3 comments about Official Nintendo The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Player's Strategy Guide.

1. I've liked Nintendo guides because they seem to have good insight and great mapmakers. The downside is they sometimes rely a little too heavy on the maps. Yet overall a great guide.
   
   Pros
   +Very colorful
   +Great Maps
   +No spoilers
   +Concise the dungeon walkthrough, it is easy to follow you just navigate from number to number on the map and then read the paragraph it correlates to.
   +Tells you all the movements for Link
   +List all the items and which mask's can use them
   +Gives you hints on how to survive
   +Good fairy guide with screenshots
   +Side quests are incorporated right into the walkthrough.
   +Bomber notebook guide (includes a graph of the times available, list of the requirements and rewards, and a walkthrough with screenshots)
   +Masks Guide (Tells who to get it from and were they are, also a walkthrough with screenshots)
   +Pieces of Heart Guide (A screen shot and paragraph on how to get it)
   +Bottles and Upgrade Guide (Paragraph with screenshots on how to get the bottles and upgrades)
   +Majora's Mysteries, which is a section of fun things to do
   
   
   Cons
   -Choppy walkthrough, it just highlights the key and difficult points in the game and expects you to get there on your own
   -Expects you to use the map to navigate from point to point
   -The dungeon walkthrough can seem too concise in a little under five instances, which aren't difficult to figure out, i.e. you'll need a key to enter and you'll need to find it on your own
   -No Bestiary
   -A little thin
   
   Overall its a great guide. I would definitively pick this guide up if you buy The Legend of Zelda Collectors Edition or decide to go retro and pick up and N64 and LOZ:MM.



2. Thank you for responding back. I've been looking for a Player's Guide in this game because it gets confusing for awhile. So, I don't mind cheating, which is my best bet in most games. I found what I've been looking for.



3. Never get lost in this game again. With this players guide you will find everything and never get stuck in the game again.

No comments about Naruto: The Broken Bond: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides) (Prima Official Game Guides).

5 comments about Okami Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)) (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)) (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)).

1. Brady Games makes horrible strategy guides. They omit things, and make everything confusing. This is the only exception.
   
   The Okami Strategy Guide is succinct, but provides all the information for everything in the game. The guide is almost as beautiful as the game.
   
   It's just a great guide for a great game.



2. I got this for my son and he was very happy with it. He said it helped him out alot in the game, and the product came very qickly..ty



3. This guide helps me out of any jam that the game gets me in
   Love it.



4. I wrote a separate review for the game where I recommended buying this guide as well. Our own copy of the guide has now plenty of dog-ears, the corners are faded, the pages are worn... all because it is so useful. I stopped playing the game early on because I couldnt figure out what all the fuss was about. I mean, the wolf was a goddess, ok and she had special powers and had a mission to fight evil, fine so far. But when I open up the weapons screen I was overwhelmed with the various options it presented. Not being too patient with such complications (Resident Evil 4 Weapons Screen was easy to figure out=) I stopped playing and ordered the guide.
   
   Unfortunately for me, my own elementary school daughter took an interest in the game and pored over the pages of the guide. she reads this anytime she has the chance which is good since she's reading anyway. she managed to finish the game 4 times with the guide's help.
   
   The guide itself is a veritable art collection! Not just the text but the art of the game itself. It is chuck full of information, tips and strategies that in some places the text had to be written in small characters just to fit the data. This is perhaps the only "con" of the guide for me. Still, the amount of information it contains would take a while to figure out if you played it on your own. I believe, we would miss many things in the game without the guide. To give you a perspective, Resident Evil 4 was difficult play but very easy to figure out what to do or where to go, for example. In Okami, you can spend a lot of time roaming around fighting enemies without advancing into the mission, although you will gain treasures defeating enemies.
   
   In Thankfully, everything is illustrated with art straight from the game itself.
   
   Highly recommended!



5. On the whole, this is a great guide. It is beautifully printed, chock full of all kinds of extra tidbits, and it will help you get through the game with all the stray beads and stuff you need to get all of the end of game extras. However, when it comes to the many creatures you will fight, no extra information is really given beyond boss fight strategies. It was useless for me to use the guide when trying to figure out how to deal with tougher regular monsters (like those hideous clay samurai), and I had to turn to the Internet for answers. The guide is also not very well organized. I missed most of the stray beads until the point of no return because many aren't mentioned during the main walkthrough, but only in a quick list at the back of the book. It only vaguely mentions where to find most of the feedable animals (and many are only mentioned in a useless list in the back).
   
