Strategy Guide Reviews

A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides

Initial Impressions of White Knight Chronicles Strategy Guide

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Sorry Darksiders fans, but the guide got pushed aside for now due to the release of White Knight Chronicles, a JRPG I have been eagerly waiting for for well over a year.

The game itself has been…interesting to say the least. I’ve never played a combat system like it before, and I’m still trying to figure out why I created an avatar for it to have no real relevance to the story. Maybe it will come to me later. But for now, it’s just a created being that I have taught all magic to and kept it in the back for healing while I control the main protagonist and his—I can’t believe I’m going to say this—MECH.

But as for the guide, I’m not a huge fan of its design. It doesn’t flow very well and its blocks of text make it somewhat difficult to quickly find out 1) where you are and 2) what information you need. But considering that the guide’s design earned the Uncharted 2 strategy guide a 4/5, and this guide was written by the same group, I’m not surprised.

As for what advice it gives, I have to say that when I do use the guide, it has been most helpful. As I said earlier, the combat and skill system is quite strange, and the guide gave very sound tips for manipulating the system. It’s also a lifesaver when it comes to prep, from basic battle prep to boss prep. However, I do find one thing about the prep to be funny: it expects your levels to be quite low at certain points, and my party has had far higher levels than the guide predicts. On the one hand, it makes me wonder how hard the writers made things on themselves, but on the other, such low expectations are nice, because they tell you things like, “Yulie is probably around level 3, so don’t go too far north until she’s level 6.”

I haven’t used the guide at all for boss fights yet, because I’ve found the bosses to be somewhat easy and straightforward. But when I read the strategies after the fact, I laughed at how complex the strategies were. They would tell me to order this character to do magic or make sure I had this combo learned, and I was able to get the job done with little struggle. Maybe it’s because my levels were higher than suggested, or maybe the writers really did make things hard on themselves.

It’s going to be an interesting ride, for both the game and the guide, methinks.

Uncharted 2 Strategy Guide Review

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Strategy 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:

Upon first glance of this guide, it looks massive and a bit overwhelming. It’s over 300 pages long, and if you knew nothing about the game Uncharted 2, you would think that just by looking at the book that the game will take one 30-40 hours to complete. I finished the game in thirteen hours, and if I had taken more time to actually look for all one hundred treasures, I bet it would have taken me fifteen or sixteen hours.

From that information alone, you can guess how much fluff is packed into the guide, and I’m not talking about the appendices. The guide goes out of its way to include several pieces of historical and factual information about the objects Nathan Drake encounters in his adventure, including the Cintamani Stone, the prayer wheels in the ice temple, and Shambhala itself. Every time Drake finds a new weapon, it is detailed a bit as well in its own decorative box and if it has any historical significance, it’s also listed. It’s almost like the guide was designed to look like Marco Polo’s diary, cluttered with images and notes.

While this is fantastic from an educational point of view, and it makes the guide look very nice in the inside, this design takes away from how easy it is to find information in the walkthroughs, because the walkthroughs are broken up all over the pages to make room for the artwork and informational boxes. As a result, you could easily cover ten pages in fifteen minutes of gameplay, but you could add another five minutes of searching time to figure out where you are in the game.

That said, the walkthroughs themselves, when you find your spot in the game, are nearly flawless. They provide well written descriptions and well devised strategies to keep Drake alive and/or find his way through a crazy platforming puzzle. In fact, the platforming puzzles are where the guide really shines. In addition to a written walkthrough detailing where Drake should go and what he should look for, the guide also has a screenshot with a directional map plotted out to show players where Drake needs to jump and climb. These were lifesavers in the ice temple section, where to me, it was NEVER obvious where to go.

I do wish that the walkthroughs that were not about the platforming though had as many telling screenshots. It provided stellar screenshots showing where each treasure was, along with a written walkthrough for each, but it didn’t provide this same service with the shooting walkthroughs. For example, in the tank chase scenes, a few screenshots depicting where Drake should try to take cover or run to would have been most helpful, as the writing for those sections was a little vague. But then again, if these sections had all these desired screenshots, the pages would be even more cluttered than they already are.

The appendices have everything a user could possibly want, from charts of medals to treasure locations to the game’s store inventory. It also has quite a unique appendix that details all the possible types of cover Drake can use. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in a guide before. I’m not sure how useful it really is, but it’s interesting to see all the various objects Drake can use to hide behind.

All things considered, the guide is extremely well done. It really helped this newbie to the shooter genre survive her first attempt, not to mention potential hours of frustration in trying to figure out all of the platforming puzzles in those temples. Writing-wise, BradyGames created another masterpiece. However, due to the cluttered journal design, I have to give it a 4/5.

Blog Dump: Uncharted 2 completion and Darksiders Strategy Guide

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I had two goals this weekend, gaming-wise, and both, I’m happy to say were complete successes. Well, almost.

The almost comes from Uncharted 2. I only had three chapters left to play in UC2 and with my kid-free day I had on Saturday, there was no excuse to not finish the game. Sure, something could have frustrated me to the point of not completing it, but fortunately, there were no helicopters in the end. There was a crazed lunatic hyped up on *spoilerspoilerspoiler*, but he was cake compared to the helicopters. But yes, I did finish the game, and I’m so happy that I did. I must thank my two shoulder-angels, MattG and Eric for talking me into not giving up. The frustration was really worth it in the end, and I got to see one of the best games in existence (yes, this one may top Lost Odyssey) through to the end. Not only that, but I started and finished my first shooter. I’m so proud of me.

