5 comments about Ninja Gaiden Black (Prima Official Game Guide).

1. This is good for just a general guide. It provides little information on the boss fights in the game and little on tips on how to beat them. I used this and a Free game FAQ walkthrough while playing (and am still playing by the way), and the walkthrough had loads of information on item locations and how to defeat Bosses and other enemies as well. I don't regret buying this guide as it has had some benefits, but unless you have money to burn, I would get a free walkthrough and use that.



2. im very happy to have this book thanks and the timing was perfect



3. unless you are a complete newbie at ninja gaiden, this guide is worthless. full of empty space and pictures with very little information. the worst offense? "ALL ITEM LOCATIONS" in huge print on the cover. But, as i discovered, this guide doesn't show item locations for level other than normal!! The guide has pretty much no discussion of strategy for weapons, even omitting strats for some weapons ( like kitetsu ) because they are "secret". terribly uninformed and underresearched, this guide is a greivious offense to an amazing game.



4. I can't help but agree with most of the reviews on this page; this guide is nearly useless. The Prima (the leader in half-assing every guide they've ever gotten their hands on) guide "walks" us through a game where chest locations are off and inaccurate, enemies don't appear in the right spots, the data on the Fiend Challenges is basically: "kill the guys that um... you know, attack... uh yeah." There's misspellings in a few cases and grammatical errors. Also keep in mind: their boss strategies aren't crucial to your survival, I bearly used 'em. The only slightly useful piece of this guide is the Golden Scarabs. One note on that, once you find the 50th GO BACK AND TURN THEM IN. I made the mistake of not trudging back to town due to being anxious about beating the game. In summery: don't buy this unless you really need feel you need a very small amount of visual support. You're better off on your own.



5. This game guide from Prima is nothing more than a glorified map. There are no strategies at all, and only very basic (sometimes inaccurate) strategies for the bosses. An example of the innacuracies would be their advice to defeat Lesser Alma. The guide tells you to use Flying Swallow. Unfortunately, Ninja Gaiden Black was retooled to be more challenging, and just about every boss has been tweaked so that the Flying Swallow move is MUCH LESS EFFECTIVE than in the original game.
   
   There is no breakdown of the general foes you come across (various types ninja, fiends, soldiers, etc.) or their strengths and weaknesses.
   
   For instance, how do you effectively combat the black ninjas? The guide says, "Slice them to ribbons!" Gee...that's great advice. How about some tactics to help me "slice them to ribbons"?
   
   If you just want a map to tell you where to go, then get this book. If you are looking for a real guide with combat strategies to help you become proficient at the game, search the internet. There are free online tutorials that are 20x more helpful and accurate than this "guide".

1 comments about Full Spectrum Warrior (Prima's Official Strategy Guide).

1. I bought this book thinking it would apply to the PC version. It is only somewhat helpful. Some of the Chapters are different on the XBox. It should be more obvious when you order the book that it is an Xbox Guide. After reading the book and playing the game, however, I decided that it was of some help, particularly as the game became more difficult the second and third time through. I am updating my rating accordingly to three stars.

5 comments about Homeworld: Prima's Official Strategy Guide.

1. Just a note to the reviewer from Ohio who finds the book worthless compared to the online guide at CNET which has "the best advice I've found."

   The CNET guide with all that good advice is composed of excerpts from the Prima strategy guide -- word for word. In other words, they're both *exactly the same*. Same author. Same words.

   How could you not know this unless you didn't actually read the strategy guide? Yes, it's always smart and ethical to read books before you trash them.

   The strategy guide is loaded with hundreds of insider tips directly from the Relic development and testing teams, none of which appear in the manual.




2. I fall in between the other reviewers on this one. I liked the book, but found that there were a few obvious items that they didn't include that I would have liked. The Homeworld:Cataclysm guide uses a tabular list of the ships, their cost, armour, firepower and speed etc... all viewable at once. I thought that should have been here too.

