3 comments about StarTopia: Prima's Official Strategy Guide.

1. First, let me start off by saying that I own and have read this book throughly.

   This Official Stratagy Guide presents a walk-through for each of the game's 10 levels, and has several chapers covering:
   1 . basic buildings and their uses
   2 . research and their relative times to complete
   3 . what pisses aliens off, what makes them happy
   4 . agriculture bio-deck, and what plant produces what items

   The down side of this, is that 90% of what is in this book, you will have discovered by playing the game. What I was looking for in this stratagy guide were specific statistics.

   I wanted to know exactly how the Z-Ray scanner Item effects Sick Bay performance. The book does not even mention the Z-Ray scanner.

   There are other specifics, such as "just how useless are those Image Views, Bio-Lamps, and Chronometers"?
   I wanted to know what quantifiable effect they would have on the alien populace. But guess what? This book sheds no light on any of those items at all. As a matter of fact, if you were to just read this book and not play the game, you would never know that those items even existed.

   Want to know how well the bench effects happines? Too bad, its not in here.

   Want to know the optimal placement for the garbage cans? Nope, it's not in here either.

   (I've found that putting garbage cans around the Dine-o-Matt and in front of the stores cuts down on about 90% of all garbage. The residents seem to drop garbage after leaving the Stores, or after using the dine-o-matt. They seem to be less inclined to drop garbage elsewhere, but you won't find that in the stratagy guide... Though, I may be wrong because I have no numbers to back me up, just my own personal experience playing with the game.... It would have been nice if the stratagy guide actually presented some real stratagy, so we could have a definite answer.)

   In conclusion, this book is very vague on specifics, and is basically just a walk-through. I find the walk-through included in this book totaly and utterly useless. Often they present stratagies that I found were not the best over-all stratagy.

   One should expect that an Official Stratagy Guide present the most optimal and efficent stratagy and to provide detailed information on how all the game mechanics work. Unfortunately, this book provides neither.




2. Although perhaps the price is a bit high for a book which needs serious work in terms of layout, the Prima guide to Startopia has all of the basic information inside it that a person would need to get going towards victory in Startopia: what plants grow in what soils on the biodeck, and what do they produce; what do the different races prefer for food/entertainment/biodeck environment; what are good strategies for the missions... etc.

   It is clear that the book was put together to match the release of Startopia, but they probably should have put off things until the game was closer to completion. Nothing is different in the guide than in the game, of course, but it seems as though the writers did not spend too much time playing with different possibilities themselves (a few simple strategies for dealing with emergencies, for example, are not covered, even though a person would figure it out rather quickly). One other problem is that the tech tree is not to be found in completion in the book. It appears in the game, and the evolution of your technologies is pretty obvious, so probably it wasn't neccisary anyway, but having it in the book would have given it a sense of completion.

   All in all, this book is really only a "must" if you don't want to go through and discover everything yourself, which only takes time (there is nothing in the book a person cannot find out themselves). However, having everything in one place and in print is still very convenient, which may be enough of a reason to buy it.




3. I believe that the title says it all. I mean, wow!

2 comments about 007: Agent Under Fire (Xbox & GameCube) (Prima Official Game Guide).

1. WHEN I FIRST HEARD ABOUT ELECTRONIC ARTS HITTING THE DRAWING BOARDS FOR A NEW BOND GAME, I WAS LIKE," NO WAY! I HAVE TO GET THIS"!
   SO ON THAT ONE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS DAY I'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER, ME AND MY FAMILY PACKED UP AND DROVE TO OUR GRANDMA'S HOUSE, AND SURE ENOUGH, MY WISH CAME TRUE. AND WHEN WE CAME HOME, I WAS SO EXCITED THAT I PUT IT IN MY PS2, AND GOT READY FOR SOME GUN-SHOOTING ACTION. THE GAME WAS SO SSWWEETT!!! THEN WHEN I HEARD A GUIDE FOR THE GAME WAS COMING OUT, I SAID " I'LL DEFINATLY NEED THAT ". THE GUIDE HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEATING THE LEVELS,MULTIPLAYER,WEAPONS, AND MORE. I HIGHLY RECCOMEND THIS TREASURE. GO BUY IT, YOU WON'T BE DISSAPOINTED!!!



2. This is a great guide for anyone who is stuck in Agent Under Fire. It has very detailed walkthroughs, detailed maps, and multiplayer strategies. It also tells you good ways to get gold and platinum medals. Best of all, it covers all three systems, Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation2! This is a must-have guide for anyone that owns the game.

No comments about EOE: Eve of Extinction (Prima's Official Strategy Guide).

2 comments about Max Payne(tm) 2: The Fall of Max Payne Official Strategy Guide for PS2 & (Brady Games.).

1. Reviewing a strategy guide for a game you are lukewarm about is one of those piquant experiences. Especially when the guide is better than the game. Unfortunately, Max Payne 2 failed to grab me. I didn't find it particularly difficult either. If you go everywhere and try everything you will eventually figure everything out. Except for maybe the last 15 minutes.

