifty-eyed orientals in an ethnic restaurant who turn out to be working for the Titanium Cyborg to destroy the world.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: This is the backstory of one of the NPC, Timothy Grant a.k.a the Brain Child, a young boy whose nightmares comes to life. One of your possible encounters involve battling a giant monster materializing from a fountain and attacking people before dissappearing without leaving any traces; and with the right clues, you discover the source of the monster to be one of Timmothy's various nightmares.
