Keri Honea - 42/183 - Strategy Guide Reviews

Unboxing Video: Final Fantasy Strategy Guide Boxed Set

July 30, 2015 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I’ve been told by readers and strategy guide fans that the Final Fantasy strategy guide boxed set from Prima Games should be avoided at all costs. It’s poorly done. They copy and paste from the older guides. There’s a blatant mistake in one of the character pages.

Well, I can’t exactly do my job if I take all of these complaints at face value and not look at the books myself. Besides, I’m a huge collector, so of course I’m going to buy these books, mistakes be damned. So I have them, I’ve looked through them, and I compared the FFVII guide to the original.

Here are my thoughts:

The too long, didn’t watch version is this: it ain’t that bad of a boxed set, people. Put down the torches and pitchforks.

Comic Review: Halo: Escalation #20

July 29, 2015 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

The Tomb Raider comic may be on hiatus to prepare for the November game, but Halo: Escalation is still going strong, even with an October game release. Issue #20 isn’t the last issue before the game, and it’s not even the last issue of this particular arc. Issue #20 is, however, quite the culmination of nearly every theme ever introduced into the Halo-verse. We have the following to look forward to:

hatred of Halsey
Halsey’s obsession with technology and knowledge no matter the cost
Covenant hatred of humans
human hatred of Covenant
all Hell breaking loose
ONI double dealings
Forerunners as gods
betrayal
other spoilertastic things I won’t mention

I’m not sure you could ask for more in a comic issue for Halo.

At the end of the last issue, everything that could go wrong has for the Spartans who have sneaked aboard Jul M’dama’s fleet with a Sangheili spy has. Really, would it be a Halo story if everything went smoothly and according to plan? This time is once again a bit of Dr. Halsey’s fault in her rush to find the coveted artifact the Librarian left her to uncover, and it’s also a bit of Jul M’dama’s fault for insisting everything happen right now. Unfortunately for Halsey, she enjoyed pointing out the latter to him way too much, and I honestly though he would be the one to finally kill her. He still may be, but he didn’t this month.

Yet, this doesn’t help our Spartan IVs at all or Ayit the Sangheili spy or even the UNSC back on the Infinity, since Halsey’s mistake damaged their communicator back to the mothership. They’re now having to wing it, Ayit and the Spartans are even more forced than they were before to trust one another with their lives, and Palmer has to be super nice to a scientist, something she loathes to do. The entire story has a great buildup to the very last page, which hints that we may finally get the answers to ________ and ________.

While the story is great, this issue is a bit off, art-wise. Ian Richardson and Netho Diaz have left off a lot of the details in faces and the environments that the series usually has. Even the inks seem to be lighter, as if this was a cel-painting from the 80s with severe line fading. It’s bizarre, and definitely not what I’m used to with the Halo: Escalation comic series.

Halo: Escalation #20 is available now from Dark Horse via digital and retail.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

Comic Review: Tomb Raider #18

July 28, 2015 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

Well here we are, the last issue of Tomb Raider before Rise of the Tomb Raider releases in November. From the way issue #18 ended, I honestly had no idea this was the last one. The writer, Rhianna Pratchett, tweeted about it this morning, and thus educated me. I had to reread the issue again before writing about it, to see if I could see the hints that this is indeed the last one leading up into the next game. Now that I know it is the last issue, it honestly changes how the comic reads, and for the better. Nothing is wrapped up, and it appears that nothing will be wrapped up, as the events of the comic set the story for the game. Even though issue #18 does not have a “real” conclusion and it is incredibly light on the action, it’s one of the best issues of Tomb Raider I’ve read in a long time. And yes, I did feel this way before knowing it’s the last one; learning it’s the last one only makes it better.

Now that Lara and Sam and company are back from Mexico, neither are handling what went down very well, and neither are talking to one another in any sort of constructive way. Sam wants to avoid it and yell at Lara about being a control freak and constantly running away. The pot is calling the kettle black here, but Sam makes an extremely valid point yet again (she told her the same at the start of the Mexico arc).

