Mike Kennon - Strategy Guide Reviews

Modern Warfare 3 Strategy Guide Review

December 20, 2011 By Mike Kennon 1 Comment

It is time to strap up once again in something a little more modern when I review the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Limited Edition guide! Gather the intel I have collected through experiencing the game with the guide to see if you need it to stop the invasion.

This new outing in the Call of Duty franchise packs a lot of new game modes and gear. This guide will help catch you up to speed on the new weapons, gadgets, and how the new perk system works. This was good for me since before the game came out I avoided reading anything about it to help keep it fresh so I was out of the loop when it came to the assault, support, and other ‘Strike Packages’ that help you earn rewards for killstreaks and taking out enemy support. This was a plus to me as it was really well written and the art surrounding the information looks great.

Just like any other Call of Duty, this one of course has Intel to collect for trophies/achievements. I found the guide very easy to follow for finding all of them during the campaign. Some guides make you feel a little lost as to where the item actually is but this shows a picture as well as a good description.

Staying with the trophy/achievement subject, the guide also tells you about them and how exactly to get them in the best way. This is a huge plus from me as everyone knows I love my trophies! The less I have to look online to find info on attaining a trophy the better.

The multiplayer has also changed some this year with the added Survival mode. This has you taking on waves of enemies across every multiplayer level. Their’s maps and tips on how to go about equipping yourself each round and maximizing your money. The Special Ops missions are also detailed here and they have to be the hardest ones yet. Way harder than MW2 in my opinion and luckily this guide has tips for those as well. I have not made my way through all of them yet but I am a little over halfway and this guide has helped me get a lot further than I would have with these blood pressure inducing difficult missions!

One thing I notice about every Call of Duty guide I have gotten so far they seem to be the most detailed when it comes to the multiplayer. Every weapon has a recoil profile laid out and various information on the weapons and equipment help you build a class that’s top notch. I always like reading these just to know the ins and outs of each weapon. There is also a section detailing the challenges and how to complete them as well. These are great as most of them net you tons of XP and a neat Emblem or Title sometimes both!

Just like the Black Ops Limited Edition guide, this one comes with that cool map stand I called during the Black Ops guide review the “Shelf of Help” is ready to be deployed and help you dominate the competition as you learn all of the twists and turns of the maps. These levels seem more loose almost like a maze at some points so it is nice to know of the spots you are open at.

Overall I have to say that BradyGames has done it again with this guide. It feels like an encyclopedia almost with all of the information it contains. The ONLY thing I would want more of is some nice concept art. The pages are really well designed and the aesthetic of the whole book is great but some nice art at the end would have been cool. I definitely recommend this to anyone who is a Call of Duty freak and likes to read about guns…even of the virtual kind. I used the guide to beat campaign on Veteran and I have referenced it up until I got to the first prestige option on multiplayer.

I have to give this guide 5 Prestige Tokens Out Of 5.

SGR Rating: 5/5

Authors: Michael Owen, Phillip Marcus, Jason Fox, Arthur Davis, and Michael Fry
Published By: BradyGames
Editions Available: Paperback, Limited Edition
Acquired via Publisher

Dead Island Strategy Guide Review

November 1, 2011 By Mike Kennon 4 Comments

It’s the perfect time of year to go on vacation, so pack your bags and be sure to pack plenty of sun screen, swimming trunks…and hatchets. Because we are going to Dead Island! This place is HUGE so you will want a tourist guide to see all the sights on your stop here.

When you first get past the opening experience the game opens up and allows you to tackle objectives at your own pace so it is not as linear of an experience as most games. This is where the Dead Island strategy guide comes in, with a somewhat open world type game there are always collectibles and little “off the beaten path” easter eggs.

Going through the main quest and side quest walk throughs the guide will let you know when you are near an ID Card or one of the many facts and tapes in the game, of which collecting a certain amount of them of course leads to a precious Trophy/Achievement. Usually to get a better look at where a collectible is on an open world game, you have to look it up on YouTube to see it in game and get a better idea of where it is, but the guide shows you a map and a picture of it in the game making it easy to snatch it up!

There are four characters each with their own skill tree and abilities, and the guide tells you all about them and the play style they take on. I have never seen a way to reset the stats on the points you spend so reading all about the skills in the guide helps to make a decision on what to dump points into.

