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Disgaea 4 Strategy Guide Review

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Disgaea 4 strategy guide reviewI have enjoyed the Disgaea series ever since it first graced my PS2. Anyone that has engaged in this game knows that it looks simple at first, but the game quickly turns into an abyss of fun and dedication with 100+ hours being a “normal” playthrough. It still amazes me that BradyGames took on this game and made a great guide to help players along.

I found myself utilizing this guide vastly differently from others. Usually I will have the guide open and at my side for quick referencing while I play. But this time I was reading, strategizing and planning before a battle, and then pushing the guide aside during the game play. There were even days I would just sit and read the guide while on my lunch break. There is a good explanation for this and it has a lot to do with how this book is laid out. While the first few pages help break down the controls and menu system, it is the game mechanics section that I spent a good amount of time combing through and taking notes on. This portion contains valuable info from the basics of character types to in-depth breakdowns of how to best use the item world. There is so much knowledge crammed into this section that repeatedly reading it becomes necessary to really bring this game to its knees.

I also found myself heavily relying on the last two portions of the guide, which were character/monster breakdowns as well as a full listing of equipment. The character and monster section was splendid, because it details, in a decent amount of depth, all the playable figures throughout the game. Damage, attack, health, level requirements, skills and so much more are easily found right here. BradyGames was even kind enough to include what conditions are needed to be met in order to unlock characters like Laharl or Etna. These same types of charts show up in the weapons and armor section, thus becoming a great aid in determining the best gear selection for each party member, as well as if it is worth the time to dive into the item world to level any given piece of gear.

Finally there is the main bulk of the guide that contains the actual walkthrough. Both the story mode and post-game battles are laid out in similar fashion. A picture of the map, Geo Block locations, and enemies are all displayed in an easy to understand form. Any Geo Blocks are listed as to what they do, and enemy stats are provided including their weaknesses. There is a small blurb addressing tactics and that is it. It may not sound like a lot, but the info that is provided is extremely helpful when it comes down to party selection and devising a plan of attack for each stage. The map overview is also helpful as the in-game camera can make things needlessly difficult at times.

As I mentioned before, I actually used this guide as more of a piece of study material as opposed to something to walk me through every stage of the game, and it was great in this role. I was able to hone my party for each fight, pick weapons I knew I’d keep, and save myself the headaches of needlessly going into the item world to level things I would just quickly dump. If I had this guide for the first two games (and the PSP counterparts) I probably would have saved myself several hours of frustration. If you dig the Disgaea series and plan to play number four, then you’ll want the Disgaea 4 strategy guide!

SGR Rating: 4/5

Gears of War 3 Strategy Guide Review

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Gears of War 3 Strategy Guide ReviewThe Gears of War franchise is not known for being overly complicated in terms of gameplay, and Gears of War 3 is no different. However, those dead Gears sure do hide their COG tags in some quirky spots, and some of those bosses seem to take longer than they should. Here is where the beauty of the Gears of War 3 strategy guide comes in. As a result, you will find all the collectibles in one go and cut down on potential frustration levels with some odd sequences, thereby opening the doors for finding more time for multiplayer, Arcade, and 4-player co-op modes.

I played Gears of War 3 twice over the last week–once with a friend and once by myself. When I played with my friend, I only consulted the guide once because 1) he didn’t care to stop and look for every collectible and he wasn’t going to restart a chapter if I missed one and 2) I was really curious to see how different playing the game would be with our strategies vs. the guide’s strategies. The answer is: we made it very hard on ourselves.

I dreaded fighting certain areas alone because my partner and I had some struggles with them; struggles that I thought could only really be easily overcome when you had another real brain playing along with you. While I’m convinced that the game had some amped up difficulty with the more live bodies playing along with you, I owe a lot of my success to the guide’s strategies.

For example, I would never have figured out how to break into the Locust base using stealth in Act 3 without the guide. The only way to do it is with the Hammerburst rifle, something Marcus didn’t have. The guide suggested that I should try to trade weapons with Dom, which was something I had no idea I could even do. That was definitely not in the tutorial! Once I swapped out the Hammerburst, it was a snap. When I played co-op with my friend that night, I told him to let me handle the stealth part, and he thanked me profusely. He even admitted that he wouldn’t have thought of using the Hammerburst (and why would you? It’s a least favorite weapon).

