X-Wing Alliance : Prima's Official Strategy Guide

Rating:
Summary: Not just a techy book
Review: I am not an avid player of games on the computer and certainly not action games like the one associated with this book (but I do love the Star Wars movies). My son left this book on the floor in the living room and out of curiosity I opened it. It was delightful! The middle section of the book is filled with adorable and humorous stories told by an R2D2 robot. Wonderful! The more technical sections of the book relate to the game itself and became very useful once I tried playing the game. When a book gets me to play a game with my son on the computer it says a lot. Thank you Mr. Drake and Mr. Barnett for the chuckles! (My son thanks you, too.)
M.S.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good, but could have been Excellent....
Review: I won't repeat what other reviewers have already said. Basically, I'm in complete agreement with them. The story line is great, the hints are helpful, and the included CD with films of the missions is tremendous. I really wanted to give it 5 stars, but it omitted a few things I felt were invaluable based on the "Tie Fighter" hint book that came before. First, there was no listing of all of the possible ranks, and the point scores needed to achieve them, nor was there a listing of the possible skill levels (novice, veteran, ace, etc.) and the points necessary for those. It did not document the scoring mechanism - the bonus points earned by playing at the hard level, and the penalty for playing at the easy level. Secondly, it did not reveal the bonus goals, and point values, for those missions that offered them. Lastly, and I state this with reservation because the authors simply may not have had access to the information, there was no detail of the AI instructions that described how the computer-generated opponents would function in each mission. These instructions allowed the player to know what conditions would trigger a new type of craft appearing, or how many waves of enemy craft would be created. This information was extraordinarily helpful for winning the most difficult missions in "Tie Fighter". In its defense, however, the book did go into a lot of detail about how to set up single and multi-player skirmishes. All in all, an excellent guide, but it fell just short of being perfect.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this CD to get the Films on how to win each mission!
Review: The film room is ont he expansion disc or downloadable from LucasArts on the net but those films on the campanion disc really help supplement the great text in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good, but could have been Excellent....
Review: This is a really good strategy Guide (Its Prima So Duh) for an INCREDIBLE game. X Wing Alliance: A neutral family fights for its buisness-- and its survival--and is swept up in the struggle between the Empire...... GET THIS GAME IT IS SO GOOD =)