Strategy Guide Reviews

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Monday Gaming Diary: Stack of Shame Progress with…Batman

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Batman Arkham Asylum

Believe it or not, I have reviewed the strategy guide for DmC: Devil May Cry. However, my MacBook Pro decided to DIE once again last week, effectively leaving me without a computer that has my images, my docs, my data, you name it. I really need to get better about storing things to the Cloud. Or I can have a $2000 computer that actually works like it should. I will hopefully get it back this week with minimal financial damage. If it’s the motherboard once again and they try to charge me for replacing it within 3 months…oh, everyone should feel sorry for the Apple Store Genius who will unfortunately incur my wrath. Since my laptop would not turn back on at all, I couldn’t even back it up before taking it in, a fact that scares me beyond belief.

But let’s get to a happier topic, shall we?

Since my jovial staff are working on reviewing strategy guides releasing in February and I have nothing on my plate until March, I figured this would be a perfect time to chip away at my stack of shame that sadly keeps growing no matter how much I work on it. I feel like I should name it Sisyphus. At least, I feel like Sisyphus when I look at it.

I’ve started 2013 with the one game I have promised numerous people I would tackle first with my stack of shame: Batman Arkham Aslyum.

After podcasting cohort Ross added Arkham Asylum in his Top 5 Stealth Games, I was instantly put on guard. I know Batman doesn’t kill anyone, and I know he has to move in shadows to get his takedowns, but I never heard once from anyone that the game was considered a stealth game. Both Ross and Blake pleaded with me that it’s not really a stealth game, that it’s more of an action game with stealth elements, even moreso than the Assassin’s Creed games. Despite my reluctance, I gave it a chance, and by the time I officially had control of the Caped Crusader, my hands were really sweaty.

I’m not that far into Arkham Asylum (long story), but what I have played has felt like more of a puzzle game, almost like Portal, than it does action or stealth. I say Portal, because with Portal, you had to be stealthy on occasion when in a room filled with turrets. You had to use the layout of the room to successfully take out each turret and hopefully not be seen by any of them. Chell can take bullets as well as Batman can. Sure, at least in Portal the turrets didn’t charge after you, but they were often so well placed, they really didn’t have to.

Every room I enter feels like a new puzzle, even the areas that offer no encounters, just exploration, as most of these areas have plenty of Riddler’s Challenges. It’s unlike any game I’ve played in recent memory, which is a great thing. As much as I love my shooters and my RPGs, it’s always nice to find joy in something completely different.

I really need to stop exploring so much for these Riddler’s Challengers and collectibles if I’m going to get through this game and hopefully one other game before March Madness begins. I’ve been told I can beat it in less than a week if I burn through it, but uh, that doesn’t seem to be happening. I get distracted way too easily.

This is why I have avoided Skyrim like the plague!

Monday Gaming Diary: Why I think I’m going to pass up The Last of Us

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The-Last-of-UsI have loved Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series, and after seeing their trailer for The Last of Us last E3, I have been greatly intrigued by the game. It’s a zombie-like game without the zombies, and it does not seem to be action-based at all. Instead, it appears to be more survival- and stealth-like, in that Joel and Ellie have to constantly sneak across areas in their journey to avoid infected humans and even other surviving humans, who have no problems stealing and killing for food and supplies. Each trailer I have seen with these encounters shows slow, strategic, and thoughtful planning on the player as Joel and Ellie are maneuvered to ideal positions to take on the threat optimally. As a result, each encounter comes across as incredibly tense to me, the viewer. I cannot imagine how I would feel as the player.

I’ve made it no secret how I feel about stealth games, and while The Last of Us definitely does not have the stealth caliber of Hitman, but it invokes that tense feeling enough to make me want to stay away. I’m fairly certain it’s a game I would greatly enjoy watching someone play, but definitely not play myself, even with a strategy guide to help ease the stealth planning.

I played a bit more stealth games in 2012 than I usually do, and I’d be lying if I said that hasn’t affected my opinion. I’m done with feeling tense while I play games. Playing games is the one hobby I can really do on a regular basis that is relaxing and enjoying, so no, I really don’t want to feel tense while doing something I’m supposed to do for fun.

