inFamous Strategy Guide Review
Practically Perfect Guide from Future Press and BradyGames
Aug 30, 2009
The strength of a strategy guide relies on the quality of its maps, walkthroughs and appendices, which are the three basics every guide needs to be truly helpful or even complete. The inFamous Official Strategy Guide, written by Future Press and published by BradyGames, contained quite possibly the best of all three that is rarely found in any strategy guide.
Compounded with the guide's excellent organization, the guide can appease a wide range of gamers, from those needing hand holding at the outset to those needing a quick look-up for one tiny element.
The Maps of Empire City
It is simply amazing how many maps the inFamous guide possesses. The following is a complete list of the guide maps:
- individual island maps that plot the story missions and medical clinics;
- individual island maps that plot all side missions: neutral, good, and evil;
- individual island maps of the Dead Drop locations;
- individual island maps of the blast shard locations; and
- a giant, tear-out map of all three islands of Empire City of the blast shard locations.
In addition to these individual maps, every side mission that requires a bit traveling includes a little map of the route along with the walkthrough.
With these maps, no player has any excuse for not finding all of the Dead Drops, blast shards, and side missions. For these maps alone, the guide is worth every cent, as these maps are not available in the free strategy guides found online.
Walking Through Cole MacGrath's Story
The guide's walkthroughs for both the story missions and the side missions are highly detailed and easy to follow. The only times the walkthroughs falter a little bit are during instances of heavy platforming Cole must do in the game.
At these points, the guide is apt to only say, "work your way towards the top," or "head toward the blue blip on your radar" instead of describing how Cole must get there, unless it really is not obvious which direction Cole needs to take next.
As for the strategies for the boss fights, there are no flaws. If a player reads the strategies beforehand, there will be no surprises and the player may even beat the boss in one try. However, if the strategies mentioned in the game walkthroughs are not helpful enough, the guide provides far more detailed assistance in the Opponents chapter.
Strategy Guide Appendices
This guide did not contain appendices in the traditional sense, since the only things Cole collects are Dead Drops and blast shards, and the guide has handy maps for finding all of those. So everything that could be considered "appendix" information is all in the front of the guide right before the walkthroughs.
This information includes highly detailed explanations of all of Cole's electrical powers, all the opponents and bosses he will face, all the stunts he can perform, and all the trophies players can obtain.
inFamous Comic Book Art Gallery
As a little bonus for fans, the guide contains 19 pages of the comic book-style art from all of the inFamous cut-scenes. It is very rare for guides to contain any art from the game, much less this many pages. For those who enjoy art books, this bonus art gallery will make the guide purchase more than worth it.
While the guide's walkthroughs are great and this aspect is important for a high quality guide, they are not what makes it different from every guide one can find online and for free. But with the plethora of maps, the detailed reference information, the user-friendly organization, and the art gallery along with the walkthroughs, the guide is one of the most complete strategy guides in existence.
Most importantly, no one with this guide will have any difficulty finding the answer to any question they possibly could have while playing inFamous.
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