   In general, the book has good ideas, but I found that frequently, I had radically different strategies than the book that worked at least as well. This is ok, but still, I found that my was was quite obvious. The suggested strategy in
   "The Bridge of Sighs" level (building 5 cloaking field
   generators to cloak your entire fleet) is a little extreme.
   That's 2500 RU's and it would be nice to have a few RU's around after this level.

   Frequently, the "strategy" for doing a level is basically knowing the level ahead of time and little else. How other ships will behave, what conditions will cause the enemy to start attacking and what direction they will arrive from etc...

   The multiplayer ideas are generally good, and I use them more than the single player level suggestions which I find of less use. I found that a few ships were left unexplored (the drone frigate and the defence field frigate are mentioned but there's almost no info on whether they are useful or not or how to use them).

   Your mileage may vary, but if you play this game a lot, and have tried many different ideas already, you will probably have used most of the strategies presented here. You'll already know what ships work against which others, what works well as an escort etc...

   Happy hunting.




3. Real time strategy games tend to be something of a learning experience, but that is part of the fun-- figuring out what strategies works and which ones don't. Homeworld certainly fits into that description, as a unique 3D real time strategy game.

   I purchased this book to minimize the learning curve and get some hints. It did minimize the learning curve, and provided plenty of generalized tips and tactics. It also provides (in general terms) walk-throughs of the missions.

   Perhaps it was too good. Towards the end I started to get bored with the game. It started to get routine-- research and harvest resources, build a massive fleet, and wipe the other guy out. I think the guide help kill the experience in some small way.




4. Pros : Complete list of the 2 playable fleets, sufficient formation list with details of their characteristics. Also gives you sufficient information on how to run the game.

   Cons : Ship details in the guide are inconsistent with those in the game( for ex in the book a particular ship may have grade 20 fire power rating, while in the actual game it might have only 10...quite a set-back when you've just pre-planned an entire strategy concentrated on the particular's ship's fire power...)

   Also, it does not include a list of the ships of the "other" races ( Bentushi, Turanic Raiders and Kadeshi), which is good in a way since it gives the game a better "Unfolding-story-discovery-excitement" feel to it. However one may also say that "this is just a game...I want the details!"

   The game itself, especially in multiplayer mode, is VERY spontaneous...thus rendering a complete detailed strategy guide practically useless. One can come up with whatever strategy he likes. THis means that the guide itself is probably only good at giving a player some details as to what ships are most likely capable of.

   The Game presents you with a constantly changing invironment in multiplayer mode. The Universe is the limit. You learn as you go along. The Strategy Guide is really just a novelty "How to play the game"/user's manual booklet that just goes really great with the CD :)




5. This book is just O.K. for the price. You can get it cheap, but most of the information can be found on websites by now. Still Homeworld is a great game and there is more in this book on multi-player stratigies.

1 comments about Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer: Prima's Official Strategy Guide.

1. What can I say? Everything that was wrong with Might & Magic VII's Strategy Guide has been remedied in this one.

   1. Quest Walkthroughs have been separated into Main, Promotion, and Secondary (according to region) sections so you can get to the walkthrough you want with a minimum of page flipping, in contrast to that annoying jumble of quests in each region provided in the previous strategy guide.

   2. A serious flaw of the previous strategy guide was the lack of a Skill table. This guide not only provides a Skill table, which is nicely divided into Armor&Weapons, Magic, and Miscellaneous Skills, it even mentions them again in the Region Location tables, resulting in (u guessed it) a minimum of page flipping.

   3. The Walkthroughs in the previous guide were written in long winded paragraphs that mentioned too much useless information. When I'm playing a game and get stuck in a quest, I don't want to spend time reading a bunch of paragraphs, I want to find out the exact sequence of steps required to finish the quest, as in: (A) go talk to this guy who is in such and such a place to receive the quest. (B) go do THIS over THERE to THOSE people (C) go back to that guy and collect your reward. Quick and painless just like this guide.