   Also, be warned that like many Brady guides, this one is absolutely horrible about spoiling every last moment of the story except for the ending. It describes every scene and every event without warning and the way it is laid out it is almost impossible to avoid missing them.

5 comments about The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Official Strategy Guide for GameCube.

1. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is not an easy game to write a strategy guide for, considering how very many tangents and extra features there are in the game. But this book succeeds pretty admirably, walking you throught the tough parts step-by-step. The charts that cover such things as where to find Heart Pieces and Treasure Maps are especially helpful. The only problem with the book is that in a few places, it directs you to use more difficult methods than necessary to accomplish tasks - for example, it might tell you to use water jars to cool off lava to make a footpath (hard to do and usually gets you burned a few times) when you can simply use your grappling hook to swing across the lava with no problem. But overall, this book is pretty much a must for anyone with a Zelda: Wind Waker game.



2. this guide has everything you need in it to complete the game fully exept that it has one mistake in it. in the list of all the heart pieces there is one listed twice and one missing. heart piece 43 should be at rock spire island and to get it you need to defeat the boats in the area and haul up the treasure they leave. one of them is a heart piece.
   other then this it is a very good guide.



3. this guide is really helpfull it tells you many extra things where to go everything! if you have the game you need this to in order to beat it or want the extra things i have everything in this game because i beated it twice you get to have three names and of course you start off at 3 hearts but with this guide you can get more when ever you beat a major beast in the game you get a heart and you also find peices of hearts to earn a full one it takes 4 peices of hearts to get a full one you get tresures and empty bottles to carry things hookshot fire errows ice light and the regular you get the graboling hook a camera a tingle tuner this item is when ever you need help you hook up your game boy advance to be connected with tingle and he could help you out i cant tell you everything because there is so much things and it might ruin the fun of the game but anyways this guide would really help so if you have the game and dont have this guide then you should get it now!



4. Great strategy guide. It also includes a strategy guide for Ocarina of Time, which is the main reason I bought it. I could find no other Ocarina of Time strategy guide for the Gamecube game.



5. My sister is adamant against using guides or cheats but one of the crazy parts about the wind waker game is that you have to find these small Triforce shards. If you didn't have the guide you would never find them all. In the end she thanked me for buying the guide. I must admit that even though the game looks some what childish the replay value and story line are pretty decent. It is very non threatening game with a lot of light hearted comedy. The world of the game is huge and there is a ton of stuff to do and see. In other words the guide is a must have because it takes you step by step through the game and points out tons of stuff you probably missed the first time through the game.

No comments about Codes & Cheats Winter 2009: Prima Official Code Book (Codes & Cheats).

5 comments about Dungeon Master's Guide: Special Edition (Dungeon & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying).

1. From WotC's description, the Special Editions are "premium black bonded leather". "Bonded leather" is a manmade compound; it is essentially leather fibers plus latex. This is far from the quality of a true leather-bound book (which would use real leather). As one bookbinder puts it: "recommended for use only if the book will be used infrequently."



2. loved the book. the leather binding gives it a beautiful touch on one of the Dungeons and dragon most bought book i loved it.



3. Very handy when playing. hes some extra things that is why it is version 3.5. the cover is very good and is why it is the special edition.



4. Having been a gamer all my life (since 1980) and have coddled and loved and invented different covers for many of my DnD books, this Special Edition just spoke to me. After receiving it as a gift and going through it, it is now my favorite gaming book. Satisfyingly reminds me of all the things I imagine in my game worlds, books of spells, lore and adventure.



5. I can't believe I bought this thing for $8.00 (After shipping)!
   Still in the plastic wrap, not a single mark, blemish, or scratch.

5 comments about Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution.

1. The video game industry is big money these days, powered by a blend of computer geeks and business mavericks who have turned it into a big business - and Smartbomb: The Quest For Art, Entertainment, And Big Bucks In The Videogame Revolution traces the history of how this country become involved in video games. Authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby went on a five-year investigation into the history and technology of the video game explosion, gaining access to design labs and business meetings alike: Smartbomb examines both individuals and trends in a survey of models, legends, and achievement.



