Category Archives: Books

Strike Commander Strategy Guide And Flight School

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I’ve already looked at the Strike Commander Playtester’s Guide but in 1994 Origin and Prima created another. This one has a larger format and takes up nearly 400 pages making it about 5 times larger than the Playtester’s Guide. It’s described as supplementary to that, however, and doesn’t even contain mission descriptions for the main campaign. This might leave you wondering how it fills all those pages, and it does it with a comprehensive guide to every aspect of flying an F-16 in Strike Commander.

Comprehensive is definitely the word here. Any guide that includes a definition of diving and how to achieve it by pushing forward on the joystick is clearly assuming that you know nothing. I suppose that there must have been people still struggling after buying the Playtester’s Guide and this book was aimed at them. It splits every aspect of flying missions into smaller chunks, such as basic flight, unguided bombing, smart weapons, etc.. and talks you through how to become expert at each one by one. This bite-size approach is a good one but it does mean you will need to work through nearly every chapter before you have covered everything you need to know.

There are 300 pages of this and no aspect of the game is left out, except for the actual mission descriptions and tips on how to fly them. After this the book has several appendices including a description of all the Tactical Operations add-on missions but without any specific advice on how to tackle them. Other appendices are less useful such as a printout of the readme file from the game and a short extract from the Playtester’s Guide, and could be described as filling pages. In terms of background information on the game, there is not much in the entire book and apart from the Tactical Op’s section the whole guide is simply about teaching you how to fly and blow things up.

I suppose I could consider myself the target audience of a book like this. Strike Commander wasn’t quite what I was expecting after coming from the Wing Commander series and I never did finish it until playing it for the blog. There are plenty of tips in here that I would definitely have found very useful, not to mention useful features of the HUD that I wasn’t even aware of. You would have to be prepared to spend a lot of time with the game to work through the tutorials in the way it suggest but if you do this you should be in very good shape to play through the game without needing tips for individual missions.

If you want to invest the time and are struggling with Strike Commander this is definitely the book to go for. It’s not entertaining though and with no extras to speak of can be considered an extremely extensive user manual. In entertainment terms, it’s quite possibly the dullest book I’ve read for the blog which is why it’s taken so long for me to get through it.

It’s scanned and available to download for any aspiring Wildcats. I’ve also uploaded a scan of the excellent X-Wing Strategy Guide in the non-Origin section which is far more fun from what I remember, although I’ve not looked at it in about 10 years. The Deus Ex guide will be next, probably later in the week.

Ultima The Technocrat War Book 2 – Masquerade

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Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I’ll go into the reasons why later, but I’ll stick to the subject of the post first which is the second book in the Technocrat Wars series, Masquerade. This was published by Pocket Books in 2001.

The book picks up two years after the events of the previous one. The war against the Technocrats is still raging in Jukaran. Both Thullan and Montenegro are amongst the battles searching for information about the enemy, and their paths cross when hunting down some schematics for a Technocrat weapon. In the middle of this, the saboteur Raveka is still on the run from Thullan, whilst trying to stop them getting the plans. There is an unlikely romance brewing between her and Montenegro and he is helping her to keep Thullan at bay whilst keeping the plans for himself.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the plot, but most of it is based around 2 central points. The first of these is the super-weapon that the plans belong to called Braum’s Needle, which is being built by the Technocrats to attack Britannia. This is a giant airship which creates a monstrous hurricane around itself. Much of the book deals with the attempts to defeat this behemoth.

The second major plot device is a pact between 4 high-ranking members of the various factions involved in the war. They are trying to maneuver events to benefit each other, but possibly have the interests of their own races in mind as well. This is definitely a book where nearly all the characters in it are in shades of grey. Even the Technocrats themselves don’t necessarily come off as evil, and appear to want peace with the exception of their leader Blackthorn (who doesn’t appear in this novel). The novel is definitely at its strongest when dealing with these characters and their relationships although there is plenty of action also.

The journey of the main characters is continued and Montengro and Thulann have an even rougher time of it than in the first novel. They both come out of the book worse for wear in some ways, but possibly wiser for their experiences.

In the nature of most fantasy that I’ve read, the second novel tended to spread out and follow some of the other characters, with part of the novel following the adventures of the thief/minstrel Toria who was under the care of Thulann at the end of the last novel. It stays focused however, and all the individual paths interweave throughout the tale so it never strayed far from the central plot.

