Keri Honea - 81/183 - Strategy Guide Reviews

Monday Gaming Diary: Killzone Kingdom

November 18, 2013 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

Best box I’ve ever gotten from Amazon

I played Kingdom Hearts for the first time in over ten years this past week. Holy God I was nervous. Kingdom Hearts was my first “real” video game (at least it was to me) with the PlayStation 2. The last game I had played on a console before Gauntlet Seven Sorrows was Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo. Not lying. Gauntlet was a great way to ease me into the controller (it had analog sticks, OMG!), and then Kingdom Hearts put it all to the test.

I hated platforming games already, that much I knew, so KH really tried my patience with a lot of it. The only reason why I didn’t rage quit was because you don’t die from falling. I loved the game by the end, but there there were levels in particular I never wanted to traverse again without the high jump and glide abilities–Wonderland and the Deep Jungle, especially that damn Deep Jungle. I am convinced to this day that the only reason I was able to get through the waterfall section at the very, very end was because of luck. The game felt sorry for me or something and finally let me make that last jump Sora needed.

So yeah, even 10 years later and many, many games later, I still have zero confidence in my skills. I was super nervous I was going to have those same problems all over again. I was going to get frustrated and possibly toss a controller once again. I was going to get stuck in that same waterfall and try to make that jump for over an hour yet again.

I’m so happy to say that while I still had some issues with that last damn jump, it only took me ten minutes of trying this time. Not even Wonderland bothered me that much. I’m actually having a lot more fun this time around playing the game than I did 10 years ago, and it makes me so happy. It’s never fun to dread playing anything. This actually gives me hope that I’ll get further in Wind Waker than I did the first time.

But I know you’d much rather hear about my fun with the PlayStation 4.

My system did arrive safe and sound, and thankfully it’s not one of the bricked units. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much Killzone Shadow Fall time as I wanted. My baby has rudely decided to not nap as much during the day and demands my attention instead. So I’ve only played about 4 hours of it, and all I can say is this since I’m reviewing it for ActionTrip: the game is absolutely beautiful and the implementation of the touchpad is genius. I regret nothing at this point, except for the fact that there is no strategy guide for KSF.

Seriously, BradyGames and Prima…WHAT IS UP WITH THAT??

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Mini-Review

November 15, 2013 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

I have to admit, that when Traveller’s Tales started adding voices to their LEGO games, I was less than thrilled. My first experience was with LEGO Batman 2, and even though the dialogue was comical and I love the voice cast to pieces, I just couldn’t embrace it. There was just something charming and funny about a game that told an entire story through gestures. The amount of parody the writers were able to produce was amazing. Then they brought in movie quotes for LEGO The Lord of the Rings, which was extremely disappointing. I had hopes that they wouldn’t do the same with LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, but of course they did. And you know what? The dialogue MADE this game. In fact, it’s the only reason why I can recommend it at all.

I reviewed LEGO Marvel Super Heroes for ActionTrip.com. Here’s a snippet of what I had to say on this subject.

LEGO games are known for their strong parody on the series they emulate. Since they’ve taken on some of the most popular comics in DC and Marvel, their sources of what they can poke fun of is almost limitless. And yes, they expose that at every corner. Hulk is always asked to clean up his messes after a mission, Wolverine suddenly remembers that he has to go buy more hair gel, and Spider-man tries to come up with a reason why he’s always leaving his girlfriend alone at a coffee shop. It’s always a coffee shop.

And that’s pretty much why you would play this game. It’s not for the gameplay, even though it is quite fun.

My Extra Life teammates played a little bit of the game during their marathon campaign, and both participants have vowed to purchase the game after their brief stint. It was all about how much the game made them laugh. I even tweeted that I laughed out loud more at LEGO Marvel Super Heroes than I did Saints Row IV.

By no means is this a game of the year contender, but it’s fun. And it’s funny. Sometimes that’s all you really need or want when you play a game.

I can’t recommend it enough, even to those who haven’t played LEGO games in the past. All you need is a love of the Marvel universe, a sense of humor, and preparation for silliness.

However, I will warn you that the co-op is the worst I have ever witnessed in any split-screen game.

Depending on where your partner is in the level, the camera and split-screen will adjust to try to accommodate you both in terms of where each player is in the level. Sometimes this causes neither of you to be able to see where you need to go or lock onto what you need to in order to trigger the next event. The characters will even switch which half of the split they are on, so you can never rely on “your part” of the screen. In some instances, the camera and split-screen make the co-op downright unplayable. I had to make my son drop out of the game once, because neither camera would focus on either one of us, even when we were standing in the same spot. I have a feeling I’m going to have to tell him we can’t play this game together anymore due to these camera issues and the fact that it has caused a bit of motion sickness at times.

