A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides
Wait, wait, WAIT. Why in the world is there an unboxing video of a video game when this site is (mostly) about strategy guides? Oh trust me when I say there’s a method to my madness.
Believe it or not, the collector’s edition to Ys: Memories of Celceta contains a strategy guide! Check it out below.
Adorable, yes?
Going to remove all Xbox friends who don’t have this.
Maybe reviewing video games right now when I have a needy baby isn’t such a great idea. So many late nights, so little sleep, and I’m too old to continue in this trend weekly when I have two little ones who constantly need something, the little jerks. But the point is that I’m done with the mad rush game reviews so I can get back on track with reviewing strategy guides, the main reason why I even bother sticking around with the internet.
I hope all my American readers had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I hope my non-American readers just had a great weekend. I finished Ryse: Son of Rome super late on Wednesday night and then wrote a review right after I returned home from the turkey coma. So glad I didn’t submit it that day, because the turkey coma made a chunk of it sound like it was a turkey coma.
But now that I’ve had some time with the Xbox One, I have to say that I am satisfied with my purchase. I don’t think the Xbox One is as innovative as the PlayStation 4, and that’s mostly due to the new DualShock 4 controller. The controller for the Xbox One isn’t pretty much the same as I’ve been playing with the Xbox 360. However, it’s weighted a bit differently, so it doesn’t feel weird in my hands the way the Xbox 360 controller did before I bought the keyboard attachment. Since the Xbox One doesn’t have cool smartphone/tablet connectivity like the PS4, I will buy a keyboard attachment for the Xbox One controller as soon as possible. For those who don’t know, you can link up your smartphones to the PS4 and use an app as the keyboard. It is so, so nice.
I also admit that I kind of like the Kinect connectivity. It’s stupid, but I giggle that I can turn on the Xbox by just walking into the room and telling it to turn on. I even like that it recognizes me, as creepy as that kind of is. Ryse implemented the Kinect voice commands as well, and I felt stupid doing it at first, but when your front line is getting hammered because you aren’t telling your archers to shoot, you get over that quickly.
This week the plan is to really buckle down with the strategy guides I have left to work on, and that means shoving my son away from the Wii U for some Wonderful 101. Okay, that’s not true. While he’s playing on the Wii U, I’ll work on A Link Between Worlds and then I’ll kick him off the Wii U when it’s close to bed time. My progress on the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 strategy guide is also coming along and I have so, so many thoughts on that. Not sure if that is good or bad.
Oh and I may be starting a new video game blog project. Because, oh, you know, I don’t have enough on my plate.
The OWL was quite handy.
I’ve been struggling with what I think of Killzone: Shadow Fall since I finished playing it. On the one hand, the story does spark some interesting thoughts and discussion, and the game was a lot of fun initially. However, the last two or three missions were so padded and filled with “tasks” instead of fun gameplay that it’s really marred what I think of the game.
Here’s some of what I posted on ActionTrip:
Each mission relies on the all-too-familiar linear formula we’ve seen too many first-person shooters before. On the other hand, the maps often seem rather open. At first this felt like it would give the player more options to how to approach a given situation, and sometimes this is true. However, as you progress, the openness feels almost more of a hindrance than anything else, particularly since many maps do not have an intuitive feel as to where Lucas needs to go. Thank God the player can highlight a directional marker for the objective by pressing up on the d-pad, but those missions where Lucas has to find something to move on, good luck to ye. I’m fairly certain I have worn out my up d-pad button already with how many times I’ve pressed it to figure out where in the world I needed to go.
At least the AI is quite scripted and a little dumb to help make up for this. You can always count on the Helghast to consistently pop up their heads after you shoot at them and even run straight toward you when you’re shooting. In addition, whenever Lucas has an unplanned demise, the player can definitely count on the enemies appearing exactly where they were the last time, making it very, very easy to memorize a sequence.
I really enjoyed how Killzone used the touchpad on the PS4 controller. By swiping in certain directions, you could give orders to your little flying drone (OWL). It presented a super steep learning curve at the beginning, but once you got the hang of it, became quite fun. It also made me think of several uses for the touchpad in future PS4 games to the point I’m honestly considering buying another copy of Diablo III to see how it uses it. (I probably won’t, but it’s got me thinking.)
Do I recommend Killzone? I’m not sure. This was my first Killzone game, and it really made me want to check out Killzone 2, which I bought for my husband way back in the day. The game is beautiful, that’s for sure, I can’t imagine too many people buying this immediately unless you’re a fan of the series. Not everyone is as weird as me.
If you want to see more of what I had to say about Killzone, please read my entire review!
As soon as I heard Prima Games announce they were selling a boxed set of collector’s editions of The Legend of Zelda strategy guides, I was all over that preorder faster than either of my next-gen consoles. While I may own a couple of these strategy guides already, I had zero problems purchasing them again with a few collector’s editions that had never been released before.
Without further adieu, here is what you can find in this monstrous boxed set of boxed sets.
I’m going to need more reinforced bookshelves.
So somehow I’ve agreed to reviewing two next-gen games when I still have three other strategy guides to review. Oh yeah and I have one more coming in this week. I think it’s official I’m insane.
Or maybe we’re all insane here. In case anyone thinks we’ve had a dearth of content lately in terms of strategy guide reviews, let me first blame my new baby for that, and then present a list of what we have in the crockpot that will get posted by the end of the year.
And before you ask, of course I’m not doing all these myself. I’m not that insane.
Here’s what we have to come before New Year’s Eve 2013:
No next-gen guides, and I’m sorry about that. I’m the only one on staff who picked up an Xbox One, and uh, Dead Rising 3 would possibly terrify me. I’m that much of a wuss about these types of games. I even turned down reviewing the game for money. That’s how much of a baby I am, and I’m okay with that.
Please wish me luck this week with both work and strategy guide reviews. My eldest son’s school is closed all week for the Thanksgiving holiday, so yeah, I may have some issues this week getting anything done, including taking a shower.