Keri Honea - 105/183 - Strategy Guide Reviews

Monday Gaming Diary: No more stealth games, thank you

October 15, 2012 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

I have the distinct pleasure of reviewing both the game and strategy guide for Dishonored, so it’s fairly obvious what I’ve been playing in my spare time since this past Tuesday. While Dishonored allows players to play however you want, whether it’s stealthy or guns a’blazing, you must have some stealth if you’re going to make it very far. Corvo is as resilient against swordplay and gunfire as Sam Fisher, so if you have no plan in mind, you’re going to be reloading quite a bit. We all know how much I such at stealth, so I always opted for a strange combination of the two. I only killed everyone if I had to, but I really tried to slip by most sentries most of the time. Too bad it never quite worked out very well most of the time.

Fortunately, my occasional blunders were rarely game killers and they rarely caused high chaos rankings, especially since I did my best to not kill my targets. That was another thing I really liked about Dishonored: there’s always a nonlethal solution to the puzzle. Your chaos rankings affect how your allies treat you and the ending you receive. However, this only added to my stress levels; I really wanted that low chaos rating at the end of most missions, and sneaking in, not raising alarms, not killing everyone on sight, etc. affects this as much as how you treat your target.

I was incredibly tense during my entire playthrough.

Between Deus Ex: Human Revolution last year, my sad attempt at Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Dishonored, I really don’t want to play another stealth game for a long, long time. I hope Assassin’s Creed III doesn’t have too many don’t-get-detected missions or I’ll be rolling on the floor and sobbing. Being stealthy puts me on edge to the point I don’t enjoy playing. I can barely watch friends play stealth games, because I get that tense and nervous on their behalf. I know for many, this is the appeal of playing, but it’s definitely not for me.

I’ve done my stealth game of the year; I feel like I’ve had paid some penance of something to someone.

I can play more Retro City Rampage now, yes?

Turf War Going On for Dishonored Online Strategy Guides?

October 11, 2012 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

BradyGames has published the officially licensed strategy guide for Dishonored, which released just this week. Yesterday, they released an official iTunes map app to the game as well. It’s usually pretty clear that when a guide is published in the US, other guide publishers cannot “officially” release any strategy guide content, at least not for a price.

However, Prima Games seems to be pushing that envelope pretty hard.

If you’ve visited that website as of late, then you know that they have hired some great writers to provide “blog” content about video game news, goings on at Prima Games itself, and opinions about the video game industry. This morning, they published a Beginner’s Guide to Dishonored. This isn’t a new practice to any video game site. Many gaming sites publish little strategy guide-ish articles the week a game releases in order to garner more hits and analyze what their reader base is interested in. However, most gaming sites don’t publish strategy guides for a cost.

By posting a free article on the Prima Games site that offers free advice for Dishonored players, that’s going directly against your chief US competitor in the guide market–BradyGames. Of course, this is just a beginner’s guide, just some free tips for those just starting the game. It’s not like they’ve created maps or written long drawn out walkthroughs, something that would directly go against BradyGames’ strategy guide. However, no one can deny that such an article isn’t pushing it a little, isn’t encroaching on BradyGames’ turf just a little.

It’s a first step. It’s almost like a child who knows they can’t touch the stove, yet they touch around it (no, I’m not calling them childish, I’m just giving an analogy!).

It also makes me wonder what the next step will be, and if BradyGames will start hiring their own bloggers to write similar, “harmless” beginner’s guides for games that Prima Games creates guides for.

Dishonored Strategy Guide Initial Impressions

October 9, 2012 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

Dishonored has been high on my anticipation list ever since E3. This year has been full of sequels, so it’s great to see a new IP, especially since the new IP looks to be so promising. Critically, the game appears to be just as great as it seems. I’d be excited about it even if it did bad critically, because what I played at QuakeCon made me happy, critics be damned. However, when I did play Dishonored at QuakeCon, I was under massive panic because I realized that this was the first time I’ve ever played a stealth game without a guide. I’m so horrible at stealth it isn’t funny, and it doesn’t help that I don’t have much patience for it either. So yes, imagine my delight when BradyGames confirmed that yes, there will be a Dishonored strategy guide from their house. I obtained a copy of the guide today, and I spent a little time flipping through it.

