Multimedia > The Wookiee Arcade

I Miss Cool Strategy Guides

(1/2) > >>

Jesse James:
I really do...

-X-Wing
-TIE Fighter
-XW: Alliance

and more...

The old strategy guides used to almost be a novel, or they at least outlined and detailed story/plot points throughout them, and gave incentive to the gamer to buy them just because they were cool reads, had cool images in them (not necessarilly from the game, but rather art and things), and other stuff like that...  Anyone else a little annoyed that strategy guides these days are much "less" than that?  They're usually just gaming bits, nothing more.

I mean, X-Wing and TIE Fighter's strategy guides BOTH were stories...  They extended the mini-novels you got with the games (Steele Chronicles & Farlander Papers), they took you through the character's story along with the game...  Even if you beat the game without the book, it gave you the incentive to own the book for the bigger story around the story you just experienced...

This isn't always practical of course...  Battlefront has no real story, as their single-player game is fairly lame, and any attempted story mode for the game is "meh" at best.  So how do you put a "story" into a guide for the game, ya know?  But I was just thinking how cool a strategy guide could be for, say, EAW: Forces of Corruption.  Great characters, potentially great story you could mix INTO the guide...  Same with EAW really if you wanted, or what about the upcoming Force Unleashed?  Unfortunately I think the guide to FU is gonna eat it pretty hard...  At best you'll get some art in it, which is nice, but not like the old days of guides to games that really opened up the game's experience with a little reading.

Matt_Fury:
Yeah, these were pretty good.  Force Commander had a good one too if I remember....I'll have to look around to see if I can dig them up.

Jesse James:
FC's was good, yeah...  I wish they took the same care on them today but, really, even games aren't as in-depth as those ones were it seems.  Story is non-existant in some SW games, like BF and BF2...  That's why I think those are games I'm just not into.  They really disappoint me in their lack of an immersive SP experience.

Matt_Fury:
Well Jesse, you also have to remember people probably won't buy a strategy guide when you can get all you need on the internet for free.

Jesse James:
True, but even still they make strategy guides today, they just don't put forth the effort on them anymore. 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page