<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: This strategy guide is actually BETTER than the game!
Review: I must admit that I played SWAT to completion *before* reading Susan Frischer's strategy guide. I wish I'd done it all the other way around. While SWAT itself is a bone-dry, joyless, repetitive exercise in frustration, Ms. Frischer's guide is imbued with a subtle, sophisticated humor that the game itself could easily have adopted (without, I might add, losing any of its authenticity; after all, even SWAT officers are human beings, not automatons).I suspect that creativity in the guide was quashed by whatever powers-that-be at Sierra On-Line, the same ones, no doubt, that insisted that the game be as drily ponderous as possible. Nevertheless, Ms. Frischer has allowed some real personality to creep in when nobody was looking. Fortunately, the personality doesn't interfere with the guide's instructions, which are clear as can be, and which will eliminate virtually all of the frustrations that the game offers. (Though if you enjoy watching the same non-interactive sequences dozens of times, you won't find the game frustrating at all.) It also provides a wealth of background material on the making of, and people behind, the game (all of which is also more interesting than the game itself). So the strategy guide is not just adept at doing what it's supposed to do, but it goes the game one better. Too bad all strategy guides -- and games -- aren't as readable and personable as this one.
<< 1 >>
| 
