For example, there's no apparent rhyme or reason in the types of shots selected or how they're arranged. Some profiles use stills from CG cutscenes, some use hand-drawn art, and some use screenshots. Several have a mix of all three. As a reader and viewer I can appreciate the qualities each medium offers, but the choices lack consistency and strength, giving the entire book a very haphazard feeling. Titles like Sonic and Fur Fighters have arresting and provocative full-page layouts well worth scrutinizing. But for every one that grabs your attention, there are a dozen you'll skip right past(And, if given the option, I would have removed the hideously low-polygon versions of Lara Croft. They look like nothing so much as worst-case Botox scenarios.)

Besides the lack of structure, 1000 Game Heroes' ignorance of heritage is also quite unsatisfying. The majority of these pictures are quite recent, and in no way give a comprehensive or long-term view. The only shots in the book for Final Fantasy are taken from Final Fantasy X, and keep readers in the dark about the diversity of its nine earlier incarnations. The entry for the legendary Castlevania series shows only two lifeless hand-drawn images taken from the Chronicles re-release disc. The stunning work from Symphony Of The Night (or any of the other games) is nowhere to be seen. A particularly egregious case, the only stills for The Legend Of Zelda are items and basic character shots from Majora's Mask. Such treatment of some of videogaming's greatest works leaves me with the impression that practically no research was done on the high points and precedents of the medium. Further reinforcing my thought that the book wasn't created by those in the know, I find it hard to believe that anyone possessing even a moderate amount of information about games would have been content with this array.

The editor's methods for picking subjects left me baffled as well. Too many of the titles featured had no significant impact or value (artistic or otherwise) when viewed in the context of videogames as a whole. I was left wondering why nowhere efforts like Azurik, Project Eden, Shadow Man or Outtrigger were included. They add almost nothing to the visual vocabulary, being comprised of crude renderings, well-worn material and more than a few clichés. Additionally, several of the games featured haven't even been released yet. I found it highly presumptuous to give space to the likes of Project Ego (now known as Fable), Xenosaga, and Crimson Skies when there were dozens upon dozens of deserving games that didn't get any coverage at all.

Nearing the end of the volume, I started wondering what a non-gamer picking up the book on a whim would take away from it. Since the only information given about the games are blurbs about vengeance quests or fighters in a tournament, it was nearly impossible to tell which were important, vital games and which weren't. What justifies the inclusion of Dead Or Alive and the exclusion of Street Fighter? Something more than the bare-bones context we're given would have greatly enhanced the work as a whole because it's impossible to do so based solely on such poorly chosen images. This may seem unreasonable considering that it's a visually oriented book, but when a fifth-rate layout makes Mario look like junk next to clearance rack piffle like Urban Chaos, that just ain't right.

While I admire the concept, the graphics aren't powerful enough to carry the book on their own, and the text left me hungry for something more substantial. Too lopsided for videogame enthusiasts and too superfluous for curious readers, there's not much to be gained from this publication that can't be found for free with a little bit of knowledge and a few minutes of web surfing.

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