2. I read about the videogame industry constantly as part of my job, but I got more of an overview of the pioneers and personalities involved in the development & running of this industry.
   The only complaint I had about the book was I thought it should have given more of a background about the 900 lb. gorilla in the industry--Electronic Arts. Even so, a very enjoyable book for anyone interested in how the videogame industry came about & the personalities behind it.



3. Simply put, Smarbomb is well-written and insightful. The words on the page are enjoyable to read, and the portrayals of the movers and shakers of the industry are the kind of writing you usually find in award-winning literature.
   
   This is rare -- writing about games is usually not very interesting nor does it presenting views that challenges or makes you think. Trust me, I know. I've worked as a video game designer, and read far too many books on the topic.
   
   That's probably this book's biggest strength -- because of the way it's written anyone can enjoy it: gamers, game-makers, or people who've never played a game before in their life.



4. THE GOOD: All things considered, Smartbomb is an excellent book. It's well paced and paints an exciting portrait of an exploding industry. Following in the footsteps of "Game Over", "Trigger Happy" and "Joystick Nation" the authors present a dynamic overview of the gaming scene. All the usual suspects are here (Miyamoto, Bushnell, Carmack...). Instead of just rehashing the same stories and personalities found in other books they manage to squeeze out a couple of new gems. Who knew that Will Wright has been working on "Spore" (aka "SimEverything") for 8 years now? Or that he wanted to call "The Sims", "SimDollhouse"? The bits on Miyamoto's family life and a clever retelling of his 'cave games' proved insightful. They also did a great job capturing the inventive atmosphere that spawned video games in the first place. Probably the most interesting (and frightening) section though, featured the American military's take on video games as a recruiting tool. The blunt nature of these conversations and giddy allusions to "Ender's Game" and kid soldiers left my jaw on the floor. The fact that the American government promotes this agenda while demonizing games as corruptors of youth speaks volumes.
   
   THE BAD: As much as I enjoyed reading the accounts of those featured here, the overall aim of the book left something to be desired. While it's true that a Tony Hawk game can sell more copies than a Britney Spears album and no one will know who made it - generating some sort of "star culture" found in other industries won't help. If anything, it will damage the industry. There are already enough megalomaniacs chomping at the bit to earn the label of "the next Carmack" or "the next Miyamoto". The fact of the matter though is that people like Miyamoto and Carmack earned their chops back when teams were smaller, the stakes lower and projects much smaller in scope. Surely there will still be visionary characters that raise everyone else's game but it will most likely be a collection of individuals working together, shaping artificial reality as a cohesive whole. Not very sexy I'm afraid but that's really where we're at.
   
   THE UGLY: This is more of a nit-picky game nerd thing but I found some of the inaccuracies in this book a little disappointing. Crediting Yu Suzuki as the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog is like giving Michelangelo credit for painting the Mona Lisa. Luigi appeared in games before "Super" Mario Brothers, and it's QuakeCo"n" not QuakeCo"m". These are admittedly obnoxious things to point out but it made me wonder if some of the other sections of the book which I wasn't so familiar with were in fact accurate.
   
   Criticism aside I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Hopefully more people will point to this book as a document of the exciting, positive aspects of video game development.



5. This book is very well written, with a fun and engaging style a bit similar to other great books like "Hackers" and "Masters of Doom". This one seems a bit as a rehash on those classic books, but it has its own merits. The best chapter is the one telling the Will Wright story, with the worst chapter being what should have been the best, talking about "Dallas, the first person shooter capital", they talked too much about game contests and less about the creators of the games.
   
   If you want a truly, superb, amazing and mind-blowing account of game making from grass-roots to success and downfall I must recommend "Masters of Doom". Its just the best one out there. Its my personal choice.
   
   That said, I enjoyed this book, the Will Wright story probably pays itself, and its a fair complement to my collection.

5 comments about Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture.