I very much enjoyed Masquerade and it’s at least as good as the first entry in the series. The story moves along rapidly and it would take a lengthy explanation on here to cover all aspects of it. I’m not normally wary of spoilers on this blog given the nature of all those playthroughs on this site but I’ll try not to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. I will say the book doesn’t have an entirely satisfactory ending but it’s not too much of a cliffhanger for the middle book of a trilogy and sets up the next book nicely.

These books have been head and shoulders above the Ultima Saga, and barring something going wrong in the final part, they are my clear favourite from the novels produced from Origin games. I’ve enjoyed them enough to seek out more books by Austen Andrews but it appears that this trilogy is the lot unfortunately. I’ll have to make the most of the last part which will be coming up as soon as I make the time to read it.

To get back to the reason for the delay in posting, apart from holidays, it’s mainly due to other gaming distractions. The Steam Summer sale has certainly contributed to this. Some of the prices were too good to refuse and I’ve bought a stack of games on there which have been keeping me occupied.

Before the Steam sale started, I’d been playing Darkstar (Website) which I’ll give a mention to. This is a fairly new indie adventure game and is a complete throwback to the days of FMV adventures like The Journeyman Project or numerous others. The scale is unprecedented with 13 hours of FMV and the production quality of the video is great, but the actual game engine and gameplay is less polished. It hasn’t learned any lessons from the games of that time and it really does feel like a throwback to the mid 90’s as a result. For instance, you would be hard pushed to find an adventure gamer who ever wanted to see another maze of any sort, let alone one with unskippable FMV every time you move. If you can see past its weaknesses, then Darkstar is still well worth looking into, if like me you enjoy this style of game. Where else are you going to find a new FMV extravaganza these days? If nothing else, any indie developer showing this level of ambition deserves supporting.

I’ve also been reading the book recently published by hardcoregaming101 on classic adventure games. This is a giant collection of reviews and interviews covering as far as I can tell every major and most not so major adventure game before 2000 and many later titles also. It’s basically the definitive book on adventure games and is a great coffee table book for when you have a few minutes to kill. I’ve only read through the section on Sierra games so far (about 200 pages) but the reviews are well balanced and detailed. I’m expecting to find a few things to put on the shopping list when I get to the less familiar games but it’s already made me want to dig out the Sierra titles that I never found the time to play.

I had been planning on playing Freelancer for the blog after Darkstar but that’s on hold for the moment and I’ll stick with the books. I’ve only got 3 left from my original list but I have picked up the guides for most of the non Origin games I’ve played through on here namely Deus Ex 1 & 2, System Shock 2, Freelancer, Thief 2 and Terra Nova which will be making an appearance eventually. It will probably be one of those next before I start on the final Technocrat War novel.

Starlancer – Official Guide

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I had a request for this guide along with a couple of others a week or two back. It’s in the downloads now but the other two could be a while. It was published by Sybex in 2000 and written by Doug Radcliffe.

There is some nice artwork throughout the book but the rest of the content is fairly run of the mill stuff. There are a couple of chapters to start with on general tactics, followed by two more on ship and missile stats. These chapters give a general guide to the game but do very little to expand on the Starlancer universe.

After this there are lengthy mission descriptions. These are extremely detailed and if they can’t get you through the game then it’s just a case of more practice.

Next are a couple of short sections on the multi-player aspects and tactics. I never tried multi-player in Starlancer but it sounds like it could have been fun with some varied game modes.

At the end of the book there is a 4 page interview with some of the developers. This mainly covers design decisions that were made and nothing in it grabbed my attention. There is also a poster of some of the ships which I couldn’t unfold without ripping it out of the book, so it’s not included in the pdf.

There isn’t a lot to say about this guide. Much like the game itself, it is professionally put together but slightly dull and uninspired.

Ultima The Technocrat War Book 1 – Machinations

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This was published in 2001 by Pocket Books and written by Austen Andrews. It’s the first in a series of 3 novels based around what would have been the Ultima Online 2 universe. Ultima Online 2 was ultimately cancelled but many of the elements were carried over into later versions of Ultima Online 1 as seen in some of the Prima guides I looked at a few weeks back.

In the world of the novel, Blackthorn has been forced to flee New Britannia but is rebuilding his forces in a distant land. He has harnessed the power of machines left by a previous race and is building an army to retake New Britannia and also conquer the Juka race closer to home.

At the start of the book, the Juka are sailing to Britannia in order to try to forge an alliance with the humans and defeat Blackthorn. They are however attacked by forces commanded by a knight called Montenegro against the orders of his superiors. During the battle, he is challenged to a black duel by the Juka Way Master Thullan, defeated and as per the deal he then orders his superior forces to let the Juka’s escape.