   So here is a guide, put together by Tim Bogenn, that is a clear, easy to use walkthrough. One could almost fault it for a lack of emphasis on strategy, since it simply tells you what to do each step of the way. The only source of confusion is that Begenn chose not to provide maps, and sometimes the pictures aren't as graphic as they should be.

   But if you need a guide, this will carry you through. It includes information on the advanced modes and weapons as well. Since there are exactly 12 weapons there really isn't anything left out. So this is a first for me - a five star rating for a guide to a game which I only gave 3 stars. Go figure!




2. Very thorough guide to all the steps you need to take to master this violent noir thriller.
   
   Detective Max Payne returns to fight the crime world. Love comes calling, as the gumshoe's heart is under siege as well this time.
   
   Helped me beat some of the hardest puzzles in the game. I turned to the guide whenever it seemed like I was stuck at an impossible spot.
   
   Max is one of my favorite video characters. This game is a rare intelligent thriller. If you're tired of the same rocket-launcher binges against the same monsters and aliens, get into the murkiest world of all: the criminal mind.

No comments about Soul Calibur? II Official Fighter's Guide Limited Edition.

1 comments about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Prima's Official Strategy Guide).

1. The T.M.N.T. strategy guide has codes from page 93 to page 95.
   Thats probably the only thing this guide is good for though!
   I mean,it doesn't help you at all!!
   Anyway,this is what you should do when you see it in the stores:
   1.Grab a piece of paper and a pen.
   2.Pick up the strategy guide.
   3.bring everything,even the guide into the bathroom,don't pay for it.
   4.write down all the codes that you want.
   5.return the guide to where it was before.
   Now you get all the codes for free!!!!!COWABUNGA!!!!!
   sincerly,
   kenny

2 comments about Throne of Darkness (Prima's Official Strategy Guide).

1. This is one game I despised, this was a Diablo rip-off, of the worse kind, got rid of this game and book after plodding through a couple of levels, stupid, stupid game!!! What the heck are you supposed to do with blubber, whoever designed this game should bury his head in the books and get a different job, because game design surely isn't his talent.



2. The book is awsome, the game is very unique the above person has a strange yet seemingly RETARDED taste.Hell that person didnt even give the game a chance, Its not a rip off from diablo, just cuz its 2-d iscometric and it has spells and swords dosent meen its a d2 rip off so the book reaaaaly helps.Beleive me try the game its cheap, escpeacailly if you play online, you get TOTAL freedom to go where you want when you want, when you get tired of crafting items, leveling up, joining other clans,collecting metals for parts,maxing out or hacking spells to awsome numbers, discovering new places in ToD's HUGE world then you can even say somthing, that person barely saw the beggining of a game, which shows a TRUE loser of a player, the book was great the game was great if you like ultima online or diablo 2 you will like this.

5 comments about Shadowbane Official Strategy Guide.

1. It's been said that the worst kind of ignorance isn't not knowing things, it's knowing things that aren't so. In that context, the Shadowbane strat guide spreads ignorance. It is riddled with errors. Some are cut-and-paste errors, like spells with the wrong description or the trainers' spell lists that duplicate the Bard spells for the Channeler trainer. Others are factual errors, like the discipline runes, levels for spells, etc. While the numerous typos and editing errors (didn't these people have a proofreader?) are fairly obvious, the factual errors are stealthy but dangerous. You think you know something, but what you "know", what the official strategy guide told you, turns out to be dead wrong. Most of the useful material should have been in the manual. Nearly all of it is available on the Web. I bought it for the maps, but they turned out to be nearly worthless; there are player-made maps online that are enormously better.

   The strategy guide is a case of the publisher trying to sell you the manual that should have come with the game for an additional twenty bucks. If it was accurate that might even be worth it, but as the mess it is, you'll find one of its flaws when you least expect it and the resulting "gotcha" can put a major damper on any fun you manage to wrest out of Shadowbane. Don't waste your money on this book.




2. Shadowbane has a rather steep learning curve, and pitifully few in game guides to push you in the right direction. I gave the game a shot at first for a week or so without the book and had rather a rough time of it.

   Once I picked up the book though, it became kind of a guide to learning Shadowbane. Despite the heavy amount of typo's and out and out mistakes, it does make a good teaching tool if you're considering dumping your time and cash into the game. I found myself referencing it continually, even after I'd been playing 5 months for certain statistics. Once you learn how to spot the mistakes, it's not really bad.

   I think some one else's review said it best in that this book should have been included with the game as the manual because life without it would have been very difficult.

   I don't reccomend buying Shadowbane at all, but if you're going to, I reccomend picking this book up. As a little bonus, beyond listing the statistics, they continue the short story of Gareth for several more chapters, which actually made a good read. Not worth the 20 by itself, but still a nice bonus.