In fact, I’ve already told him that I’ll play LEGO Batman 2 with him whenever he wants as long as we don’t play Marvel Super Heroes together again. I’m very fortunate he’s left his Iron Man phase and is in a full-blown Batman phase.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Strategy Guide Review

November 13, 2013 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is one of the most fun LEGO games I have honestly ever played. The hub worlds are massive, the dialogue is hysterical, and the gameplay is so fun, you kind of forget how repetitive the game really is. The co-op is awful, but that’s a story for another day. Since it is a LEGO game, it has a metric ton of collectibles, in both the main game and in the hubs. As such, the strategy guide needs to be heavily detailed and accommodating for all of these collectibles, as playing the game in of itself is not that difficult. I am very sad to say that the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes strategy guide has too many typos, errors, missing information, and completely inaccurate information for it to be recommended one hundred percent.

LEGO guides in the past have always been set up with a main walkthrough for the story that contains information on finding all of the collectibles, even on freeplay. In this manner, everything about the main campaign is all in one place, so if you miss something in the story, you can easily find it as you run through again. Also, if you get stuck in free play, you see the story walkthrough hints to remind you how to get through a certain area once more. The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes strategy guide breaks these strategies up. The story is in one section, and the free play is in another. The strategy guide could have been so much more concise if it was all bunched together. Plus, it would have prevented additional page flipping as I had to remind myself what random thing I needed to build/trigger that I wasn’t seeing this time around.

Missing A5…

In regards to finding these collectibles, the maps provided are almost more important than the information on how to get a mini-kit or rescue Stan Lee. A few maps had collectibles swapped from their actual locations, and one map left off one mini-kit location completely. It wouldn’t have been as big of a deal if this particular mini-kit didn’t require players to destroy a certain number of items in the level in order to unlock the mini-kit. The locations of each of these breakable items were not listed in the written portion, so the maps have to be reliable for these. At least in this one situation, the breakable items were easy to find, but that’s still no excuse.

Then sadly, there is all of the inaccurate information. Some of the stud requirements for achieving True Believer status were completely wrong (sometimes by 10,000 studs), the Achievement/Trophy list has Trophies that do not exist and is missing Trophies that do exist, and there were a large number of typos in the walkthroughs and even in the design of the guide itself (two level 12s).

When it comes to hunting down those gold bricks, character tokens, red bricks, and wayward Stan Lees in Peril in the hubs, the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes strategy guide is spot on. Thank God it is too, because I do not have the patience to hunt down all 200 of the missions you need to unlock everything else. Plus, Stan Lee moves constantly. You save him in one area, he gets in trouble somewhere else. The strategy guide paints a nice path of where Stan Lee will go next. The missions in the hubs are crafted in the same way; you must complete a particular one to unlock another. With the strategy guide, I was able to plot out exactly where I was going to go with both the missions and Stan Lee so I could get through it in the most efficient manner possible.

The back half of the strategy guide is for the handheld version of the game, which is a completely different game in both format and gameplay. Each level is built upon a set of challenges, some of which you can do the first time through and some are better saved for free play. The strategy guide provided fantastic tips for beating each challenge, and it pretty much saved my Vita from being tossed across the room. The handheld version is definitely not as intuitive as the console, and I never would have gotten past the second level without it.

This is the only checklist I didn’t mark up.

The best part(s) of the strategy guide by far are the checklists. The checklists provide the best way to track exactly which gold bricks you have unlocked in the hubs, which Stan Lees have been saved, which character tokens you have found, etc., etc., etc. I normally hate writing in books, but you better believe I used my pen to mark off the gold bricks I found with each hub excursion.

The LEGO Marvel Super Heroes strategy guide is a mixed bag, and I really tossed and turned over what rating to give it. The inaccurate information disappoints me greatly, but it’s not enough to completely mar everything else the strategy guide does really well. Just be prepared to use the code inside to unlock the e-guide from Prima Games so you can get a bit more accurate info when needed.

SGR Rating: 3.5/5

Authors: Michael Knight and Nick von Esmarch
Publisher: Prima Games
Editions Available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

Monday Gaming Diary: OMG THE PS4 IS THIS WEEK!

