Article: I love physical strategy guides

I love physical strategy guides. I didn't use to, mostly because I saw them as an unnecessary cost on top of the already purchased game. If I got stuck I could check a walkthrough on GameFaqs. With the introduction of touch screen phones it became even more convenient to whip the phone out whenever I got stuck.

But times change and I've slowly grown tired of scrolling through anonymous .txt files. And the convenience aspect of the phone is out the window. If the game is long then it's quite a hefty body of text that needs to be navigated through searchable chapter codes. Fiddling around with ctrl+F on a phone isn't a seamless process to say the least, it's mostly just a chore. And the ASCII-art maps were certainly getting on my nerves...

So I opted for other forms of walkthroughs often hosted at the bigger gaming sites more centered around being browsed through a smart phone. But this, too, changed from bliss to nightmare fairly quickly. Their walkthroughs were divided into chapters which I then had to navigate while dodging loads of ads and filler text (which they use to be able to serve even more ads). I felt almost abused by all the dumbed down content paired with heaps of ads and "Skip in 3... 2...", "I want to continue as a guest" and "No thanks, I don't want to join for more benefits and/or disable my adblocker" and what not. That's when the thought of a good old printed guide popped into my head once again.

I looked up a few previews of printed guides online and they were filled with everything you'd ever need to know about the game they covered and the pages were decorated with beautiful pictures and graphics from that game. I immediately saw the appeal on a whole new level. How the added expense was more than justifyed. And with that I changed my stance on physical strategy guides. The climate on the modern corporate internet is so predatory, manipulative and consumer focused that I'm more than willing to pay $20 to get a physical copy of a guide. A guide I can read without interruptions, a guide I can find my way around without cumbersome screen fiddling and failed gestures. A guide filled with illustrations, charts, maps and all sorts of creative and colorful things without watching an ad every other minute or giving up my privacy.

My latest purchase is a FFX guide that is said to arrive any day now (but it's sent from Denmark, a.k.a. the country where all post services go to die so you never know), and therefore that game will probably be my next review.

Review: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Xbox)

Several years ago, when it was common to have a chipped Xbox and some burnt discs, me and my girlfriend started playing Shaolin Monks and got to a point where it was evident it was a bad iso and we couldn't advance anymore. Some time later I bought the real deal with the intent of finally beating it. We gave it a try and for some reason we stopped pretty early on. Our memory of why differs so I'm going to go with mine: we got lost (we didn't pay any attention to what the characters were saying and therefore lost track of the objective) and subsequently bored. It would pass a good 10 years before I finally decided to go back to it and give it another try - this time alone. (I'm still together with my girlfriend though!)

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is a 3D beat 'em up set in the timespan of Mortal Kombat II (a game which also is present in the disc as an unlockable extra). Shang Tsung lures Liu Kang (and/or Kung Lao since it's possible to play this in two player co-op) to Otherworld where the majority of the game takes place and to remain spoiler free I'll sum the story up with "the journey is filled with familiar encounters, predictable twists and turns, and leads up to a bombastic finale in an familiar arena". During the course of the game the player earns XP through pulling off moves and combos with which more moves and combos are unlocked. That's pretty much the jist of it.

"I had a blast trying out different combos and stuff"

I immediately advanced further than we've ever gotten and I had a blast trying out different combos and stuff. I found, however, that the unlockable moves and specials were pretty limited in quantity and I maxed everything out pretty early on - rendering the rest of the XP earned point(hehe)less. There's a lot of secrets (artwork, video clips, unlockable characters and things like that) to find, I found a fair bit but far from everything. The maps are varied and easy enough to navigate, with a few metroidvania elements thrown in there (Reached a point where you can't advance? Try coming back when you've learned new abilities.) and most areas lead up to a a roster character encounter. I had fun through most of it, some moments really showed the game's age and there were some technical issues (sometimes the voiceovers and/or music was played at 10% volume and the controls ignored some of the inputs) but I didn't fire this game up looking for perfection but for some casual fun and Mortal Kombat goodness. On this Shaolin Monks delivers.

"I can absolutely recommend it for fans of the series"

A few hours in I arrived at the final showdown which consists of a three fights long bossrush - and the third and very last boss was an absolute anticlimax. I struggled with him and went to ask the guides - all of which adviced me to keep my distance, use projectiles and go for chip damage. Close combat is mostly out of the picture. I wanted to shine, to put my acquired knowledge of the fighting to the test in the final fight, and instead I had to run around like a coward slowly grinding the boss down like a Souls-cheese. But the last boss is only a few minutes, the rest of the game is awesome (that is; b-movie fun) and I can absolutely recommend it for fans of the series.