   4. In general the guide hasn't forgotten anything. It provides ALL the stats on EVERYTHING: Spells, Items, Ores, Maps, Travel Schedules, Monsters, etc. The Maps are clearer, and the tips provided are very useful and great time savers.

   Could this guide have been better? Maybe, anything is possible. Still, I couldn't find a single thing to complian about, and thats something.

5 comments about Douglas Adams Starship Titanic: The Official Strategy Guide.

1. In the genre of PC Game Strategy Guides, it may be difficult or impossible to consider the book without reference to the game. That said, Neil Richards' "Starship Titanic: the Official Strategy Guide" is an essential, albeit well-padded, guide to an underwhelming gaming experience.

   The guide begins with forty pages of fluff, mostly unhelpful, unfunny introductions to the main, animate characters in the game: the "bots" - well-meaning, malfunctioning, robotic crew of the Starship.

   This is followed by sixty-some pages of what the author curiously calls "hints". In the best of worlds, a player, frustrated by the mind-numbing pedantry of the game itself, would expect this section of the guide to offer subtle suggestions on clues that may have been overlooked. In fact, it consists of verbose solutions to the trite, often silly, puzzles aboard the Starship Titanic. Unlike Myst or Riven, Starship Titanic requires little more "strategy" than hit-or-miss bumbling about and rudimentary linking of tasks, so perhaps these type of "hints" are appropriate to the situation.

   The next section, titled "Solutions", is merely a repeat of the previous section, minus the blather. It lists the step-by-step procedures for obtaining and assembling each of the pieces of the puzzle. Don't be tempted to use this section to speed up the boring part of the game to get to the "good stuff", or you'll quickly find yourself at the end of the game with nothing to look forward to except -- perish the thought!! -- a sequel.




2. This guide to the adventure game "Starship Titanic" wants to do three things at once. First, it gives more background to the Starship and the characters in the game. Second, there are stories from behind the scenes, telling how the game came to be. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately all this leave too little room for what I consider the most important part: The hint section.

   The cover promises "subtle hints" and "complete solutions". This made me expect gradually more obvious hints for each problem, each hint on a separate line to avoid reading too far. In the book, each overall problem has its own section, but the section itself is one long description of how to solve the problem. This makes it VERY easy to read too far. I recommend reading the hint section one line at a time, with the rest of the page covered by a piece of paper. The hints are in themselves good enough, but not always subtle enough. And the prose flows TOO WELL: You read on where you should pause and return to the game! At least the most outright spoilers are kept in a separate section of the book.

   I enjoyed reading about Douglas Adams' visions of the game and I found the sections on the creation of the game very interesting. If this guide had been sold as a hint book but as background material I would have rated it 4 stars (but to tell the truth, I would probably not have bought it in the first place for just that - I am a Douglas Adams fan, but there are limits).

   All in all: The book contains quite a bit of interesting material, but personally I would have preferred a plain hint book of better quality.




3. When I bought Starship Titanic Gold Edition I got the Starship Titanic Stragety Guide Included. When I browsed through it I noticed the book had interesting subjects from the Starship Titanic game the problem is that it has an anoying part where you can accidently open to a spolier or too good a hint. Even though I loved it! It was an excellent book. I like it because it has 3 main sections: I)Blerontin Bugle, II)Hints and III)Solutions. It also has some lesser important sections called:1)Table Of Contents, 2)The PET and 3)Index. It also has a page that gives the website address. I'll give you one hint read the book!



4. I loved the book that's why I gave it the maximum rating. I think it's the best book (sorry strategy guide) ever! Thank God they're making a sequle to Starship Titanic! (I got the info about a sequle at the Starship Titanic website.)

   The book has a few sections which are: A) Table Of Contents, B) The Blerontin Bugle, C) Meet The Bots, D) The PET, E) Hints, F) Solutions, G) Index, and finally H) website information (well actually it's some "thing" about the website.) I also like the front cover. It's pretty.