So where is the almost? Well, for some reason, I never got a completion trophy from the PSN when I finished the game. I did complete the game on Normal, for those wondering if I kept the difficulty level down low.

I hadn’t had the game on Easy since the helicopter scene, but I guess completing the game with 75% Normal isn’t enough for a trophy. I suppose that the only way I will get a trophy now is to either complete each chapter on Normal (which I’m not sure that will even do the trick) or play through the game again on Normal without changing the difficulty. My early switches are the only things I can think of as to why I did not receive a trophy. I’m not sure why I want the trophy as proof I finished the game so badly. Back in the day, we had no real way of proving anything. Yet, here I sit, wanting my proof. Now do I want it so badly I’ll hurl myself in front of that infernal helicopter again? Ha! No. The above picture will have to suffice.

After I finished UC2, I wiped away a tear (yes, I did get a little choked up at the ending and the overall story), ate some lunch, and then hopped into my car to pick up Darksiders and its corresponding strategy guide at GameStop. I didn’t look at the guide until I got home, but I was stunned and very, very pleased to see Doug Walsh‘s name on the cover. Not only did I love his work with the Crisis Core strategy guide, but he’s also agreed to grant me an interview. If this guide is half as great as the Crisis Core guide (without the obsession with Costly Punch, of course), it will receive a rave review.

I only played a few hours of Darksiders, because believe it or not, I was feeling a little gamed out at that point. G4TV gave the game a 2 out of 5, mostly for shallow hack-and-slash gameplay, but I like shallow hack-and-slash gameplay. So far, I haven’t found it to be that shallow, but maybe when War gets some of his powers back, it will be stale. For the moment though, I’m having fun with it. I have to say though that UC2 kind of spoiled me a bit with its great graphics. I got spoiled with the cut scene and game sequence graphics looking seamless and identical. Darksiders is definitely not seamless and definitely has two sets of graphics running. A little sad, but I have to remember that not all games can visually be as great as UC2. Well, they should be, but I supposed they can’t be.

Stay tuned for my long overdue blog post about Spirit Tracks and the Uncharted 2 strategy guide review!

Witty Writing in Guides

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Uncharted 2 is widely known for its intense action, creative platforming, and its witticisms from Nathan Drake. When writing the guide, the BradyGames team tapped into Drake’s wit and deposited little pieces of hilarity gold throughout the guide. More than once have I laughed out loud to something these writers wrote, such as “Whoever says that you can have too many grenades is just wrong.”

I’ve started marking these quips with post-it notes, and I plan on going back through the book and rereading it for any other laughs I missed. Once I mark them all, I’m going to immortalize them on this website and then reread other guides for points of wit.

I’m not sure how I missed some of these before, but I want to make sure I don’t miss them in the future and the writers will get the homage that is due. Whoever said writing a guide has to be dry and straight forward?

BradyGames Author Blog – Doug Walsh

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No, he’s not writing for me, but he did write a nifty little piece on BradyGames’ facebook page. For those who do not have a facebook account, here is the quoted blog:

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving here in the United States and though the weekend has come and gone, my feelings of shame and discomfort persist. Why do I do this to myself every year? Why can’t I ever say no? Every November it’s the same old story–I tell myself this year will be different, but then I spot something I haven’t tasted in two years and my gluttonous ways get the better of me again. The first bite is always wonderful, then the reality sets in: I simply have too much on my plate.

You’d be excused for thinking I was talking about holiday deserts, but I doubt I have to explain the analogy to my fellow gamers. No, I’m referring to the annual crush of premium releases that pile up this time of year and, like clockwork, simultaneously work to drain my wallet and sleep schedule. This year it was the three-pronged attack of Modern Warfare 2, Forza 3, and Borderlands that proved too tempting to resist (not to mention the XBLA release of Gyromancer). And though I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with each of them, our relationships have barely moved beyond initial introductions.

I recently completed an interview about my upcoming strategy guide to Darksiders and one of the questions I was asked dealt with the pros and cons of being a strategy guide author. The cons are few, but I had forgotten the biggest one. As a gamer, you’re pre-programmed to get excited about the fall releases and the blockbuster titles that dominate the forum discussions. You rush out and buy them just like so many others do. It’s a twitch-reflex, actually. October comes, you swipe the Mastercard. November arrives, you reach for the Visa.

Now imagine you’re a strategy guide author. You get home with those shiny new games and the doorbell rings. It’s a courier. In exchange for your signature, he’s willing to hand over a beta of one of the biggest titles of 2010. A title so big I’m not at liberty to mention it by name. You see the conundrum. There is only so much time and energy one can spend every day playing games and the strategy guide author lives in a vacuum, enjoying unreleased pleasures in silence while the games du jour scream shrink-wrapped insults at us from the shelf of forgotten games.

One game I can discuss, and happily, is Darksiders. I have to admit to not having followed the development of this one too closely, but it had my full attention within minutes of putting the disc in. At the risk of stepping in a pile of journalistic hyperbole, I have to say that Darksiders features some of the most entertaining boss battles and level design I’ve experienced in years. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s not everyday that I shout with glee at my monitor but that’s indeed what I did on several occasions. I don’t want to spoil anything but let’s just say playing as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse has certain perks–especially once you’re reunited with your horse. Darksiders releases later next month, just in time to help you ring in the New Year.

As for that secret project I’m working on, maybe next time…

Of course, I’m wondering about the secret project and if it could be in reference to a guide coming out soon. Would it be for a hit game like Mass Effect 2 or a game not many people are that gung-ho about, like Avatar or The Saboteur. OR could it be Final Fantasy XIII? That would make my day. Doug writes nice guides.

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