Douglas Adams Starship Titanic: The Official Strategy Guide

Neil Richards

1 Needed to get through it
If you have "Starship Titanic", Douglas Adams last CD-ROM game, this book will get you through it, plus there's some sly Adams wit sprinkled throughout.

2 Review
I loved the book that's why I gave it the maximum rating. I think it's the best book (sorry strategy guide) ever! Thank God they're making a sequle to Starship Titanic! (I got the info about a sequle at the Starship Titanic website.)

The book has a few sections which are: A) Table Of Contents, B) The Blerontin Bugle, C) Meet The Bots, D) The PET, E) Hints, F) Solutions, G) Index, and finally H) website information (well actually it's some "thing" about the website.) I also like the front cover. It's pretty.

In the middle of the Hints section of the book (well not in the middle they're spread out over the section) are some articles and footnotes on the making of Starship Titanic (the footnotes are just little notes ont the interior spaces and the areas ot the Titanic.) The Blerinton Bugle section of the book gives some good back story clues. Meet the Bots is funny but they left two bots out they are Rowbot (the gondaliers) and Boppy Headcase the pianist in the music room [he is the one who bangs his head}.) ThePET section is annoyingly stupid. Hints is a little too spefic. And Soultions is too step-by-step informative.

All and all I loved the book because the Solutions aren't stupid "try this" and "try that" kind of solutions they're "do this" and "do that" solutions. I think the book is superb and I say: "Bravo Doug you've done it!"

3 Starship Titanic Startgey Guide Review
When I bought Starship Titanic Gold Edition I got the Starship Titanic Stragety Guide Included. When I browsed through it I noticed the book had interesting subjects from the Starship Titanic game the problem is that it has an anoying part where you can accidently open to a spolier or too good a hint. Even though I loved it! It was an excellent book. I like it because it has 3 main sections: I)Blerontin Bugle, II)Hints and III)Solutions. It also has some lesser important sections called:1)Table Of Contents, 2)The PET and 3)Index. It also has a page that gives the website address. I'll give you one hint read the book!

4 Interesting background material, but weak hint section
This guide to the adventure game "Starship Titanic" wants to do three things at once. First, it gives more background to the Starship and the characters in the game. Second, there are stories from behind the scenes, telling how the game came to be. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately all this leave too little room for what I consider the most important part: The hint section.

The cover promises "subtle hints" and "complete solutions". This made me expect gradually more obvious hints for each problem, each hint on a separate line to avoid reading too far. In the book, each overall problem has its own section, but the section itself is one long description of how to solve the problem. This makes it VERY easy to read too far. I recommend reading the hint section one line at a time, with the rest of the page covered by a piece of paper. The hints are in themselves good enough, but not always subtle enough. And the prose flows TOO WELL: You read on where you should pause and return to the game! At least the most outright spoilers are kept in a separate section of the book.

I enjoyed reading about Douglas Adams' visions of the game and I found the sections on the creation of the game very interesting. If this guide had been sold as a hint book but as background material I would have rated it 4 stars (but to tell the truth, I would probably not have bought it in the first place for just that - I am a Douglas Adams fan, but there are limits).

All in all: The book contains quite a bit of interesting material, but personally I would have preferred a plain hint book of better quality.

5 The Strategy Guide that could not possibly go wrong....
In the genre of PC Game Strategy Guides, it may be difficult or impossible to consider the book without reference to the game. That said, Neil Richards' "Starship Titanic: the Official Strategy Guide" is an essential, albeit well-padded, guide to an underwhelming gaming experience.

The guide begins with forty pages of fluff, mostly unhelpful, unfunny introductions to the main, animate characters in the game: the "bots" - well-meaning, malfunctioning, robotic crew of the Starship.

This is followed by sixty-some pages of what the author curiously calls "hints". In the best of worlds, a player, frustrated by the mind-numbing pedantry of the game itself, would expect this section of the guide to offer subtle suggestions on clues that may have been overlooked. In fact, it consists of verbose solutions to the trite, often silly, puzzles aboard the Starship Titanic. Unlike Myst or Riven, Starship Titanic requires little more "strategy" than hit-or-miss bumbling about and rudimentary linking of tasks, so perhaps these type of "hints" are appropriate to the situation.

The next section, titled "Solutions", is merely a repeat of the previous section, minus the blather. It lists the step-by-step procedures for obtaining and assembling each of the pieces of the puzzle. Don't be tempted to use this section to speed up the boring part of the game to get to the "good stuff", or you'll quickly find yourself at the end of the game with nothing to look forward to except -- perish the thought!! -- a sequel.

6 This book will even rise the rusty ship itself
This book will be fantastic, like all books by Adams. I give 9 out of 10 because it is most unlikely that anything like The Hitchhikers Guide will ever be written on eart

7 Only Adams could be writing this book!
This book will deserve maximum rating, but I will hold back my final score until I have seen the cover....... ;