Series: Prima's Official Strategy Guide | Publication Date: November 6, 2001
STAR WARS GALACTIC BATTLEGROUNDS features epic real-time strategy set against the backdrop of the entire Star Wars saga and PRIMA'S OFFICIAL STRATEGY GUIDE provides all of the in-depth help needed to win the Galactic Civil War! Learn how to execute your campaign over land, sea, and air and research over 300 different available units. Only PRIMA offers the strategy needed to control all six key civilizations and learn to manage each individual resource.
* Complete walkthroughs of all scenarios and campaigns, plus each bonus mission * Details on all 14 new environments-from Tatooine to Hoth to the Imperial City * Strong multiplayer tips * Scenario Editor Chapter! * Strategies for using all units-land, sea, and air * Resource and technology management covered in detail
Steven L. Kent has published several books dealing with video and computer games as well as a series of military science fiction novels about a Marine named Wayson Harris.
Born in California and raised in Hawaii, Kent served as a missionary for the LDS Church between the years of 1979 and 1981. During that time, he worked as a Spanish-speaking missionary serving migrant farm workers in southern Idaho.
While Kent earned a Bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in communications from Brigham Young University, he claims that his most important education came from life.
Many of the lessons he learned from the Mexican field workers in Idaho have appeared in his stories. Later, from 1986 through 1988, Kent worked as a telemarketer selling TV Guide and Inc. Magazine. His years on the phone helped him develop an ear for speech patterns that has been well-reflected in dialog in his stories.
As a boy growing up in Honolulu in the 1960s, Kent developed a unique perspective. He spent hours torch fishing and skin diving.
In 1987, Kent reviewed the Stephen King novels Misery and The Eyes of the Dragon for the Seattle Times. A diehard Stephen King fan, Kent later admitted that he pitched the reviews to the Times so that he could afford to buy the books.
In 1993, upon returning to Seattle after a five-year absence, Kent pitched a review of 'virtual haunted houses' for the Halloween issue of the Seattle Times. He reviewed the games The Seventh Guest, Alone in the Dark, and Legacy. Not only did this review land Kent three free PC games, it started him on a new career path.
By the middle of 1994, when Kent found himself laid off from his job at a PR agency, he became a full-time freelance journalist. He wrote monthly pieces for the Seattle Times along with regular features and reviews for Electronic Games, CD Rom Today, ComputerLife, and NautilusCD. In later years, he would write for American Heritage, Parade, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and many other publications. He wrote regular columns for MSNBC, Next Generation, the Japan Times, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
In 2000, Kent self-published The First Quarter: A 25-year History of Video Games. That book was later purchased and re-published as The Ultimate History of Video Games by the Prima, Three River Press, and Crown divisions of Random House.
During his career as a games journalist, Kent wrote the entries on video games for Encarta and the Encyclopedia Americana. At the invitation of Senator Joseph Lieberman, Kent has spoken at the annual Report Card on Video Game Violence in Washington D.C.
In 2005, Kent announced his semi-retirement from video games so that he could concentrate on writing novels. Though he still writes a monthly column for Boy's Life, he has mostly concentrated his efforts on writing novels since that time. His first efforts in science fiction, The Clone Republic and Rogue Clone were published by Ace Book in 2006.
Despite his "retirement," Kent continues to write the occasional game article or review. His sixth novel, The Clone Empire was released in October, 2010, and a seventh novel is due in 2011.
This review is from: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
I bought this guide because I love the game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds (I'll assume anyone who reads this will already have played the game so I won't describe it). I recieved an excerpt with my copy of the game which had the chapter on tips on playing the game (times for moving through tech levels, etc.). I was excited, but slightly disappointed to find that a large portion of the guide details how to get through all the scenarios rather then the normal game, which I was more interested in.
There is the (pretty good) story for the first chapter (although it goes in the some-stormtroopers-are-clones theory, where I go more for the (noncanon?) view detailed by Timothy Zahn's trilogy), and then the book goes into a overview of the main menu (what each button does). The next chapter was the excerpt included in my game (which is a good chapter). After that, detailed stats on every unit/building in the game, and then a neat transcript of a conversation about the different civilizations, along with a tiny chapter on strategies.. Pages 63-175 (out of 204) detail every single scenario. After that is another chat about multiplayer strategies, and then two appendices.
All in all, it is a very handy resource, it just won't replace you playing and finding out how to win yourself.
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This review is from: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
This game is awsome if you like strategy war games there are 6 diffrent teams to pick from and there all pretty good the only flaw is that there are that you have to gather 4 diffrent kinds of crystals and stuff but other than that its one of the best starwars games ever. P.S. if you like this you have to check out the computer game starcraft its even better then this one.
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This review is from: Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Prima's Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
This book is just below mediocre in what it provides anyone who would open its covers. I have played AOE I and II a lot, and this book contributed nothing to my knowledge. I was hoping for the simplest of things: A complete listing of each Unit with its statistics, and instead got a first-grade primer on how to play a RTS game. Usually these lists of statistics on the units come in the games Microsoft puts out, but not from LucasArts. I would wait until a better book comes out instead of buying this complete ....... It is a part of the "manual" which should have been included in the game box, especially since the standard manual is lame, too. This support aspect of this game is the worst I have seen come from almost any gaming situation, and a rich company like LucasArts shows its disdain for consumers and gamers alike by packaging this ...... like this....
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