   I gave this book 2 stars because the game itself isn't that good, the book has a way-beyond-acceptable amount of problems with it, and the writer/editor should have been fired. But having seen how the actual game is run, the book stands at about par with it for errors and problems.




3. Went to Best Buy, decided to look around, saw shadowbane strategy guide, thought it might be nicely done, flipped to a random page, shut it, walked away. End of story



4. When I first got ahold of this book it was an incredible resource for the Shadowbane game. The more I played, the more began to notice small errors in the book. These happen, and I was still satisfied.

   As time went on, the errors were getting numerous and confusing - I began to highlight each error so I would remember what info is wrong.

   It's been almost a year since I've had the book now, and every single page has at least one highlighter mark. A few pages are completely highlighted out as they are completely erroneous. The errors include:

   -Blatant typos
   -Copy/Paste errors (The book has a section that discribes spell attributes. You can tell that the writer used one spell as a template, as it appears almost six times in the list with different names.
   -Statistical errors
   -Credit errors (A portion of the book is a part where people submitted their character's template. One of them was wrongly credited [wrong name given] even though the accompanying picture has his name right on it!)

   The worst part about the book is that in the past few months Shadowbane has gone through such a tremendous change that 90% of the book's correct information (Which applies to just over half of it's total information) is now unaplicable because it's been changed by the game developers.

   The book was good, but the more I got used to the game the more I noticed the book was wrong. Now that the game has matured so much, the book is essentially useless.




5. I bought the First Edition of this book not too long after I started playing Shadowbane, and back then it was a handy reference, even thought it had a lot of mistakes and omissions. I was pleased to see that they'd finally released an updated edition, but it is not even close to current. It doesn't have any mention of the Rise of Chaos expansion pack that has been out for quite some time, and is about to go even further out of date with the upcoming release of the "Throne of Oblivion" expansion pack.
   
   To be honest, you'll find just as much information with at least the same level of timeliness and accuracy for free online. And if you are playing the game, and not sure how to develop a good character, don't be afraid to ask for advice from higher level players in your race/class/discipline.

5 comments about Diablo II Official Strategy Guide (Official Guide).

1. this guide sux! it doesnt give any overall characterstrategies, and tells you everything you DONT need to know aboutquests - i dont care how to find the boss, tell me how to kill him! italso makes the bad skills seem good, which caused me to WASTE SKILLPTS on them. it also doesnt show how good some skills are. the guidesdoesnt show the damages for weapons, or even mention exceptionalitems. blizzards official website gives more info, and for free! italso has more pictures, and in color. i thought the guide would giveinformation not on the site - which MOST guides do. but no, it wasjust a waste of money. id get a better guide if i went to kinkos andtold them to print out and bind the whole blizz site.



2. The only thing I found useful in this guide was the list of items. Everything else in the guide has either been outdated, or is just some crap opinion from some guy saying that "It would be powerful if you did this..." and it's really only something useful in a single player game when you're just messing around.

   I suggest to anyone that plays Diablo2, to just enjoy the game and look up anything they need to know about items on websites. All the other info in this book is pretty much useless, and becomes your own knowledge within a week of playing on your own anyways!




3. This book is just sorry.. I never thought that wasting (money) for this thing would kill me like that. Its better if you just play it normally by yourself or log on and use (an online site). thats the way i had to do it, cuz the book only tells you how to kill diablo with the 5 Diablo 2 characters. They should really put more work into the book, cuz it just plain sucks... I suggest that who ever thinks of buying this book, is way better off by playing it their own way. Thats the way i had to do it, so its just a good suggestion.



4. if you ever play D2, do not buy this guide, I did when it was brand new, then you know what happened? They released version 1.02, and changed every skill stat, and item stat in the game, making every chart in the entire flippin book worthless. And even the writers opinions were killed because all the changing was to "change the balance" which makes other things more powerful than before, and some things less. As I write this, I still play D2 (quite obsesively) and we are now on patch 1.09 so even the expansion pack strategy guide, is out of date (based on 1.07) and it is now rumoured that version 1.10 is comming out soon. I sometimes look in my strategy guide and look at an item's stats, then look at the item in my inventory on the game and compare stats, all I can think about is laughing at how I wasted $20 on this when it was new. :(



5. This came with the Diablo BattleChest. It's a nice reference to have around, but it's nothing you won't be able to find online. There's nothing in the guide that will steer you the wrong way, and it is nice to have it in printed form. I wouldn't pay money for it, but if you're getting the BattleChest, it's a nice little bonus.

1 comments about TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (Prima Official Game Guide).

1. I don't know about the book but the game is awesome. Maybe a little blood and gore here or there, but still the best game in the universe. Cortez meets with new characters along the way that help him and the humor of the game. The graphics are awesome especially when you shoot darts at some mutants and they blow up and blood flies every where. There are some security things you need to hack. the scariest level is the Mansion of Madness. There are zombies( little children beware! ) To make a long story short buy this game!