This battle doesn’t put the Juka’s off trying to forge an alliance and a second party is sent. Blackthorn sends an agent to try to sabotage this alliance however. Without giving the whole plot away, much of the book deals with the relationship between Montenegro and Thullan and they ultimately have to forgo their differences to try to track down the saboteur. The book ends with a desperate defence of the Juka’s lands and Blackthorn’s forces being repelled at great cost to the Juka. The alliance is forged but the war is far from won.

I enjoyed Machinations vastly more than I expected to. Unlike the earlier Ultima novels, this stands in its own right without relying on nostalgia or knowledge of the games to sustain the reader’s interest. The characters are rounded, complex and believable, and the story always had enough intrigue to keep me turning the pages. The end of the novel, possibly felt a little rushed as if the battle had been crammed into a few pages to add a climax but it’s only a minor complaint.

I can’t say that it felt very much like an Ultima however, being based as it was on the Ultima Online universe with new races not featured in the main Ultima series. The Meer race were already established in New Britannia at the start of the story although there is only one of them in the novel. The Juka’s were more or less the typical fantasy alien race of warriors with a strong honor system. They may as well have been the Kilrathi, or the Klingon’s for that matter. The Technocrat’s of the title are Lord Blackthorn’s forces who now have mathematics as a religion and steampunk technology to work with. It’s the standard battle between the forces of order and chaos, with the twist being that the good guys are on the side of chaos.

All of this is a long way from Ultima as far as I’m concerned but it’s still a decent fantasy universe to set the novel in and would have been a solid basis for a game also. The story mingles familiar themes with the virtue system of Britannia and it actually creates a cohesive whole. Thanks to the depth of the characters this is ultimately one of the better modern fantasy books I’ve read in its own right. I’m very much looking forward to reading the next two novels and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this to any fan of fantasy fiction, even if they know nothing about Ultima.

I’ve scanned this in as usual but I can’t achieve great quality with these small paperbacks. It’s perfectly legible but if you want anything better, I’d recommend buying the real thing which can be picked up for next to nothing second-hand.

F-15 – Official Guide

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This was published in 1998 by Prima. When I was playing it for the blog, F-15 was a game that I rushed through just to get it out of the way. It’s not that it was a bad game by any means, quite the opposite, but it was in a genre that doesn’t interest me as a rule. Something I learned from all Origin’s sim games is that the further a sim game is set from the date it was published (in either direction), the more I enjoy it. That makes the Wing Commander series my favourite of the lot (by some margin) but I did enjoy Pacific Strike and Wings Of Glory as well.

The F-15 guide isn’t bad at all having said that. It was put together by the same team that had worked on many of the other guides I’ve already looked at before now and they clearly knew what they were doing.

The book starts with around 100 pages of walkthroughs and procedures for all the situations you might encounter and full details of how to approach all the tutorial missions. There is an awful lot of information here, all of which is exactly the sort of thing you need to set you up with the game. The tutorial mission walkthroughs struck me as especially helpful for anyone starting out. There is a lot to remember and it emphasises how F-15 isn’t the sort of game you just quickly play through without investing some time and effort into learning the real skills needed to fly.

There are no details for the campaign missions as they vary depending on what happens throughout the campaign, but there are walkthroughs for standard mission types which should tell you everything you need to know. There is also some of the story surrounding each campaign to set the scene, and the 3 possible outcomes at the end of the Iran campaign.

After this the guide starts to go into the Jane’s level of detail which doesn’t appeal to me especially with lengthy extracts from military training manuals. I’m sure there is a wealth of useful information in there if you want to take the game seriously but I skimmed over it. There is an even more technical section afterwards on the mechanics of F-15 flight with all sorts of graphs detailing how the plane performs under certain conditions, how much damage certain targets can take, how much damage the weapons do, etc…

There aren’t any developer interviews but there are about 50 pages about the development of the F-15, its history of service and the specifications of it and the weapons it carries. As someone with an interest in the development of technology of any kind, I quite enjoyed reading through some of this. It’s not strictly relevant to playing the game but goes down as a welcome extra.

This book was positively crammed full of information and probably one of the better guides I’ve looked at. It’s not the most entertaining of reading and is deadly serious 99% of the time, but we are dealing with a serious flight simulator here so it seems appropriate. It gives an extremely thorough grounding in what you will need to learn to play the game and I’d recommend anyone who fancies playing F-15 has a look at it.