The same goes for all of the collectibles. I never would have looked in some of these odd places for half of these collectibles or even a couple of the COG tags. In other instances where I did notice where to pick up collectibles, I couldn’t have gotten them because I missed where to find a hidden Silverback. Taking time to hunt down all of these collectibles added a bit of time to my solo-run campaign–especially when I realized too late I missed them and had to restart a chapter–but it is nice to have it done without needing to go back and replay some chapters. Now I can save additional replays for Arcade mode and playing 4-player co-op.

Page from Gears of War 3 strategy guideThe strategy guide’s design was absolutely flawless in presenting not only the guide’s strategies, but also callout notes for the collectibles, extra tips just for co-op play, and tips for Arcade mode (see image to the right). Thanks to the placement of the notes for collectibles and their coordinating screenshots, there is little doubt as to where these elusive tidbits are hiding. Even if you get a little confused as to their exact location, there are always the maps to at the start of each chapter to show the way–which also nicely pinpoint all weapon caches and hidden Silverbacks. In addition, any game artwork that was included in the main walkthroughs was kept separate from the rest of the content, so it was never fringing upon the text or strategy screenshots. It’s another fine example of how artwork doesn’t have to impede on the overall usefulness of a strategy guide’s design.

The Gears of War 3 game was a fine sendoff for Marcus and Dom’s story, and the Gears of War 3 strategy guide couldn’t have done it any better justice. This is the perfect accompaniment to the game for completionists and for hardcore collectors of the series. The guide is beautiful on the outside and inside and contains sound strategies. One really can’t ask for anything more in a strategy guide.

SGR Rating: 5/5

Authors: Doug Walsh, Phillip Marcus, and Michael Owen
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions Available: Limited Edition and Signature Series
Acquired via Publisher

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine Strategy Guide Review

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Space Marine Strategy Guide ReviewWarhammer 40,000 Space Marine is a fast-paced shooter/hack-and-slash combo game that is quite linear and leaves little room for exploration. So what’s the point in having a strategy guide?

Actually, there’s plenty.

Space Marine moves so quickly that it is very easy to be overwhelmed by the literal hordes of enemies that overrun you, and its unusual gameplay of constantly alternating between melee and range weapons can be equally as overwhelming. In addition, since it is so linear, it’s easy to miss all of the collectibles, which come in the form of servo skulls–floating red skulls that leave audio recorded messages (I never said it made sense as to what they are). Normally collectibles aren’t all that important to the game, but in order to truly understand the gravity of the situation at Graia and learn about the deep character development for the supporting cast, finding all of these creepy skulls is a must. Not to mention, if you’re a Warhammer 40,000 fan at all, you’re going to want the Space Marine strategy guide just for all of the bonus materials.

The main walkthrough itself is designed well, but it’s only written okay. The start of each chapter presents a table of all the servo skulls available, the pages of the guide they can be found, new weapons to be obtained, new enemies to be encountered, and what Achievements can be earned. Much to my disappointment, no maps were included. The scenery does change quite often, so each chapter would require quite a few maps, but it’s still a little unforgivable that there are no maps whatsoever. Oftentimes, the writing is a little confusing as to exactly where a servo skull or desperately needed weapons cache is hiding. A map would have eliminated this confusion. Maps would have also been very welcome for the last chapter that required lots of platform jumping to find the main path.

Space Marine Strategy Guide page layoutAt least there are plenty of screenshots that do a halfway decent job to showing the way, and the pages’ layouts help point out exactly where you will find every servo skull.

The walkthroughs for the boss fights and supreme horde overloads–really not a better name for them–may not have strategies that will work for every player style, but at the very least, they do prepare you well for what unspeakable horrors are coming. They also provide great tricks and tips for switching the styles of combat and weapon recommendations. For example, I wanted to use a the heavy bolter for one of the final battles since it served me so well in other battles, but the guide suggested to use the lascannon. After one round of realizing that it’s really hard to dodge with the minigun and it doesn’t do as much damage as I thought, I conceded to the guide’s advice and discovered its wisdom.

The guide’s appendices are fairly thorough, but I would have liked to have seen some advice for some of the odd Achievements. For instance, one of the Achievements requires that you use only a stalker-pattern bolter and a chainsword for your weapons for one chapter. I would have liked a recommendation for which chapter this is best to try, especially since you can replay any chapter at any time.

With lore as deep as it is in Warhammer, you can expect that the bonus features of the strategy guide will be just as deep and enriching, and you would be right. All of the bonus artwork, especially the concept artwork (as shown on the scanned page to the right), is gorgeous and right up the alley of any Warhammer fan. However, for someone like me who knows nothing of the Warhammer universe, the bonus features presented a whole new and fascinating world to me. The history of the Space Marines was examined, the main characters were thoroughly detailed with background information, and a bit of the Warhammer 40,000 lore was explained. None of it was necessary for understanding the game, but it made me far more interested in the franchise than I ever would have been otherwise. The background info for the main characters also gave me a deeper appreciation and understanding for what was going on behind-the-scenes for the characters, especially with Inquisitor Drogan.

