Assassin’s Creed III Strategy Guide Cover Revealed

September 21, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I can’t lie. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful cover for a strategy guide come across my email ALL YEAR. Piggyback Interactive has really done themselves proud with this artwork. Normally, the hardcovers are very subtle, with raised Assassin’s insignias on white. Those were always gorgeous, but it’s going to be hard to top this one.

I may be reviewing this strategy guide with gloves on so I don’t ruin it with fingerprints! Let’s hope that we can judge this book by its cover, and that the strategy content inside will be just as fantastic as the cover itself.

Guild Wars 2 Strategy Guide Review

September 20, 2012 By Chris Nitz 1 Comment

Reviewing a guide for any MMO is a tricky bit of work. These types of games constantly change and so info in the book quickly becomes outdated. There is also the issue that almost all of these games guide the player along lower level areas while introducing tidbits of the games various mechanics in small chunks, which most commonly happens between levels 1 to 20. What BradyGames has done with their Guild Wars 2 strategy guide is make a textbook for the MMO 101 class.

BradyGames starts this guide out with some lore on the Guild Wars 2 universe, and I enjoyed this greatly as I never fully played the original Guild Wars or any of the subsequent expansions. This portion gave me some history on world events, the races and their trials and tribulations, and how the world got to be so crazy. I actually read this portion twice just because it intrigued me and brought me that much closer to the game world itself.

From there, the strategy guide dives into the basics of multiplayer online games. I am talking these are basics down to what leveling is and slaying monsters works. Anyone that does not know what pulling or kiting is; this is the section to study. For those that this is not their first go-round in an MMO can skip right on by, as there is nothing new or earth shattering covered here.

The guide then moves into each profession, along with what weapons unlock what skills. I strongly recommend looking through this section before embarking into creating a character as this is a decent glimpse into how each profession works and what their roles in group battles are. This actually saved me a bit of time as I was able to see what I wanted to play and what fit my play style best. Each skill includes a blurb on what it does along with any cool down to consider. Do note that cool down times change as this game ages and profession balances drop into place, so do not always expect this info to be 100% accurate.

As with all MMOs, there is plenty to do for people that just want to make in-game items. Sadly, this is where the guide drops the ball with a measly six-page spread dedicated to helping players get their craft on. Sure, making stuff in GW2 is not overly complicated, but in my eyes, it deserves a bit more than this.

The guide then dives into the world and monsters players can encounter while playing. I have to be honest in that I never used this section. NCsoft did a wonderful job of making each area somewhere I just roamed and explored. Outside of some vista points and strategically place points of interest, the game itself encourages players to roam around and participate in quests and world events. I had a hard time trying to stick to some sort of script while I played and so I just closed the book here and immersed myself in the scenery while slaying countless enemies. From a new user point of view, this does provide some insight into how the game works but again, it is just some repetition of what the game already provides through various help screens and tutorials.

BradyGames does their best to enlighten a gamer on how player-vs-player works, but this is something that is only mastered through countless hours of play. The basics of how to conquer a fortress and rudimentary concepts of staying alive on the battlefields flow from page to page. This is a starting point that newcomers should look through, but the master sensei decrees one hour of practice every day to be an necessity on the stage of world dominance.

We finally arrive at one of the most used portions of the guide, and that is the maps of each area. I found myself here more than any other as I worked for the 100% completion bonuses of each area. While the guide does a nice job pointing out Asura Gates, points of interest, and quest hearts, it lacks showing where each vista point is. I do not need a breakdown on how to obtain every vista, but knowing their general location would help. The lack of these on the maps is a letdown and does diminish their value some.

If you are totally new to the world of Guild Wars, or have NEVER touched an MMO before, then theGuild Wars 2strategy guideis going to be of some use to you. However, veterans may find the maps handy but those are also freely available online and some even include videos on how to obtain the harder points of interest and vistas. I found the lore portion to be great and highly entertaining, yet I also found the crafting section to be weak and useless. I recommend that anyone considering this guide to head to their local bookstore and flip through the pages before dropping hard earned money on it as this is made for a very niche audience.

SGR Rating 3/5

Authors: Michael Lummis, Kathleen Pleet, Edwin Kern, Kurt Ricketts
Publisher: BradyGames
Editions Available: Collector’s Edition and Paperback
Acquired via Publisher

State of Vita Strategy Guides

June 13, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

A few weeks back, I pondered on why there have been no strategy guides for Vita games. I had my assumptions, but this past week at E3, I got my answers. I met with all four strategy guide publishers of whom I am in contact with last week, and I asked each of them about guides for the Vita. Two had one answer, and two had another, but both made perfect sense. Just so you know, I will not be naming who said what, so don’t even ask.

One camp said that they would love to write guides for Vita games, but they can’t produce books simply because they want to write them. Even though some of the developers are just as interested in strategy guides for their products as the guide publishers are, that’s not enough. The problem lies in the retailers not being willing to carry the guides for sale. If they can’t get stores to sell the books, then why create them?

I can’t fault the retailers for this logic at all. It’s well known that Vitas aren’t selling, well, anywhere, so if retailers are having a hard time selling Vitas and Vita games, why would they add Vita strategy guides to the menu? It doesn’t make any good business sense. When Vitas and games start leaving the shelves, then retailers will be more willing to take that risk.

