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Halo: Reach Strategy Guide Review

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Halo Reach Strategy Guide by BradyGamesby Pete Davison

A new Halo game is always a big deal, and the release of Halo: Reach was no exception. Acting as a prequel to the Master Chief’s games, Reach tells the story of Noble Team, a squad of Spartans on the titular planet battling to save their homeland from the incursion of the sinister Covenant. But Halo has always had two sides to it—the story-heavy single-player campaign and the chaos of online multiplayer. Reach offers more possibilities than ever before for a wide variety of fun, making it an enjoyable game for first-person shooter fans of any persuasion.

With all these possibilities, then, it’s clear that a strategy guide for Reach needs to be a fairly hefty document. And BradyGames certainly haven’t disappointed on that front; weighing in at 400 pages, the Halo: Reach Signature Series Guide offers a wealth of knowledge that every fan of Halo will find both useful and interesting. [Read more…]

Print v. Online Strategy Guides: Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

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Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep IGN GuideI keep waffling about doing comparisons between print guides and online guides, but something that IGN Guides guru Colin Moriarty said on the PlayStation Beyond podcast about print guides swiftly changed my mind. He commented that no one wants to pay for print guides anymore when online guides are free. While I think that Mr. Moriarty has a valid point, I also think that print guides have a far higher value than online ones, and it goes beyond the fact that it’s easier to look at a book than a computer screen while playing a game.

So let’s take a look at IGN’s guide for Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, shall we? [Read more…]

Kingdom Hearts Birth Strategy Guide Review

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Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Strategy Guide ReviewStrategy Guide Review Policy:

My goal for these strategy guide reviews is not to discuss whether one needs the guide to complete the game. Every gamer has different strengths and skills, and one may need every bit of a guide, another may need to look up information for quick assistance once, and another may laugh at the idea of ever using a guide, even the online freebies. My goal is to determine whether the guide is 1) helpful in the first place, 2) does it encompass gamers who need hand-holding as well as those who need a quick reference and 3) how much information does it really have.

Review:

BradyGames’ strategy guides for the Kingdom Hearts franchise have been a bit spotty. The first guide was outstanding, the CoM guide was pretty good, the KH2 guide was virtually worthless, and the guide for 358/2 Days was a bit hit or miss in terms of understanding what it was trying to say. But Birth by Sleep brought in a different writer–Casey Loe–so there has been some hope that this guide will be as good as its early predecessors.

Fortunately, it is. [Read more…]

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