A mixtape of essays

Not too original here. The first chapters in the book are simply awesome. There's inspiring stories of D&D, Atari, Flappy Bird,..

It's getting worse at some point. The essays become loosely related to games, short and leave the cut off in the middle aftertaste, like the one of a cancelled TV show. They hype up games that eventually failed to deliver on their ambitious promises (original texts being written before the release) and thus I felt questioning more and more on how true is what I hear, whether something was actually as great as the author portrayed it or was simply a marketing stunt. The last few chapters focus heavily on the GTA and the controversy around it.

Nevertheless, some stories in this collection do rock. They made the listening worthwhile.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Another great book on games.

Tells the stories of multiple games and companies over the years, good book length also.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Not a continuation of the previous story as the name suggests

Whilst the author does ‘touch base’ at the start on the previous story, the rest of the book is just recycled articles that were written for a variety of magazines. As such it really lacks the deep dive of content that I enjoyed so much in the previous title and what I ultimately bought this book expecting. That said, the actual production and performance by Wil Wheaton were still quite good. They just didn’t prevent me from getting a little frustrated with some of the individual short stories. It is also a little telling that these are seperate pieces of work as some of the chapters mention events in previous chapters and then go on to explain them briefly again.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Gamers - amateur or hard code will like it greatly

Would you listen to Prepare to Meet Thy Doom again? Why?

Yes! Will Wheaton is both an Excellent narrator/voice actor and has lived through so much of the personal computer history's beginning that we can really relate to him.

Any additional comments?

Great history of game developers and the companies they built and how it changed the video gaming landscape forever. These stories recount how several of the more popular game titles and gaming genres got started as well as how game developers get to dictate the direction of the business rather than corporate pencil pushers. Read it - you not regret it.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

meh...

Not what I was looking for. I'm a huge fan of Masters of Doom, so I was hoping to get a bit more id software out of this. There's hadly any.. While some of the chapters are interesting, I don't care about Flappy bird, Neo-Pets, or Second life. Those chapters felt very dated, since no one talks about them anymore, and they didn't leave much impact on the industry. I havent read JACKED, but this book spends A LOT of time talking about GTA and Rockstar. I guess check it out if you read JACKED and want to hear more, but I'm guessing it will be stuff you already know. I wouldn't recommend paying for this, and hardly recommemd using a free credit, but if you do, it's an ok book.. sometimes

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

An interesting and unsorted collection

David Kushner starts off by billing "Prepare to Meet Thy Doom" as the successor to "Masters of Doom", a rambunctious tale of the formatin and success of id Software while following both John Romero and John Carmack lives in and out of gaming. In reality, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom is a collection of stories David Kushner wrote many non-gaming A-list magazines such as Rolling Stone / Wired / Playboy / Salon / Blendr / Spectrum. While both Johns kick off the story with "Where are they now?" pieces, the rest of the book is a mish-mash of unrelated tales over the past decade. Stories aren't limited to video games, as it diverges to the world of DnD and even chess. The book's high point is when David Kushner gushes over Atari founder, and original anti-establishment digital bad boy, Nolan Bushnell, who put the roof up on the start up culture. Kushner's excitement is palpable, and makes for a better read, and better researched than the few other books in the same vain like Jeff Ryan's "Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America".

There's also a few interesting stories on distant memories like Second Life, which has been nearly 3-4 years since I recall any major media discussing it, the ambitious and somewhat forgotten Spore and once activist lawyer (now disbarred) Jack Thompson. There's even a story dedicate to a flo like AFP which sent me to google as it bombed so badly that I had never heard of it. The end of book trails after Rock Star, and due to the nature of reprinting separate articles for separate publications, finds a few steps retraced.

It's an interesting retrospective through of-the-time case studies but really could use follow ups for "at the time of publication" as most (if not all articles) collected are freely available online. I enjoyed the stories but would have liked to see Kushner's lens focused again on another set of digital misfits.

9 of 17 people found this review helpful

An okay book, if all you care about is Grand Theft Auto

Too much of the book covers Grand Theft Auto and it’s controversy. I was hoping to hear more about Romero and Carmack than was presented. If you are expecting something the caliber of “Masters of Doom”, you will be disappointed.

Interesting content yet somehow repetitive

The reading was pleasant as I expect from Wheaton. I felt the stories seemed to repeat content. Perhaps with a slightly different perspective that the previous story but they felt to similar in essence. Still enjoyed it overall.

Collection of articles

The first book is amazing.
This is not really a book.
It is of a collection of vaguely related short pieces.

Not Quite the Successor I wanted, but still good

The title really says it all. The book is an interesting listen, but because multiple developers were focused on, I felt like the whole of the book had less focus than the previous entry. Wil Wheaton is always a pleasure to listen to, and book is good listen. Would recommend.