For over a decade Prima games has been known to release high quality strategy guides and their latest outing with the Gears of War 4 strategy guide is no exception.  At 320 pages, authors Doug Walsh, Michael Owen and Will Murray have crafted a high quality- and spoiler free- guide through the world of Gears 4 and a resource to use to better your multiplayer game.  As an added bonus Prima has thrown in a free digital copy of the guide and a free Gears 4 Gear Pack DLC.

When you first open the Gears 4 strategy guide, you will be greeted by high quality photos and your standard table of contents to help you utilize your guide.  Right off the bat this guide offers you a comprehensive background into the story and characters of Gears 4.  This info used to come included with video game instruction booklets a few years ago but has since disappeared.  I am glad Prima has seen to include it in this guide for those of us that crave as much detail out of our gaming stories as possible.  The Story walkthrough is very easy to navigate and well structured.  The first pages of a new story chapter features overhead maps of the battlefield with locations shown for all weapons, ammo and collectibles.  Following pages then contain a breakdown of your current objective and combat tips with collectibles pointed out in the text as you get to them.  In modern games, collectibles have become a major part of game completion and having them pointed out in this convenient way is a major plus.  The guide also offers a few co-op strategies during certain sections of each mission, as well as details of each boss fight encounter.  Unfortunately, the co-op strategies are not as frequent as I would have hoped and there are not dedicated Insane difficulty strategies.

If you are a multiplayer enthusiast or are just jumping in for the first time this guide provides a great platform to learn the new maps and upgrades system.  Most veteran gears players will already be familiar with advanced movement techniques, but for the Gears newbies out there this info will help level the playing field more quickly.  Each map has an overhead image of the map with weapon placements and callouts.  This guide also briefly covers some tactics for the new Horde 3.0 per map.

For all of you Achievement Hunters out there the final pages of the guide will offer you a complete listing of all the achievements that can be obtained in the game.  Achievements are separated into campaign, horde, campaign or horde, versus and general categories with a short description on how you unlock each one.  With lots of detailed content and free bonuses, the crew over at Prima Games have released another fine strategy guide that any buyer will be happy to add to their collection.

Our review copy of the Gears of War 4 Strategy Guide was provided by Prima Games.

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