1. For those who wonder what on earth online gaming is about, Taylor furnishes an education. He covers the history of how it sprang from the MUDs [Multi User Dungeons] and MOOs [MUDs with object orientation] of the 80s. When those were of necessity primarily text based. Then, in the 90s, with the advent of the Web and faster bandwidth and more powerful personal computers, multiuser online games emerged. Notably EverQuest, which is well documented here. Other games are also mentioned.
   
   Taylor himself took part as a player in one of these. Partly of his own recreational interest. But also as background research for this book. He shows that these games became virtual worlds. Where players could build up their personas and environments. Even to the extent of trading these assets in the real world. Some players took these on as "jobs", building up characters that they would subsequently sell on eBay. Amazing indeed.
   
   Important issues are aired. Like what rights, if any, do players have to sell these personas? Much of the value in a persona arises out of the creativity of its owner. Much more than just the passive watching of a film. Or even of playing a twitch game like Quake, which is not really about character development. The book reaches no definitive conclusion. Which is a good assessment of how things stand now, anyways.



2. TL Taylor is a brilliant woman, and the thoughtfulness and scientific rigor of her research shine through in this book.



3. I would term the first few chapters of this book to be MMOs for dummies. They were fairly redundant filled with the basics of the genre. I realize that to a certain extent she had to write about this sort of stuff to ground the book for non-genre players, it went on for a little to long I think. If you took away the stuff that explained how the genre worked, this book may very well have been about 75 pages.
   
   Once you got past this point, the book was fairly good. I especially like Taylor's insight into the ownership rights in online games as I think this subject is currently of major concern to players. The women in MMO section was also fairly good, but again fairly redundant at the same time.
   
   I would like to point out that Taylor is a woman and not a man as a previous reviewer implies. A point she makes quite clear early in the book, and a point which I do think offers a fresh perspective on the genre considering much of what has already been written has come from a male-centric point of view.
   
   Overall, the read is pretty good. I think it would work best for those who are not familiar with online gaming, and maybe even someone who hasn't yet started really reading material on the culture of online gaming. As someone who has both been an MMO gamer for over a decade and someone who has read a number of theories and books on the genre I didn't really feel that this book brought much new to the table which was too bad.



4. In her book on the MMO gaming world, Taylor brings an ethnographic approach to the game Everquest. Through interviews and personal experience, she gives an insight into the gaming world that portrays it for the rich, complex, social world that it is. A gamer herself, Taylor does an excellent job shining new light on the "frowned upon" gaming world. She also goes beyond the gaming world to show how things are connected through the internet and "in real life" to things within the game.
   
   As far as this being too "basic" in covering the genre - this wasn't aimed to be a book only for advanced gamers. For those of the academic world, who have no experience whatsoever with games, the chapters provide sufficient information about the games to allow understanding. The summary/analysis is as comprehensive as it is rich. There are parts that she could have gone further and I do hope she does write a second book (although she does have articles on this topic as well).
   
   All in all, this is an absolutely fantastic book for academics (or just interested people) who want an ethnographic approach to the gaming world that treats it not as a deviant, subersive "alternate" reality. Gamers and academics alike can appreciate it. Think Jenkins' Textual Poachers (written about the fan world) for gamers.
   
   I sincerely hope this is the tip of the iceberg for this serious academic research into the community, social aspects of MMOs.



5. While I appreciate the sentiment behind Taylor's urge to explain the specifics of virtual worlds to the possibly uninitiated reader (e.g. explaining what mobs are, what buffs are, what leveling is, etc.), I was quite thrown by the dissonance between such writing, which takes up the first 60 pages, and is interspersed throughout the rest of the book, and the *extremely* jargon-riddled approach to otherwise fascinating issues. This combination left me alternately bored and irritated (maybe this is just a pet peeve when it comes to words like problematize, constitute, complicate, etc.).
   
   Needlessly vague, abstract, and technical language aside, I think Taylor brings up very interesting points: about women gamers, about game-content ownership, about emergent game-culture, about the effects of game structure on that game-culture, and many others. Taylor summarizes her arguments when she writes "My call then is for nondichotomous models." This idea rears its head repeatedly in her explorations of distinctions such as game/social, real/virtual, play/work, user/producer, consumer/citizen, and in her broad argument that there are a variety of different activities that constitute "play."
   