The maps for each act help give you bearing on where to go as it is easy to get lost and wander off when trying to go after collectibles. Before using the guide I found myself being distracted running around trying to search every single room for a card or fact. With the guide I was able to get every collectible in the first play through so on subsequent play throughs all I had to do was enjoy the game.

Now on to the downside of the guide. I never really had to use the guide for quests as the game tells you plainly where to go and even throws you a GPS guided dot system. This is not the guide writers fault, but it does make the guide less useful for knowing how to complete a quest and more useful for collectibles/maps.

In Dead Island you get to craft your own weapons, kind of like Dead Rising 2. There are quite a few combinations you can throw together to make devastating zombie killers and this guide does tell you what the ingredients are, but it does not tell you where you can get these items. The stores that sell items are often randomized but there are places you can go that always have for example duct tape or batteries and wires and so on when loading that zone. They could have thrown in that “Two rolls of Duct Tape are always found in the Lighthouse Tower repair room beside the repair table and a spool of wire directly across from the table.”

One other negative I have for this guide is that there are no extras. Usually with every guide I have reviewed so far there are concept art galleries, developer commentaries and just neat little facts about the game. This guide has none, but I will say the artwork and illustration of the guide are very well set up, I would have just liked to see some extras though.

Overall I would say the guide is not mandatory reading, but it does help for collectibles. In my opinion I would have rather used this guide for the collectibles than looking them up on the Internet. Reading about the character classes was useful too, but if you do not care about stuff like that or hoarding collectibles for a Trophy/Achievement and just play the main quest line, then you will not necessarily need this guide. I give it 3/5 zombie hands.

Guide Authors: Tim Bogenn, Michael Owen, and Kenny Sims
Publisher: Brady Games
Editions Available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

Duke Nukem Forever Strategy Guide Review

August 2, 2011 By Mike Kennon Leave a Comment

I’m here to review strategy guides and chew bubble gum…and I’m all out of gum. I am back from Duke-Vegas to review the Duke Nukem Forever: Balls of Steel edition strategy guide. Duke Nukem has always been a cult favorite who dropped off the map for quite some time, but he’s back to deal with the Alien Scum who have kidnapped his babes.

Trekking through Duke’s world can be dangerous on its hardest difficulty, but with some steroids and some beer, anything is possible!*

*please do not take steroids and beer together as I am sure it’s quite dangerous unless you are Duke himself.

Going through the first couple of pages, the guide does a nice job of telling you the history of Duke Nukem. If you are under the age of 20 or so you probably never heard of Duke Nukem before his latest game. No problem there, though, as the chapter “There And Back Again: A Duke’s Tale” has you covered on that. It chronicles his history from 1991 to the infamous delays and ultimately the revival of the game as well as all of the characters in the latest game. I always like it when a guide takes you through the history of a series.

The thing I liked about this game initially was the ability to pretty much interact with anything. Whether it is a toilet, sink, or whatever, if it has a switch to it, you can pretty much interact with it, and some of them provide an “Ego” boost thus making your health bar larger (sounds like a Beavis and Butt-Head joke). The guide does a good job of showing you which interactions earn you that precious Ego Boost you will need by the end of the game.

With all of the great stuff I have liked about the guide so far, here is where I find it not as necessary. The game’s objectives are simple enough and even glow and the levels are very linear so really there is no need to back track, and you cannot get lost unless you really are not paying attention. What ended up happening was instead of following the guide for what to do next I was following it to see exactly what Ego Boosts I was missing since some are obscure. Not the guide-makers’ fault, though, about the game being so linear, but I still wanted to point that out.

The guide does do a good job of letting you know what Trophies/Achievement opportunities are coming up too, which is always a plus for me. There was an annoying trophy in which you had to get 280,897 points for an Ego Boost and one million points on a pinball table for a trophy. The tips it provided helped me get a trophy that I was ready to come back to on another playthrough.

The main area I needed the guide for was the last boss, which can be quite frustrating on its hardest difficulty, but there are some tips/pictures provided to help. After a few tries with the guide’s details, I was able to overcome the boss and get that nice shiny trophy for beating it on “Balls of Steel” difficulty.

There is a section for multiplayer, but the multiplayer component is pretty shallow so don’t expect anything mind blowing as far as tips and tricks go, but it does show you the spawn points of armors and weapons throughout the levels.