And Sam isn’t alone in telling Lara what an idiot she is. Kaz yells at Lara the same thing about Yamatai that I’ve been saying for months. No one else has told Lara this nugget of truth before, so I suppose it’s only fair that Lara wouldn’t come to that conclusion herself.

However…

Lara is finally coming to grips with the fact that she has not handled Yamatai or anything else that has happened to her well. She’s paranoid, overly controlling, and is too ready to run off on the next adventure before closing her last one. It’s unfortunate that it takes two friends to yell at her and one to get arrested (oh that’s not a spoiler, it’s the cover) for her to realize she needs help. The trailer for the upcoming game has shown Lara in a therapy session, and while the comic doesn’t go that route, it sends her down a rather healthy path toward recovery.

The bad news is that it looks like we aren’t saying goodbye to Yamatai or the Sun Queen any time soon. That said, it does look like we’re taking a fresh perspective on it, and the video game won’t drag down as much as the comics. If that’s really where the game was always going to go, then it really wasn’t the comic writers fault for constantly harping on the Yamatai story; they were doing what Crystal Dynamics told them to do, and they were doing the best they could with what they were given.

As much as I have disliked these comics, I’m afraid they will be necessary for connecting many dots in Rise of the Tomb Raider. The last issue releases tomorrow, July 29, 2015.

Digital review copy received from publisher.

Monday Gaming Diary: Mortal Kombat X Comics

July 27, 2015 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

Last Friday was my birthday, and a dear friend of mine gave me a gift certificate to Comixology with the recommendation for the Mortal Kombat X comics.

Wait.

Stop.

There are Mortal Kombat X comics? Are they as awful as the Injustice: Gods Among Us comics? How is the art? How is the writing?

About this time my friend told me to shut up and read the first comic for myself. It’s a weekly comic series, which I think Injustice was as well, and it moves incredibly fast. Since there are so many characters in the game, the story arcs jump around a lot, but they’re able to get away with it and keep it cohesive because it is a weekly subscription.

Long story short, I ended up buying all 30 comics available in the store, and I didn’t play any games over the weekend because I stayed up super late every night reading the comics. I haven’t gotten through the entire series yet, but suffice to say, I’m hooked. In fact, it’s taking a lot of willpower to stay in my office today and work instead of reading the rest of the comics.

Once I do finish reading them, I want to replay the story mode of MKX. The comics really fill in the gaps that the story mode mentions of past events, and they help fill in missing pieces for people like me who haven’t been MK faithful in many, many years. The stories do get a little dark and deep, the art is absolutely gorgeous, and it pokes fun at the franchise in all the right places. I even texted Chris late on Saturday night to order him to look into the MKX comics.

And I recommend the same for every other MKX fan, even if you aren’t that into comics. Grrrr, it’s going to be really hard to finish working today when I know those comics are just a tablet away…ready to read…

LEGO Jurassic World Strategy Guide Review

July 22, 2015 By Keri Honea 4 Comments

Chris was the first one to foray into the video review waters after his tragic fight with that unicorn, and now I feel it is my turn to jump in. I had so much to say about the LEGO Jurassic World strategy guide and so much I wanted to show that video seemed to be the best format. That and I’m super lazy; you think I wanted to scan in all of those pages? Isn’t that why I use strategy guides in the first place, because I am super lazy (and I like to collect things)?

Regardless of my laziness, I had a lot I wanted to show to help explain exactly why I’m so disappointed in this strategy guide, which breaks my heart to write. It would be one thing if Prima Games slacked on all of their LEGO game guides, but they normally don’t. This book screams of a rushed product, something I noticed with the game as well when I reviewed it. The strategy guide’s only saving grace was the handheld section, which was everything the console section should have been.

Here’s why.