   In the middle of the Hints section of the book (well not in the middle they're spread out over the section) are some articles and footnotes on the making of Starship Titanic (the footnotes are just little notes ont the interior spaces and the areas ot the Titanic.) The Blerinton Bugle section of the book gives some good back story clues. Meet the Bots is funny but they left two bots out they are Rowbot (the gondaliers) and Boppy Headcase the pianist in the music room [he is the one who bangs his head}.) ThePET section is annoyingly stupid. Hints is a little too spefic. And Soultions is too step-by-step informative.

   All and all I loved the book because the Solutions aren't stupid "try this" and "try that" kind of solutions they're "do this" and "do that" solutions. I think the book is superb and I say: "Bravo Doug you've done it!"




5. If you have "Starship Titanic", Douglas Adams last CD-ROM game, this book will get you through it, plus there's some sly Adams wit sprinkled throughout.

No comments about Facebreaker: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides).

2 comments about Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles (Prima Official Game Guide).

1. it was ok but it doesn't tell you too much you don't already know from playing the game besides who to take to help finish missions.



2. This guide helps you through the levels, but doesn't always give specific details. I was enthralled when I read it. It also tells you which characters to take on the missions. This is a must-have if you own the game.

No comments about Azurik: Rise of Perathia: Prima's Official Strategy Guide.

5 comments about The Sims (Prima's Official Strategy Guide).

1. We became addicted to the SIMS game as soon as we got it, and eventually knew we needed to learn to understand our little people a lot better.

   This book helped, but it isn't fantastic. Much of what you'll find in here you can find at the SIMS home page, and some you'll figure out by yourself, through trial-and-error. Some is common sense (before making any major change, SAVE your work so you can always go back).

   It offers some things, but omits others. For example, it gives a handy chart for skill levels needed to get promotions - what is missing is how to do what is hardest, develop and maintain friends, since having a lot of friends is both required for a lot of the SIMS to 'get ahead' AND is extremely difficult to do!

   Some of the cheats are OK, but the best ones you'll find through other sources.

   For SIMS beginners (perhaps as a gift for someone who just got the game), or those who can't get on-line, this would be helpful. For those who have been playing for awhile, or are on-line, this book would probably be a disappointment.




2. This is a really great strategy guide. whether you are just starting or even a pro you should get this book! It helped me become the sim champ I am today as well as offers a good laugh too.



3. This is a really great strategy guide. whether you are just starting or even a pro you should get this book! It helped me become the sim champ I am today as well as offers a good laugh too.



4. When I first started playing this game, I made a family of eight people. Two kids. I didn't know about fire alarms or cooking skills. Four people (my men) all died. Then the others wouldn't work because they were too depressed. They spent free time wallowing in self-pity, mourning over the tombstones, and getting stuck behind furniture (and I couldn't figure out how to get them out).
   I played the game for a year, figuring it out pretty basically, still not able to get past the rusted-up carpool car. I knew things got better for some people because I downloaded families that were rich and happy.
   That didn't last long - I just plain wasn't good at the game.
   Then, a light in the darkness, was this book! It was totally awesome! Whatever I needed help with was IN THERE. Now I've got happily married six-people families who are always happy! . Now I only trust maxis-mades, BTW.
   If you think you're an expert or not, everything really lies in this book.



5. If you are having trouble with the Sims then this book is for you. It tells you every little detail about the game as well as graphs and charts that specify what you need to do to succeed.

   The chapters are as follows...
   Cheats and Quick Start Tips
   Personality
   Mood and Motives
   Sim Autonomy
   Social Interations
   Careers and Skills
   Sim Economics 101
   Building
   Sim Objects
   Creating your own Stuff

   As you can see, it covers every little aspect of the Sim world. It will help to start your sim family in the right direction and what traits your sim will need to excel at his or her career.

   It is filled with pictures, beta-testers tips, and little hints/cheats that will no doubt improve your gaming experience.

No comments about Teen Titans Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)) (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)).