November 11, 2013 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

It honestly seems like just yesterday I was watching the E3 pre-show press conferences for Microsoft and Sony and taking furious notes so I could prep news articles for my employers. November seemed like so far away to save up for the next-gen consoles, and OMG IT’S THIS FRIDAY.

This Friday, a brand spanking new PlayStation 4 bundled with Killzone: Shadow Fall will arrive at my doorstep. You had better believe I’ll be staring out my front porch waiting for my UPS ninja to arrive. It may be my husband’s birthday that day, but he will instantly be tasked with setting up the console in my office before he’s allowed to have any birthday cake. (I’d set it up myself, but honestly, I don’t want to jack with how he’s set up my office gaming TV. The amount of wiring is a bit scary, even for him.)

True, there won’t be a strategy guide for Killzone, which makes me sad for this site, but somehow, I will struggle onward. I will find a way.

Now I just need to find a way to get through these next four days. I hate when I have something I’m looking forward to at the end of the week, because it makes my work week so darn slow.

Thank you to everyone who voted in my strategy guide poll. The Wii U only received one vote for each game, and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 the half-assed HD collection got the over-whelming vote. I have to admit that I’m a little nervous delving back into that world, because to be honest, it’s a miracle I finished the first game at all with all of the platforming. I’m a much better gamer now than I was nearly 10 years ago, but it’s enough to still make me a little nervous about trying to manipulate Sora through the Wonderland. God I hated that world.

Tomb Raider Strategy Guide Review

November 7, 2013 By Keri Honea 1 Comment

I’ve had both the game and the strategy guide for Tomb Raider for awhile, but I was scared to try the game for a number of reasons. One, I was nervous it would have as much platforming as the Tomb Raider games of old, and two, I was pregnant when the game released, so I was strictly warned to avoid the game during that time since pregnancy makes me have a very sensitive stomach to violence. When the Extra Life marathon came up, I put Tomb Raider up on the poll of games to play, and it got a resounding majority of the votes. I am so glad that I finally played the game (even more glad that I didn’t play while pregnant), and I am thrilled I had the Tomb Raider strategy guide available to help me through this game. Even though my goal was to burn through the game and not explore every nook and cranny to its fullest, the Tomb Raider strategy guide was invaluable at helping me get through several sequences, especially when I got lost in a few areas.

When I first looked at the strategy guide while getting ready to play, I was honestly nervous that the strategy guide would frustrate me more than help me. The guide is really focused on walking players through getting everything the first time–challenges, collectibles, and optional tomb raiding. I have typically found that when strategy guides are constructed in a way to lead you through getting collectibles while playing through the story, it’s easy to get lost in what the guide tells you what to do if you are not collectible hunting. For example, the guide may tell you to journey down this one path that’s really out of the way and then guide you back to the main path via a shortcut. If you don’t go down that collectible path and you need help finding the main path, the strategy guide will only confuse you and not help. The Tomb Raider strategy guide was not like this at all.

It was incredibly easy to both instantly find where I was in the written walkthrough and then interpret the guide’s instructions to help get me on the right track. It didn’t matter if I was hunting that collectible or completing that particular challenge or not. I could still find where I needed to go in the middle of all the completionist info.

And thank God it was easy to look up help, because I got turned around a lot as I ventured forth with the determination to grind through the game as quickly as I could.

The strategy guide also helped me get through combat situations that got me stumped nine times out of ten. Of course, I usually wanted to smack myself with the guide after learning how to, as it was usually something simple and very easy. Shoot a fire arrow into the gas, kill everyone instantly before they can call for help. Oh, silly me.

Not to mention, a couple of the puzzles had me absolutely stumped at what to do. Since the guide was so helpful with the puzzles, I know I’m going to heavily rely on it to help me when I go back and complete all of the optional tombs.

And yes, I want to go back to the game at one point and actually hunt around for the collectibles, challenges, and the optional tombs. And yes, the Tomb Raider strategy guide will be at my side the entire time.

This may be really late in the game, but I still can’t recommend the Tomb Raider strategy guide enough. It’s the perfect companion for both the completionists and those who want to burn through the game. It’s not often you find a strategy guide that is good at doing both in the main walkthrough. It’s so good, in fact, I’m not sure how much I’ll use the appendices when I go collectible hunting.

SGR Rating: 5/5

Authors: Michael Owen and Kenny Sims
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions available: Paperback and Collector’s Edition
Acquired via Publisher

SGR Rating: 3.5/5

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