Well if a game has a big enough glitch, the manufacturer should have to allow a recall on the game and compensate the buyer just like new cars with faulty brakes or floor mats
Well if a game has a big enough glitch, the manufacturer should have to allow a recall on the game and compensate the buyer just like new cars with faulty brakes or floor mats
Most car recalls involve the owner bringing the car into the dealership where the faulty part is replaced for free and then the owner leaves with the same car, not turning over the car and getting a refund for the purchase price or a brand-new car. It's actually pretty similar to the process of games getting patched.
Comparing a glitchy game to a serious safety hazard is akin to hyperbole, and demanding compensation concurrent with a patch? Ironic; an attitude usually found among those modern FPS kiddies you hate so much.
In any case, back to the original subject. I'm not particularly pleased that Prima passed on, but I can't really say I've thought much of their modern guides, as well, they're not guides. They're mostly artbooks with lore snippets and some badly done walkthrough and play tips scattered through. The only time I even crack one open is when I feel like nerding out at work and I between tearing though novels. Prima has always been all over the place with their guide quality, even in the old days. The Tactics Ogre is a 'favorite' of mine. A few screenshots and very vague tips for each battlefield, no reference to any of the optional content, not even hints for finding rare equipment or spells, no class tables, the list goes on. Make the obvious comparison to the guides for Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle, that gave you maps, equipment lists, and guidance to find pretty much all the extra stuff (hell the OB guide bothered to tell you differences for high-reputation and low-reputation playthrough encounters and options). All three? Prima.
I just...really I like being able to leaf through guides. GameFAQs can be helpful or even indispensable, but the stuff for modern games are getting worse and worse. I'm expecting that within five years any new content from there will be five or six pages of copy/pasted chatlogs in garbled leetspeak that amount to "get good noob." I don't like those kiddies either. Video walkthroughs? They probably have some utility, but unless somebody is doing some sort of QC and archiving the good ones, it's probably more efficient to do trial-and-error in your own playthrough.
RPGs: Proof that one you start done the dork path, forever will it dominate your wallet's destiny.
I think the saddest death of a strategy guide line will always be Nintendo Power's for me. I just love those things, and they were almost always very skinny, so they don't eat up a lot of shelf space. Sometimes I entertain the idea of collecting the entire line (but I have to remind myself that I'm already drowning in game-related books and magazines, haha). Double Jump was also really good during its relatively short run.
My strategy guide collection is pretty funny because not only do I have a bunch of guides for games I've never played (because they're still in my backlog) but I also have lots for games I don't even own. I rarely hit thrifts anymore, but for many years when I still did, I'd almost never find any good games to buy. If I did leave with something, it probably came out of the book section. It's a pretty fun challenge to visually scan the shelves and try to spot any game guides. I'm sure I missed some, since I'm not about to go through the books one by one, but I think I got pretty good at finding them, even ones without the telltale white and yellow/orange spines of BradyGames or the black and red of Prima. It's sad to imagine a future when strategy guides may be no longer a fairly common find at thrifts. I suppose now that the US strategy guide market is effectively dead, I should buy and play more of the games I have guides for so that I can actually put the guides to use, even if only as something to read for fun after I've already cleared each part of a game.
I don't demand compensation for anything. I accept a glitch as just being a part of the game. I was speaking on behalf of people who seems distraught if a game is imperfect and need a patch or a new version of a game
Consumer consumption habits have changed a lot in this decade. Now people prefer watching another person play the game over playing it themselves but the games actually are very user friendly and easier to play. The strategy guide consumer has always had the choice of getting that information for free, maybe those consumers no longer play video games and new customers spend their money on more important stuff.
I have only bought a few guides as a collector item and only 2 with the purpose of reading it after finishing my first run: Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. I had to buy the Deluxe Edition of Demon's Souls because I loved the game and obviously felt that I left many mysteries on the first play, the game deserved a strategy guide and I enjoyed reading it and getting all that missing information that I maybe had never got to discover it by myself.
Las calles no son basurero, POR FAVOR TIREN LA BASURA EN SU LUGAR !!!!
One thing I'll really miss now that pro guides are dying out is game maps. If you just watch somebody else playing, you'll only see whatever the game will show you at any given time. If you search a game on GameFAQs, you either don't get maps at all or they're often lacking. I remember buying the Super Mario Sunshine guide specifically to get some decent maps. I was working toward getting all 120 shines, and I only had a handful of blue coins left to find. Trying to get that info from GameFAQs was getting me nowhere, so I bought the guide, and in no time I found what I was missing. I can't even imagine how much time I would waste on videos if I was trying to get the info that way.