A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides
The Uncharted 4 Collector’s Edition strategy guide has arrived! We got a glimpse of it when Prima Games first announced it, but is there more to the collector’s edition than their announcement claimed? Here is what I found when I opened this pretty, pretty thing. And yes, it is a gorgeous strategy guide, make no mistake about that.
Watch below and find out for yourself if you should buy the Uncharted 4 collector’s edition strategy guide over the paperback.
My God, have I played a metric crap ton of point-and-click adventure games this year. It seems like nearly every time I check my inbox at work, I have another point-and-click announcement. I’m happy that the genre has come back, and some developers have made some really great games, such as Kathy Rain, The Order of the Thorne, and Heaven’s Hope. However, as our market has been slightly flooded with these games, I find that my tolerance for a certain element often used has ceased all together. I am sick and tired of the nonsensical puzzle solutions prevalent in these games.
Double Fine by far is the worst offender. I think they find it to be charming and whimsical to have solutions comprised of crazy combinations that hardly make sense. A friend of mine recently replayed Grim Fandango when it was remastered, and she told me how the puzzle solutions were often ridiculous. When I asked how she found the answer if they were so crazy, she said it was a matter of combining everything you could think of in your inventory and then trying all of it. Puzzles are supposed to be brain teasers, I’ve always believed, and the solution should make some sort of sense, even in a video game world. Granted, I don’t always figure out a solution and I’ll look it up if I’m absolutely stumped. However, to find that that solution doesn’t make sense to me at all is pretty unforgivable.
I experienced this issue a lot with Broken Age, and I’ve been getting it quite a bit lately with the revival of King’s Quest. I really enjoyed the original games, and while I found the puzzles difficult, I never once found them to be unfair or nonsensical. This new episodic game has taken a strange leap back into the nonsensical with puzzle solutions. After playing something as deep and meaningful as Kathy Rain, which had some complicated puzzles, I no longer have the patience for ridiculous solutions. Your puzzle solution should make sense, even if I have to turn to help to find it. Making a tree throw up sap into a bucket to use as an emulsifier does make sense. Holding up a book cover in front of a magic mirror that shows what the gazer looked like when it was younger does not sense. I mean, really King’s Quest; why in the world would the clock’s hands change on a fucking book cover? Even if you’re trying to say that the clock’s hands were different in an earlier edition, that doesn’t mean THIS PARTICULAR book would look that way when it was first printed.
When I looked up that puzzle solution and saw that was the answer, I nearly beat my head on my keyboard. Be clever. Clever doesn’t mean batshit insane.
I actually have been working my way through Hyrule Warriors Legends, believe it or not, and I continue to be amazed at how much tweaking Nintendo and Tecmo have done between the Wii U and 3DS releases. For starters, I love that they now have all of the chests available the first time you play the Legends mode and allow you to switch to the appropriate character to open the chest. Before, the chests would only appear with certain characters. The game always told you which characters had a chest for them, so you didn’t have to guess, but now you don’t have to replay them several times. You only do if you want those damn Gold Skulltullas, which are still a beating to retrieve.
The biggest change is the addition of Linkle, a female Link. She has her own set of side adventures that I don’t know are optional or not, because I’m playing them anyway. She’s always believed that she was supposed to be the Legendary Hero of Time, and she always kept a green tunic for the occasion. She’s a fun fighter with her dual crossbows, and I like that she actually talks. Link always lets fairies or others speak for him, which was cute at first and annoying several Zelda games later.
Aside from the fact that she’s bound to run into some disappointment when she realizes she wasn’t tapped with Triforce tattoos on her hands or the Triforce of Courage, (or maybe she doesn’t run into Link and Zelda at all) her name bothers the absolute crap out of me. Nintendo, I get that you wanted to make it absolutely clear that she is the female Link. But there are hundreds of ways of making that clear and keeping “link” in her name without making it rhyme with”tinkle.”
Linkalla. Linkalie. Linklie. Linkan. Linkanna. Linkara.
Any of those are thousands of times better than Linkle. I feel weird even typing that.
That said, I’d still buy a Linkle amiibo, because I need all the Links.
I haven’t been to PAX East in three years, and when I went, I was five months pregnant (bad idea, by the way) and wasn’t known to really any of the PR reps. That makes for quite a different experience compared to this round, when I was thankfully not pregnant and now I’m known a bit more by publisher public relations. The upside was I was in a better mood and didn’t have to pee every 20 minutes. The downside is I was so busy, I was just as exhausted as I was when I was pregnant.
You don’t want to be part of this pregnant.
However, I really can’t complain because I saw so many amazing indies at the show. I was very excited to see Pyre, the new game from Supergiant Games, who created Bastion, which I loved. Pyre is nothing like Bastion or Transistor, and I think that’s a very, very good thing.
Another favorite indie was Klang, a music-action-platformer, three things you wouldn’t necessarily think go together, but they did really, really well! Most impressive thing about Klang is the fact that it was all created by one man, except for the music. But the game design, coding, modeling, everything else was all on him. It helps that it’s a really fun game to play as well. And I want the soundtrack, which kind of goes without saying.
I actually can’t list all of the games that were so great just yet, especially since I’m still writing about them for work. However, here is my list of favorites thus far:
But you will hear more about PAX East during the SGR Coffee Break this week, and I’m sure I’ll talk a bit about it when we record the Book of the Month Club as well.
I also played a ton more of Final Fantasy and the 4 Heroes of Light. That is one weird, weird game. I enjoy the gameplay quite a bit, especially how they handle magic and skills, but the story is bizarre and yet boring, even for JRPGs. I’ve put in over 20 hours and I need this sucker to pick up and pick up soon before I abandon it forever to Final Fantasy Explorers.
But that won’t happen now, as I have more stuffs to write. So much stuffs.
When I was reviewing Quantum Break for work, I said to myself more than once that I would love for their to be a strategy guide for the game, simply for the collectibles. There are an incredible amount, and while most are relatively simple to find, just as many are rather hidden. Or, as I discovered, can only be found when you make certain choices. So I was rather elated when I learned that Prima was in fact releasing such a strategy guide for the masses.
Unfortunately, when I opened the book, I was rather disappointed with all it contained. Or should I say, what it didn’t contain. Sadly, my first impressions didn’t really improve as I used it in my second playthrough of the game.