   The one distinction I think she gets wrong is the one between the real world and the virtual world. She questions other scholars who worry about the potentially deleterious effects of the 'real world' on the 'virtual world,' calling into question the separation between the two. I don't think other scholars believe in a hard line between the two; I think they make a good point by recognizing that, for instance, if bill-boards for Wal-Mart start popping up in fantasy realms, this is going to ruin the atmosphere and the game. Taylor, at times, stays at too abstract a level of engagement to see these points.
   
   Otherwise, an interesting book, though I would hardly call it "ethnographic" as other reviewers have. Yes she played Everquest, but the book is not really about her experiences. For an ethonographic work check out Julian Dibbell's Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot.

No comments about Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames)).

5 comments about The Encyclopedia of Game Machines.

1. lot of photos, good design-layout, composition and information, easy to read.
   
   this serie has 3 book.
   this is the 1.5 (revise from Deutsch)
   (no info about Nintendo Wii & Sony Playstation3)
   
   the 2nd is about controlers "Joystick" just released in Deutsch, i want to see it in english ASAP.



2. Very enjoyable read, nice use of colour, compact, some nice stats. Something you would use often as a resource. Covers absolutely everything. Only a couple of gripes - some of the computers only get brief mention, while others offer a 'lite' history of the company. But I would very much recommend this book.



3. I'm an American gamer from the old days. I started programming on a CBM PET, used Apple II, C64, Vic-20, Atari 400 and 800, Amiga, etc. and have used many game consoles (SNES, Xbox, PS2, etc.). One thing about this book is the very brief coverage of some areas. Things are not referenced, so when the author states that the PET was poor quality - it seems a jab. The original chicklet PETs were problematic, but the full-size keyboard ones (of which I had one) were extremely robust, and why they were in many schools in the US - you couldn't break them. Also, sound was easy to add via a $20 speaker but the book says they failed gamewise because without sound nobody made games for it (huh? I was just playing DeathPlanet with sound on my PET emulator!). Also, the text was apparently originally German, and translations are poor, for example Intellivision "at you fingerprints" should be "at your fingertips". Also, Fort Apocaplyse added 'depht' to Choplifter is an editing mistake, and furthermore Fort Apocalypse added 'depth' but was just made difficult by tight caverns and never achieved the fame of Choplifter (which was on every system and even the arcade). Computer screens were apparently added later. So Karateka is upside down on the monitor - hard to believe that Mount Fuji is upside down - is it really a cave game and that is a giant stalagmite? No, and for someone who played Karateka to the end and also Prince of Persia, it's more famous cousin, this lack of attention to detail is bad. Sometimes things are not noted, like an apple game screen shot of an adventure/RPG of stairs, does not mention what game that is (I went through my Apple emulator and it is Mystery House by Sierra On-Line). For SNES, C64 and Apple II should really have had much larger sections (yes, they get 4 pages and some systems get 1, but why can't the encyclopedia be comprehensive?). The C64 revolutionized home computing by offering (eventually) a $299 computer at K-mart (discount store in N. America - now supplanted by Wal-Mart). This made color computing, gaming and a real computer accessible. And the huge owner base encouraged thousands of games to be developed for it. Also, they ask Gordon Jump which machine was best to program on and he said C64, but they should have a whole page devoted to his Jumpman game which set a new standard for clever (30 unique levels), and high playability. Likewise, perhaps more profiles of developers like Sid Meier and others would have be a good addition. I was highly interested in the subject matter of this book but this book has gaps and editing problems.



4. Very cool book with cool photos and information about the classic gaming systems. It's not a "in depth" reading, but it's very fun.



5. Basically goes over 450 home consoles, (rounded to 420 full console reviews -- since the more obscure 30 are semi explained in the back with no photos) with full photos, descriptions, last game published until, complete models, and how well they sold amongst the competition at the time.
   
   The book is split up into 4 segments. First, explains the different storage of each console (floppy disk, Hudson's Hu Card, GDROM ect) briefly. Second goes over first computer/arcade built. Then branches off into 4 eras.. Beginning (Atari, C64, MSX ect) until the crash, return of 8-bit (Nintendo, PCE, SMS ect), 32/64-bit + handheld - (Saturn, Nuon, 3DO ect) until Today: which is Xbox and Nintendo DS since it was published in 2003.
   
   But I would fully recommend picking up a copy 5/5