When I saw Dishonored at E3 this year, I said that the game is a steampunk Deus Ex: Human Revolution. When I played a sample of it at QuakeCon, it only enhanced my initial feelings. This is in no way a bad thing; it’s a fantastic thing, especially if you liked DXHR. As such, as soon as I got the strategy guide, the first thing I looked for in the walkthroughs was to see if it indeed was set up like DXHR. One thing DXHR and Dishonored both have pushed is that the game allows players to play how they want: with stealth or with mass murder. Therefore, the strategy guide needs to provide strategies for both methods of gameplay, and to my delight, it does.

stealth

mass murder

One other thing I found that made me immensely happy was the fact that all of the collectibles listed in the back were accompanied with screenshots where to find them. However, it is unfortunate that the walkthroughs themselves do not point out where to find collectibles. The collectibles are in the maps in the beginning of every mission, but they’re not in the written walkthroughs, which will require lots of flipping back and forth for completionists. I’m glad that there are no call-out boxes for the collectibles, because the guide pages are a bit cluttered up with call-out boxes anyway with side notes, side missions, and Achievement notes. That said, the collectibles could still be mentioned, perhaps in bold, within the walkthrough itself with page references to the appendix. This wouldn’t alleviate any page flipping, but it would at least help prevent missing any wayward items.

appendix-only

At first glance, the Dishonored strategy guide looks like it would have everything a user could want from the guide, at least it does content-wise. We shall see what the final review unveils in time.

Monday Gaming Diary: Harry Potter all the Way!

October 8, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I know I said I feel the need to finish what I start, and I’ve left about three games hanging, but since I started LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 last weekend as well, I couldn’t leave such a light-hearted game hanging! Everything else is pretty heavy handed, and with the review season in high form, I NEEDED SOMETHING LIGHT. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

So happy to say though that I’m super close to Platinum-ing the game. I’m really close to wrapping the game up to 100% (only one Gold Brick left), which will give me all of the remaining trophies except for a couple of bronze. Those last bronze are the most annoying out the bunch–they require reenacting random fights between characters, which wouldn’t be such a big deal except for the one that requires Voldemort to Avada kedavra ALL of the versions of Harry Potter, of which there are like 20. Going to be hanging out at a cauldron and forcing Harry to sip lots of Polyjuice potion for 15-20 minutes at some point. Tedious tasks like these make earning a Platinum trophy kind of not worth it. At least it’s something that is easy to do and doesn’t require a ton of skill on top of being tedious.

Although, it’s not like I haven’t abandoned a Platinum trophy pursuit before due to monotony. I bailed on LEGO Batman 2 just because I couldn’t take doing the same stuff over and over and over in that massive hub world. I didn’t even finish playing all of Free Play modes because I got so sick of the tediousness.

You can argue that the Harry Potter LEGO games have the same amount of tedium, but it doesn’t bother me as much with this one. I have too much fun running around Hogwarts, Diagon Alley, and even Hogsmeade with the Harry Potter characters. I’m a bigger fan of Harry Potter than I am DC Comics, which I’m sure has some to do with it, but I think it also has to do with the fact that the characters don’t talk. I’ve said it before, but I really did not like the LEGO characters talking in LEGO Batman 2. I know they talk in LEGO LOTR, and the only reason why I’m not as hesitant about that game is because all of the lines are copied (literally) from the movie. It’s not a fresh script, and what is different from the movies does not have spoken lines from what I understand. God I hope that’s true.

I’ve also been exorbitantly pleased at how much the console version of LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 has NOT been like the Vita version. I couldn’t even finish the Story Mode of the Vita version since I hated the gameplay so much. I don’t understand why they’re so different either. I understand that the handheld versions can’t include the large hub worlds that the console games have, but does the actual gameplay have to be so different? Case in point with this game, the dueling for the Vita and the console versions were so incredibly different, and after playing the game on both, I don’t understand why.