I’m sure another writer on staff will be happy to take up the burden of reviewing the strategy guide for The Last of Us if there is one, so nobody worry about that too much. Of course, the game doesn’t release until May, so there’s plenty of time for me to see something that will change my mind.

Are Online Wikis a Threat to Print Strategy Guides?

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In the last year or so, friends have been sending me numerous notifications of this site and that site now offering online wikis or strategy guides for video games. The notification is usually accompanied with a question about the state of print strategy guides, whether these wikis will make my “job” of reviewing guides more difficult, or whether I’ll have this “job” at all in the future. I think the most recent news was from Steam, which now has user-created guides available.

While online guides may be for the most part free, and while they can be easily amended and/or corrected unlike books, I don’t see online strategy guides or even the new trend of online wikis really posing a viable threat to print strategy guides.

Print strategy guides are available the day of game release.

This fact is possibly the biggest advocate for print strategy guides. When a publisher secures the rights to develop a strategy guide, they give their writing team a copy of the game as soon as is humanly possible so they can work their fingers to the bone playing the game in its entirety in a matter of days. Most often with online guides, the contributors have to wait until the game’s release before they can even start to work on them. As such, if a gamer gets stuck or has a question within a day or so of the game’s release, that person cannot go to the Internet for an answer quite yet. Sometimes quick walkthroughs surface within the first couple of weeks of a game’s release, but most often, you will have to wait about a month for a complete guide to publish online.

IGN used to be able to produce online guides the day a game released, as they used to have dedicated strategy guide writers working on them. Now that they’ve moved to the wiki format, they may open up the wiki for contribution as soon as a game is announced, but the wiki itself is rarely complete for two weeks after the game hits store shelves.

I’m not saying this is always the case, as I’m sure anyone can throw out an exception to the rule, but this is what I found when IGN moved to the wiki format. I used to review IGN’s online guides because they were so thorough and so complete the day a game launched, and I hoped to continue that when they became wikis, but my job was impossible. When it became a sea of contributors that could constantly change a single preposition on a whim, I had to stop trying to review them. When they stopped being complete as soon as I got a game in my hands, I no longer saw a point. What makes this any better than what GameFAQs has to offer, other than the possibility of more screenshots?

Print strategy guides are proofread.

With the anyone-can-contribute scheme that IGN wikis, GameFAQs, and even Steam has, proper editing, much less proofreading, is thrown out the window. Some online strategy guides are incredibly hard to follow due to poor spelling, poor grammar, poor sentence structure, etc. etc. etc. I have, on occasion, when using an online guide, rewritten the paragraph so I could understand where this writer was trying to lead me. Sometimes this requires me reading it out loud. If I’m already lost, the last thing I need is a guide getting me more lost.

With the wikis, I believe anyone can edit another’s work, but the point is, these contributors aren’t always professional copy editors. With print guides, a professional copy editor gives the content a once-over to make sure there are no run-on sentences, the punctuation is correct, the terminology is consistent, the paragraphs are well structured, etc.

This fact may not be important to some people, but as someone who does make a living as a copy editor, this is incredibly important to me.

There’s just something about physical media over e-books.

I use both print strategy guides and online guides when gaming, as sometimes, sadly, there isn’t a printed guide for the game that I’m playing. Every time I use an online guide, whether I’m using on from IGN, GameFAQs, or even elsewhere (it depends on which website has the most thorough guide at the time I’m needing one), I find that I have a harder time looking for what I need than I do with print strategy guides. With print guides, I use at least two bookmarks–one for where I am in the walkthrough and one for the collectibles, if not yet another for a side quest section. If I use an online guide, I’m constantly using the search function on my laptop or tablet, which does not make for easy “flipping back and forth” between points.

Also, with print guides, I can check off which collectibles I’ve already picked up so I can avoid confusion in the future. One reason why I love Prima’s LEGO strategy guides so much is because each book has a massive checklist in the back for all collectibles. You have no idea how handy that has become. When I had to use an online guide for the LEGO Harry Potter games, I often printed the collectibles lists so I could mark off which ones I already had. I would have rather paid for a book than used my printer paper and ink.

