Against the Odds

Counter: A Fighting Game LitRPG Adventure (Counter, Book 1)

By: Tomie-Mickai Williams

Narrated by: Scotty Storm

In another dimension, the Fighting System has overtaken all modern sports.

Fighters use supernatural powers to climb a global leaderboard and enter the Ultimate Versus tournament, where the winner — the #1 Fighter in the world — can have their greatest wishes granted.

And Daniel Chase needs to get home. A seventeen-year-old teen from Chicago, he’s always loved music more than fighting games, but he must battle his way to the very top to earn the chance at wishing himself back. Even worse, the System labels him a Joke Fighter, and only gives him one technique: a counterattack.

A retired top fighter unexpectedly offers to train him, and Daniel seizes the chance to learn from a master. But, as he further grasps his counterattack and prepares for a local tournament, top fighters are dropping dead worldwide. Someone is trying to take over the Ultimate Versus — and every victory brings Daniel closer to the lethal truth.

Featuring:

- Defiance of the Fall meets Street Fighter with a Black protagonist

- Ranked system with classes and a global leaderboard

- Magic system based on fighting games with growth by skill and knowledge

- One-on-one fight scenes

- Weak to strong underdog MC with a limited moveset

©2023, 2024 WEI Publishing (P)2024 WEI Publishing

One dimensional railroad

The story just glides along without much reflection or reasoning given. Everyone just agrees, loves and respects their elders, and the plot points might as well be the titles of the chapters. The narration wasn't so bad, but the cadence and editing were awful. I couldn't stand the MC voice. I was hoping he would power up and it would be revealed that he gets a better voice, but no.

Great story!

I don’t write reviews at all, but I thought I’d give my thoughts since I finished the book. Highly recommend listening to it.

I loved it. I thought the book was actually very well done for what the author was going for here. Though I do wish I did get some background on who Daniel is. However, when I keep reading on, you slowly begin to put the pieces together. Like this different dimension seems to be a weird, twisted version of real life. Very interesting.

I had no problem with the story as the narrator himself gave such an incredible voice over for the characters. Even with all the women voices which I’ve always been iffy about with male voice narrators doing, he actually did a very good job! I was very impressed with how he did such a wide range of voices along with the ref’s voice, the announcers voice and also the voice of Rex which was my favorite character of the book.

There are a few things about the book that I was confused on, which it seemed to me the different dimension seemed to mirror that of real life, like it had other countries in it which I thought was a little strange but hey, I’ll take it with a grain of salt. But it seemed that there was a Carmen in this world and there was another Carmen mirrored from his world. But despite that, I actually thought Carmen and Daniels relationship was very cute!

I would say overall 4.5
Story: Good
Voice Narration: Great

Great story

The Story line is fantastic. It keeps you wanting more, I like the dad in the story he has is own funny side. I’m on chapter 4. Can’t wait to see what else it has in store .

Received for free: Good beginning and end

I received this audible title for free and alternated listening to it on audible and reading it on kindle unlimited.

It has a good beginning and ending. The middle has some switches to the villain’s perspective and other fighters that she interacts with. It’s dark, and it slows things down a bit. But I guess it is necessary for development.

Some of the voices were better than others. One sounded too kiddy, but again, since the character is a minor that might be expected.

I liked some of the tropes used. It felt a lot like a fighting game, but also even better. A lot of the developments and twists were smart and understandable.

But Why

I did not finish the story. I made it 10 chapters in, and probably would have stopped sooner if I didn’t get it for free.
The 10 chapters were filled with things happening that just seemed so senseless.
The main character ends up in another world before you even know who they are. In his first minute there, he hides in a restaurant with an alternate dimension version of his crush from school AND THE PARENTS ADOPT HIM AS HER BOYFRIEND? As soon as he is just granted powers, some dude shows up at THEIR house and is like “hi, I’m here to train you for some reason”. The writing fails to ever explain WHY something would happen and just keeps doing these super opportunist, out of nowhere boons to the main character. Story telling 101 is conflict, and this book hasn’t had any. There’s absolutely no way that characters would act this way if they were human and not just written to facilitate the wish fulfillment of the main character, and that really takes me out of the story