The other camp has no interest in producing guides for handhelds, period. They see using handhelds as a means for getting your gaming fix while traveling. If you’re going to travel, why do you want to pack heavy book with you? Would you want to get it out in a cramped space on a plane or in the backseat of a car? How often do you travel, and how many people who travel often play with handhelds anyway? To these publishers, it’s not worth the time and investment to publish a guide for something people only use when traveling.

I can’t fault that logic either. I haven’t touched my Vita in weeks until I went to E3. It will probably sit in its cradle until I go to San Diego Comic Con next month due to my current deadlines with console games. My 3DS has been a dust collector until E3, and I only brought it there for the Street Passing. I’ll take it to SDCC for the same reason.

If we need guide assistance with Vita games, it looks like we’ll have to rely on the online route for awhile. It kind of sucks for traveling, as I can’t access the internet while on a plane (and I refuse to pay for in-flight Wi-Fi), but them’s the breaks.

No Strategy Guides for Vita Games…What Gives?

May 16, 2012 By Keri Honea Leave a Comment

I have been absolutely shocked at the complete lack of strategy guides for Vita games. It’s not as if all games for the Vita are direct ports of other games, puzzle games, or games meant for brief bursts of play, such as many 3DS and DS games. The Vita has had an RPG and an Uncharted game, both of which typically have strategy guides. Not even Unit 13, which could use a strategy guide for those of us who hate freaking timed missions, has one. From the looks of my two most anticipated upcoming games, Resistance: Burning Skies and Gravity Rush, neither will have strategy guides.

Does this mean that Silent Hill, Ragnarok Odyssey, and Dragon’s Crown won’t have strategy guides either?

Strategy guides for handheld games are definitely nothing new, and I don’t believe that there haven’t been any guides simply because the Vita is so new. I remember that the DS and PSP both had games with guides fairly early on. Well, let me backtrack. Nintendo launched the DS with mostly platformers, which, at that time, traditionally did not have strategy guides. As for the PSP…well…the poor thing hardly had any games for months.

That said, though, neither the DS nor the PSP had a launch lineup that the Vita has had, with the caliber of games the Vita has and will have in such a short time. As such, it seems crazy that the only strategy guides for these Vita games can be found in the online universe. In other words, neither the DS nor the PSP had a launch game like Uncharted, and it absolutely baffles my mind that Uncharted: Golden Abyss does not have a guide. Not having an Uncharted guide seems like such a sorely missed opportunity for both guide collectors, Uncharted fans, and guide publishers’ wallets. I mean, have you seen how much strategy guides for Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune sell for?

I admit that I know nothing regarding the behind-the-scenes work to secure a license for writing and publishing a video game strategy guide. Most likely, it’s a complete pain in the ass. But, maybe it has nothing to do with the licensing and everything to do with the predicted market for the Vita and Vita games. Maybe the publishers decided not to take a chance on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on publishing a strategy guide for a game on a system that isn’t predicted to do well. As the Vita still hasn’t done well–thanks to a high price at launch and a fizzle-out with game releases–perhaps publishers are in no hurry to take that risk in the near future.

Whatever the reason, it’s very disappointing. IGN wikis and GameFAQs will have to do for now. Ooh, that made me shudder.

Discourse on Strategy Guide Organization

April 13, 2012 By Keri Honea 2 Comments

I just like this comic from VGCats.

This morning I woke up to text messages from one of my closest friends griping about the strategy guide for Final Fantasy XIII-2. She was having difficulties with finding out how to unlock one of the gates in order to progress through the story. She swore the guide was zero help, which puzzled me, because I thought the guide was extremely helpful in finding pretty much everything. After some back and forth, I had asked her if she looked in the Tour Guide section for the answer, as the guide is split up between the main walkthrough and a tour guide of each era. Sure enough, she found the answer there, and was close to livid that all of this information wasn’t glomped together.

As I said in my review, I was initially disappointed that all of this information wasn’t together, but the more I played the game, the more I was pleased that it wasn’t all crammed in together. If it had been, the walkthrough would have been an overload of information, most of which you wouldn’t need until much later in the game. I believe that that would have forced me to flip through the guide more than I already did, and it would have additionally forced me to take more time away from the game to read through what I needed to.

She pointed out that I did not like The World Ends with You strategy guide whereas she did, so we obviously look for different things in guides. That made me scratch my head, because my big beef with that guide was that it narrated everything that happened in the game, down to actual dialogue. With so much text I didn’t need–because OMG that’s why I’m playing the game–I had to take more time away from the game to weed out what I was looking for.

What was fascinating to me about the whole conversation were the differences in our preferences for strategy guide organization and what we considered to be taking us away from the game. She seems to want everything bunched together so she doesn’t have to flip through the book, no matter how much she has to read through. I want the guides to require as little reading as possible in order to find what I’m looking for. While I am normally not a fan of guides breaking up the walkthrough sections, in the case of Final Fantasy XIII-2, I think it was done perfectly in order to cut down on the massive amount of unneeded information.

Obviously I’m not going to be changing my preferences, because they are my preferences, but I am going to rethink how I discuss a guide’s organization. Maybe a warning or two for those who prefer the guide to be organized in a lump sum or spread out. It’s definitely given me something to think about.

What are your preferences? Do you have any?

SGR Rating 3/5

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