Much like the game of Space Marine itself, the strategy guide appears to be something easily overlooked and unneeded, but it doesn’t take long to see how much of a hidden gem it really is. If you absolutely must find every collectible, master every weapon, and destroy every enemy as quickly and as brutally as possible, then the Space Marine strategy guide is a definite must. If you are a fan of Warhammer 40,000, then owning the guide is simply a no-brainer.

SGR Grade: 4.5/5

Author: Michael Knight
Publisher: Prima Games
Editions Available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

Gears of War Strategy Guide Review

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Gears of War Strategy Guide ReviewI can already hear my friend @GreedyRaven yelling, “OLD GAME IS OLD!” in response to me even mentioning this game, but give me a break; I got into the Gears franchise a little late, okay? Even old games and old guides deserve reviewing.

This guide in particular became very handy when I fired my husband as my partner. Suddenly, the game became quite more difficult, even without Dom dying all the time (although, he kind of still did anyway–that guy has a death wish). On top of that, those COG tags were stuck in some strange places–or I guess I should say, former Gears died in strange places. So, if I hadn’t dredged up this book on the Amazon Marketplace, I most likely would have rage quit Gears of War shortly after I fired my partner–unless I swallowed my pride enough to beg him to come back.

While Gears itself is very straightforward, it’s not always easy to figure out where to go next thanks to its dark levels, shades of brown, and bad lightning. Even though the maps in the Gears of War strategy guide were also just as brown, I could easily pick out where I was, if I was heading in the wrong direction, where I needed to go next, and what COGs or weapons were available. In large, dark areas like the Stranded’s village, the Imulsion Factory, and the Fenix Estate, these were more than greatly appreciated.

The walkthroughs themselves were impeccable. Every time I followed the guide’s suggestions, I had very little difficulty–a/k/a I or Dom didn’t die as quickly–getting through the sequence. Or, if I used my own methods, I would find that my method that worked was coincidentally the same method the guide suggested. The best piece of advice came from the strategy for fighting the Corpser. The guide said that if you followed its instructions, you could defeat the Corpser in less than a minute, right before the Wretches appear to make your bad day even worse. I never could finish off that Corpser before the Wretches arrived and killed Dom. Once I followed this strategy, that ugly thing was gone in no time.

Page of Gears of War strategy guideMost impressive was the overall design and layout, as depicted in the image to the right. As you can see, the walkthrough paragraphs are neatly laid out, the COG tags are clearly marked and separated from the walkthroughs, special tips are segmented away from the walkthroughs, and there was even enough space for some game artwork that wouldn’t detract from the text. Once again, Brady Games has shown that guides can be decorative and artistic without impeding on function.

In addition, the writers were kind enough to throw in some humorous tips to help brighten up your dark journey. For example, one of the tips to the right suggests that you shoot at the lights above the Locust, as then the Kryll will swoop down to quickly feast on them. As the guide puts it, “This conserves ammo and it’s fun to watch!” Yes, yes it was fun to watch.

The guide also included small sections on the multiplayer aspects of the game AND strategies for co-op play, depending on the difficulty level that you choose. These aren’t half as in depth, but they really delve into how to fully take advantage of playing with a human over an AI for certain situations in each Act. With the main walkthrough already present, this was a nice touch that they didn’t have to include but is always appreciated.

As for a real bonus section, the guide includes interviews with the Epic Games developers. I’m not sure what it would have meant to me if I had played this game back then, but reading back on how inexperienced all of these famous devs were–like Cliff Bleszinski (CliffyB)–made them all the more endearing. It was a little fun to see how much all of them have progressed and grown from just a few years ago.

If you’re looking to get the most out of your very brief adventure with Marcus and Dom, the Gears of War strategy guide will not disappoint, unlike some of the game’s AI. For those who need every COG tag, who want to fight through the hordes of Locus without a partner, or need some assistance killing bosses on Insanity mode, you definitely won’t regret picking up this guide. And hey, if you just like to collect Gears memorabilia, then the interviews and the concept artwork should be more than enough to entice you to add this book to your collection.