While we’re undoubtedly in an era where e-books and e-readers are becoming far more appealing than owning physical books, for many people, holding an actual book is more aesthetically pleasing than using an e-book or reading a website. If there comes a day when all print media becomes officially dead and all strategy guides are in a digital format, I may change my thoughts.

But for now, I’m still finding print strategy guides to have an edge over their online counterparts.

Monday Gaming Diary: Does the devil cry because he’s sad or bored to tears?

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dmc-devil-may-cry-screenshots

I finally procured a copy of DmC: Devil May Cry this past week, and I finally found time to play it over the weekend. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I have never before played a Devil May Cry game. I played the demo to DMC 4 repeatedly when that released, but if memory serves, I never bought the game because a friend gave me Lost Odyssey as a gift and that consumed the next several weeks of my life. So all I knew of DMC was that it was a hack-n-slash game, I remember the graphics being super pretty, and I remember having a lot of fun playing. Yeah, I’m not having that same experience with DmC.

Even though I am well aware that Bayonetta was called a chick version of DMC, since I played Bayonetta first, all I can see are the incredible similarities. That said, it doesn’t copy Bayonetta enough, because Bayonetta had enough unusual and over-the-top flair as well as a completely insane, WTF-is-going-on story to keep me interested and going. With DmC, the story is laid out almost instantly. I’m sure there’s a twist coming, but as it is presented now, I’m not that interested in pursuing what the twist may or may not be.

As someone who used to really love hack-n-slash games, I don’t understand why I feel so bored with this one. The combos aren’t as fun, but maybe they will get more fun later as I unlock more moves for Dante. The platforming also makes me sigh quite often, especially when it reminds me so much of the platforming in Darksiders and Darksiders II. I’m most likely not being fair with my feelings since DMC games came before any of these others, but it’s a reality for me at this time.

I also could care less about the points system. I didn’t care about it in Bayonetta, and I still don’t care about it. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t have enough unique style points for you so my rank has dropped, but did you ever think I ever thought I could be in a section of the leaderboards that matters for any game in existence?

Most likely, this type of game just isn’t for me. Maybe I’ve grown away (not grown up, just away) from hack-n-slash games. I guess I prefer to shoot things into oblivion instead of stylishly slicing them to bits.

However, I really think that I could overlook all of this if the story grabbed me at all. That’s one thing that has never changed; I’ll always be a story-driven gamer.

Monday Gaming Diary: DmC is popular

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DmC: Devil May CryWhenever I know I’m going to review a strategy guide, I typically preorder the game. However, since I rarely get my review copies the day of game release, for DmC: Devil May Cry, I decided to forgo preordering and just pick up the game whenever the guide arrived. I never have problems picking up games in store the week they release, as no one seems to be hardcore in my neighborhood. I stopped preordering games–save Collector’s Editions–before, and I never had an issue then. Seems silly to preorder a regular game and have it sit around for a few days doing nothing.

My strategy guide review copy arrived on Friday, so I headed out to GameStop that evening. No games in stock. That was a first. I’ve never visited my GameStop and seen any games out of stock, including Mass Effect 3. No problem, I’ll go to BestBuy tomorrow. Out of stock. Went to a different Best Buy with same results. I was told that the closest Best Buy that had maybe one copy in stock was an hour away.

So my weekend did include prodding a devil into possibly crying, as disappointing as that was. I’ve had to put in a request at BestBuy for one to ship to store, which will take 3-5 days. It took a lot for me not to roll my eyes at the news.

Maybe this is good news in the long run, as I’m still not feeling completely up to par. I feel like I should start something from my stack of shame in the meantime, but then again, why get involved in something else now when another game will be here within days? Eh, I may just use this as an excuse to continue to be lazy.

Oh and by the way, the strategy guide for DmC is not nearly as fat as the picture on Amazon makes it out to be. I was half disappointed and half relieved.

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