The end of the guide is actually what I ended up liking the most, the “Art From The Vaults” section weighs in at over 100 pages of concept art and comments from the development team. I am a sucker for concept art and this collection is pretty nice and gives you a behind-the-scenes style look at what they were going for with this game.

I really liked the presentation of this guide, but unfortunately this is one of those games that does not need a big detailed strategy guide to complete it any differently other than finding all of the Ego Boost moments and the tips for the boss fights. If you are a Duke Nukem fan though such as myself I can still recommend the guide for those who want a collection of art from the game and a history of the series. But for those who do not even know who Duke is or they don’t care then this guide doesn’t really offer much for them.

SGR Rating: 3.5

Guide Authors: Joe Epstein, Doug Walsh
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions Available: Paperback and Limited Edition
Acquired via Publisher

Call of Duty: Black Ops Strategy Guide Review

June 28, 2011 By Mike Kennon 1 Comment

It’s time to strap up and lace your boots; we’re going in and this time it is with the Call of Duty: Black Ops Limited Edition guide! Real soldiers never enter the battlefield without pre-hand knowledge of the layout and intel of the missions details, this guide will help you with both and then some!

I prepared to play through the game again to properly review the guide because it would be unfair for me to expect you to go into battle without properly testing the tools myself! That’s like me telling you “this vest is bulletproof!” without testing it. That’s no fun unless you’re getting hazard pay.

I am going to break this review up into two parts, the single-player and multiplayer. First let’s start with the single-player campaign. I started this game up again on the games hardest difficulty “Veteran,” so I could really test the guide and see how it helps in situations where you need it most. Starting off with the first few pages the guide has general tips on how things work in Call of Duty: Black Ops such as the obvious advice on taking cover as well as descriptions of the different types of weapons.

Going onward with the missions you are greeted with the name and details of the mission as well as a nice top-down 3D view of your starting point and the point you need to get to. The thing I like about this guide is that it tells you what weapons you started with and when you eradicate certain enemies the guide will tell you what weapon they are carrying and if it is worth it to switch out over your current loadout. I also really like how in most situations the guide advises you on the best place to take cover for that wave of enemies and what to look out for. I completed it already on Veteran when the game launched but I found the guide to be helpful for spots I used to have trouble with where now I know exactly how many enemies are coming and what weapons they planned to use on me and where I needed to be. It really helps to know those details, and I am glad they were able to provide them throughout the game!

I had some trouble with one of the stealth missions where I was going for a trophy where you do not get caught but after referring to the guide I was able to get the trophy as well as silently put the enemies to sleep.

Moving on to something some of you might know, I go for on these games are the Trophies. Yes those satisfying little *dings* of accomplishment you get. I am pleased to report this guide will tell you when you are coming up on a Trophy/Achievement and how to go about getting it which gives this guide some cool points from me. When you are going for the Intel Collecting Trophy/Achievement the guide has that same top-down 3D map as you move through the rooms and shows you where the intel is located. This is really handy so you don’t have to worry about looking for a separate or better guide as this one tells you everything you need to know about the Trophies/Achievements and collectibles.

There are some Trophies/Achievements in the game that make you do the mission a certain way (getting into the relay station without being caught, escape the ship with 2:15 left on the timer, guide the squad through an outpost without them getting killed), if you don’t know exactly what you are doing or if you are coming up on it the guide is sure to tell you how to get the Trophy/Achievement prize on the appropriate levels.

The guide also features a comprehensive tips and strategies section for the Zombies mode. I have never been good at the Zombie mode solo but using some of the tips and the maps it provides have made me a better player at it, for example where to turn the power on and rooms and points of interests and where the Mystery Box spawns in which is a box that can randomly give you some very awesome weapons. I found the maps to be quite helpful as to find out where to make my stand during each round.

Now we move on to this franchise’s probably most popular mode: the online section. Looking through the tips it gives you on Perks and Loadouts are always interesting as well as information on every single weapon and attachment. The guide of course also features maps of every level as well as the hot spots in them and tips on every mode and suggested loadouts to use, but the real surprise with this guide is that it comes with an extra bit of help in terms of a foldout “Multiplayer Tactical Recon Stand.” This thing is truly neat; it stands up and lets you flip to the level you are currently playing and it shows you depending on the gametype the objectives you need to get to as well as the player spawns, flag bases, and everything! This was something I personally have not seen before and it really surprised me how much trouble they went through to produce it at such a high quality. This is not just some cheap poster, but a cool and useful tool if you find yourself wanting to know all of the ins and outs of a level while playing it and feel like a pro.