SGR Rating: 5/5

Author: Doug Walsh
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions Available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

Dungeon Siege III Strategy Guide Review

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Dungeon Siege III Strategy Guide ReviewDungeon Siege III is a creation of Square Enix and Obsidian, although neither worked on the first two games. There wasn’t a lot of hype for the game, which could be partly Uwe Bolle’s fault for producing a horrible movie about the original game, which is a shame because the action-RPG is actually quite fun. Despite many people’s misgivings about Obsidian’s hands in the game’s development, Dungeon Siege III turned out to be a beautiful and highly enjoyable game. Prima Games’ strategy guide for Dungeon Siege III turned out to be the same: beautiful and highly enjoyable.

The Dungeon Siege III strategy guide implemented my two biggest requirements for any strategy guide beautifully: maps and easy-to-follow walkthroughs that include sidequests.

Until I realized that I could turn off the auto-camera for the mini-map in my upper right corner, the maps in the guide were a godsend. Since the mini-map turned whatever way I was facing, I got turned around a lot, especially in the underground areas (*coughdungeonscough*). At least with the maps in the strategy guide, I could see that I needed to head west and then just follow the marks on the mini-map compass. The maps were clear, easy to follow, and all chests were clearly marked. Can’t really ask for much more than thatn.

Dungeon Siege III strategy guide pageAs for walkthroughs, they were 100% spot on. DSIII is an action-RPG that is well, quite linear, so while it’s fairly impossible to not find where you’re supposed to go to advance the story, it is very possible to miss out on sidequests. And what is an RPG without loads of sidequests? A very short story that will be next to impossible to complete. If that isn’t enticing enough, there’s also a Trophy/Achievement for completing all of the sidequests along with completing the game. Here is where I put the strategy guide to the test, because if I missed out on that Achievement, well, I probably don’t need to paint that picture for you.

Long story short, I snatched up that Achievement with ease, and I owe a lot of it to the guide’s help. Numerous sidequests were in areas I didn’t think of going–even while exploring–and at times, I never would have found the goal of a sidequest due to its obscure location.

Another element the game focuses on is this idea of Influence with your party members. Players gain influence with other characters by the decisions they make, whether they are plot decisions or dialogue choices. Influence with particular characters rewards players with specific stat bonuses, such as Will or Agility. Every instance of where influence can be gained with a particular character is presented clearly within the cut scene sections of the walkthroughs, thereby making them very easy to find (see the scan of one of the pages to the right).

Following this idea of allowing players to pick which partymembers they want to “attach” to, DSIII also allows for players to customize their characters to fight the way that they like to play. As such, the guide does not advise players as to which character to select or which abilities to focus on for particular characters. In addition to the heavily detailed character sheets presented in the front of the guide–which list the characters’ abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and the like–the guide makes general suggestions for how to select a character’s proficiencies and talents, based on the player’s experience with playing. For example, one of the tips early on in the walkthrough advises newcomers to DSIII to focus on defensive and healing abilities until they are comfortable with the play style of the game. That’s really as far as it goes as to ability planning, which I particularly liked because I never felt that I was choosing the “wrong” character or the “wrong” abilities. The strategy guide never once said, “Use ___’s _____ attack,” allowing players to freely play the game how they prefer instead of using the author’s method as the only one. (See Final Fantasy XIII strategy guide.)

I’ve played games that allowed such deep character and party customization, but it’s not often you find a guide that follows suit and doesn’t try to pigeon-hole players into one character and one party.

Another point worth mentioning is that like the strategy guide for The 3rd Birthday, the Dungeon Siege III strategy guide proves that you can have an incredibly artistic design for the pages without detracting from the guide’s usability. As you can see from the page featured above, all space of the page is filled in with artwork, mostly screenshots. However, it’s done in a manner that doesn’t impede upon the guide’s text or walkthrough screenshots. It’s still very easy to pick out the walkthrough text that you need, and the screenshots aren’t sacrificed in terms of size or clarity to make way for the gorgeous artwork and even developer commentary (which is a fabulous bonus, by the way). Strategy guide designers, please look at both of these strategy guides as standards when trying to make the guides artistic.

With all of these fantastic elements, it pains me to point out that the Dungeon Siege III strategy guide grossly overlooked one pretty important appendix that all guides for current-gen consoles should have: a list of Achievements/Trophies with explanations and tips on how to obtain them. Even if all of the Trophies/Achievements are story markers and very obvious, every guide should contain a list of them at bare minimum.

As a result, this guide cannot be considered perfect. Highly recommended, though, to everyone looking to get the most out of Dungeon Siege III, especially those who are fans of the franchise and die-hard completionists.

SGR Rating: 4.5/5

Author: Stephen Stratton
Publisher: Prima Games
Editions available: Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

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