After this experience and the experience I had with playing LEGO Batman 2 on both, I’m definitely not playing any future LEGO games on the Vita. The 3DS, yes, absolutely, especially after I found the absolute gem of a version LEGO Star Wars III on the 3DS over the consoles. I wonder what joys I’ve missed with not playing either LEGO Harry Potter game on the 3DS? Hmmm…maybe another time…way after I finish playing this current Harry Potter game. When you play these LEGO games to completion, they kind of suck a lot out of you and you don’t want to think of playing them again for a long, long time, if ever.

However, playing this last game has really made me want to watch the last three movies again.

Bulletstorm Mini-Review

October 3, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

Bulletstormis one of those games that I’ve always wanted to try after hearing my co-hosts on the EvilCast podcast go on and on and on about how insane it is (See also Saints Row The Third). I bought it when it went on sale, and it sat in my stack of shame for some time. Recently, I had a bit of a personal tragedy, and I wanted something over the top, silly, and yes, a little violent.Bulletstormwas promptly moved out of the stack and into my Xbox 360, and it did not disappoint.

Bulletstorm is so incredibly, delightfully ridiculous, from the gameplay to the dialogue, that it’s virtually impossible to not have fun. Well, that’s not true. I suppose it wouldn’t be fun to those who are easily offended, don’t like dick jokes, and don’t enjoy creative headshots. But if you’re a shooter fan, and you don’t get offended that easily (hey, Call of Duty fans!) then Bulletstorm should be right up your alley.

It’s a first-person shooter that completely focuses on creative kill shots. Any creative kill you make earns points (nicely called “skillshots”) that you can spend on weapons, ammunition, and weapon upgrades. If you do nothing but regular ol’ headshots and shots to the chest, you won’t rack up many points and therefore won’t be able to unlock or upgrade your weapons properly, if at all. Different guns have different skillshots, so by simply swapping out weapons you pick up, you can pull off some hilarious skillshots without much effort. The fun with skillshots comes with the ability to kick and leash opponents. Early on in the game, the main character, Grayson Hunt, picks up what they call a leash, which is an electric whip of sorts that allows Grayson to leash enemies toward him or pull down objects in the environment. He can even use to pick up weapons he can’t reach. Grayson can also kick enemies away, which is great for both stopping enemies from shooting at you and great for kicking them off of high places–which leads to a series of skillshots, depending on where you kick them off of. Kicking and leashing also slows down the action for a little bit, thereby allowing players to more easily make that headshot or aim for a certain part of the body to earn other skillshots. For example, a shot to the throat is called the “Gag Reflex,” and if you shoot an enemy in the balls and then kill him, it’s the “Mercy” skillshot. I swear I’m not making this up.

The dialogue is as over-the-top as the skillshots. I played rugby for a few years, my husband is a former rugby player, and my husband is in the military, and I swear I have never heard so many dick jokes in my life. I turned on the subtitles so I wouldn’t miss a single crazy thing said while I was laughing so hard. I’ve actually turned some of the dialogue into text tones and ringtones on my phone because they’ve made me laugh so hard. My phone is now a weird conglomeration of Gears of War and Bulletstorm tones…I should just slap on an Epic Games logo and move on.

Surprisingly enough, the story was pretty good as well. It wasn’t as deep as something like Spec Ops: The Line by any stretch of the means, but it never once felt convoluted, it made sense, and as the game went on, it got pretty serious. It was amazing to learn that there was a reason why all of these crazy, insane, and twisted-looking humans were on the planet. It was nice to see that there was a reason why General Sarrano was hovering near the planet in the first place. They could have made the story completely happenstance, but they chose to give some meaning to the craziness, and it was a nice touch.

Bulletstorm wasn’t nominated for any Game of the Year awards for 2011 that I’m aware of, and that’s most likely because of its insane and violent nature as well as its okay story, but it’s still an incredibly fun romp. If you need something silly and just fun, I can’t recommend Bulletstorm enough.

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