1000 Game Heroes (Paperback)

This massive tome has over 600 pages of glossy images and information on games from Ghost Recon to Tomb Raider, Ecco to Virtua Cop to Dungeon Siege. Most of the games featured are newer ones, and the graphics they choose to highlight are truly spectacular.

Each title lists its platform, release date, developer and editor. A paragraph about each game is given in English, French and German. This means that you don't get a huge amount of depth for each game. But the book is already 600 pages long. If they had in depth information on each game, it would have turned into 2,000 pages and would have cost over $100. Instead, there's just enough about the game for you to see if you're interested in it, at which point you simply go to the web and learn everything you could possibly hope to know about it.

The organization of the book is a bit strange. You have "Kings of Action" which includes Metal Gear Solid. You have "Legends of Video Games" which puts Diablo next to Rayman? Then you have Sexy Heroes full of slinky women, and Strange Heroes which holds the wonderful female hero in Syberia.

Still, many of these games are blasts from the past, and it's fun to look through screenshots of Diablo and Dungeon Siege and remember the hours and hours we spent playing these games. I do warn that some of the graphics involve sexily clad (or topless) female characters, as one might expect from an industry that at least until recently pushed primarily towards teenage boys as its target audience.

Highly recommended for any gamer!

Mostly what this book lacks is context--now that we see the pretty pictures, why are they here? What do they say about game design, or character design? What was the artist's intent? You'll never know, and the result is a feeling that these pieces were included because that's what Nintendo and Sony sent the author on CD. If you've been following video games for a while (and why would you be interested in this book otherwise?), you will quickly realize that you've seen this all before, on the covers and in the pages of game magazines like PC Gamer and GamePro. 1000 Game Heroes is 600+ pages of shallow recycling.

Yes, it's printed on pretty paper and what few words appear do come in three languages (English, French, and German). The good points end there. Without any context, 1000 Game Heroes lacks true value--and as regurgitated content repurposed by a third party without fresh insight, it certainly isn't worth the asking price.