You Are Not Deadpool

YOU become the sidekick …when a heavily-armed weirdo dude in a red suit accosts you in Central Park.

Deadpool has been given a job to find alien weapons that are being smuggled and potentially sold to gangs, and he wants YOU to help — not really for the butt-kicking or the super-heroing, but to add some randomness to his (apparently) too predictable reactions.

Cram yourself into his awful rental car and get to searching New York, and try to save the world. But don’t call yourself the hero; that’s his job.

No, you can’t touch the swords.

Review and Opinion

As a book, it’s wonderful. It’s goofy and snarky and crazy, and a riot of fun. I <3 Deadpool. Tim’s writing is pretty great, engaging and fun, with lots of action.

As a game, it’s okay I guess. Unlike most game books, there is every incentive to open every single door. Almost every path has a bonus and very few have any drawbacks, and all of them end up connecting to the other path anyway so you’re not really choosing either-or but which-first. So again, racking up the bonuses happens too easily even on a naive playthrough. Having gotten your stats from a humble 3 to a hefty 8 within a few pages, the rest of the book seems calibrated toward your initial scores of 3. We have played it a few times and only failed two attribute tests and four rounds of combat (and zero fights) in all that time, because our stats were 8-9 so making a 12 with 2d6+Merc is virtually guaranteed. So as a game, it’s all too easy and you’ll only lose by finding the wrong path and not by having low stats.

BUT… Back to my original point, is that as a book and an experience, You Are Not Deadpool is hilarious and fun! There’s snarky humor, lots of senseless violence, and a variety of puzzles and mini-games. The writing covers scenes as diverse as New York City’s subways, alien-inhabited caves in Vermont (I had just finished reading Whisperer in Darkness, the timing was awesome), casinos, and more. And a super fan stabs Deadpool in the face!

Hints and Spoilers

There are seven Secret Hunter pages with bonuses and items, and no obvious links to them. A few very clearly say that you could only get there by cheating, so yeah…

Secret Hunter One = Page 165 = From 98 in The Hollow bar, a Straczinsky poster is supposed to point here? Gives you adamantium knuckles for +2 Merc and also +1 Puzzler.
Secret Hunter Two = Page 202 =From 282 the storage area of One Family. No idea why you would subtract 80, or go to “200 or so or more or less.” Gives the Razor Ball which is a single-use weapon against bosses.
Secret Hunter Three = XXX = I don’t think this exists.
Secret Hunter Four =Page 56 = An ant pendant, but not a real item, and +1 to all stats and to Chaos. How do you get here? On 247 in the Snow Valley Academy, there are 11 guards… how that translates to 56 I do not know.
Secret Hunter Five =Page 63 = Explicitly says that there is no entry here and you’re obviously cheating. Congratulations, here’s a laser sword that automatically wins every fight, you cheater.
Secret Hunter Six =Page 72 =There is no connection here, and it’s just a white void. You are given a Cheery Log, and told to go back to wherever you were.
Secret Hunter Seven =Page 190 = On page 12 you meet AXCA the mantis creature, and in the boiler room 116 you see “+C”. So obviously, if you kill the mantis monster you should turn to 190… Whatever. If you do, you get +8 points to stats of your choice.

Errors

The circuit board puzzle on 163, where you follow a path of numbers, their answer is wrong or there’s more than one path through it. The path we found adds up to 179, which makes 278 as the final page, which is wrong. The solution is on 265.

On 276 you’re given the achievement Obtuse, but that’s not an achievement on the list.

There is no Secret Hunter Three.

There is an achievement called “Twisty” but this does not appear in the book.

On 256y and 146 in the First Family warehouse, you are asked if you have three alien devices. As far as I can tell, there are only two in the book by this point (Alien Device, Alien Gun).