Overall I could not find one thing to complain about (believe me I tried!), so far the two “Collector’s Edition” guides I have reviewed from BradyGames (God of War III and this one) are both top-notch and deserve a place on your “Shelf of Help” (I need to copyright that) where all of your guides go.

*Guide was provided by Keri at StrategyGuideReviews.com, played through on Veteran Difficulty gathering all Intel as well as scooping up any situational single-player trophies that I missed on my initial playthrough.*

Authors: Thom Denick, Phillip Marcus, and the Sea Snipers
Published By: Brady Games
Editions Available: Paperback, Limited Edition
Acquired via Publisher

SGR Grade: 5/5

God of War III Strategy Guide Review

April 6, 2011 By Mike Kennon 1 Comment

Authors: Michael Lummis, Peter McCullagh, Stacy Dale, James Manion, & Samuel Chartier
Publishers: BradyGames
Editions Available: Paperback and Ultimate Edition
Acquired by Purchase

Do you like Greek Mythology? Perhaps you enjoy a little bit of a revenge plot dabbled in action and adventure? God of War III features all of this along with a lengthy and full fledged adventure! But before you head out on this quest you will probably need some help and this is where the God of War III Collectors Edition guide makes itself known. Putting your enemies away has never felt better and now this guide tells you exactly how to do it with grace.

One of the fine points of this guide is its beautifully embossed hardcover, complete with Kratos’ likeness on the front and some beautiful images inside. The features in this book are really well done; it covers everything from the history of the story, maps, walkthroughs for each act, and an extensive collectibles guide, and it even features concept art with behind the scenes comments of the process by the development team. There are also concept images of the main characters as well as their story and a complete bestiary of all types of creatures/enemies in the game.

Starting off with this guide it really tells you everything you need to know about the game. This is one of those rare, really well-written guides that if you follow it you WILL get everything accomplished in the game. I am by no means the best video gamer in the world but accompanied by this guide, I was able to beat this game on my first play through on its hard difficulty (Titan) as well as collect every collectible I needed for their respective trophies.

Now that brings me to my next topic of this guide. It has what myself (along with Keri) think every guide should have, and that is an extensive Trophy/Achievement section. This guide tells you every single trophy in God of War III along with its value and how to get it along with other various details about the trophy itself and what part of the game it’s in. I myself am a “Trophy Hunter” on PS3 so I value that kind of information in a guide; it helps me earn that ever-so satisfying *ding* of a Platinum Trophy popping!

Those really tough boss fights keeping you away from getting to the next point in the game? This guide tells you strategies and weapons to use on each type of enemy and boss as well as their weaknesses, so next time you take them on you will know exactly where to bring on the hurt! It really helped me for some of the later fights in the game that can be a “pain in the Pandora’s Box.”

Another neat thing this guide does is when you do get to that boss fight, it gives you their back story along with pictures of them to really get an idea of their character. It also really gives you this feeling of really knowing everything about the game and its universe, even if you have not played the previous two entries in this series.

As you proceed through all of the acts of the game, this guide tells you every encounter and which enemies there are to deal with and how to dismantle them, which makes you feel like you know the game inside and out. When you go through each room, the guide tells you if there are collectibles in the room and how to reach them along with a map. There are also moments where you will probably need to read exactly how something is done but you don’t want to really spoil it completely, but this guide offers “Small Hints” and “Big Hints,” so you can try to figure stuff out for yourself unless you really get stumped and cannot continue on your journey.

Those features along with all of the art, story background, enemy information as well as the breakdown of how everything works, how to acquire every trophy in the game, and the overall design and composition of the book, really makes me recommend it to anyone who wants to pick up this great game and know everything about it and achieve everything you can. What better way to top off the “Ultimate Edition” of God of War III than with the Ultimate Edition Strategy Guide?

SGR Rating: 5/5

SGR Rating: 3.5

SGR Grade: 5/5

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