Game Manuals - dying off?

[Blackpapa]

Homeworld games always had great manuals.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kvgtmycujof

Here's a 144 page booklet that was bundled with Cataclysm. Not only an explanation of the game interface but also a lot of backstory and "flavoring".

Of course reading isn't contemporary. If you'd want to read you'd go read the text on the back of a beer can or something.

 

[Nouw]

I loathed how Starcraft 2's manual was just a story-book with no actual gameplay. Ah well, as long as Relic exists!

 

[Akihiko]

Catherines manual was quite nice, not massive, but it had details on the plot and characters. It was also in full colour, too. But yeah, I miss it when there isn't one. I mean in most cases everything is explained in game, but often, some things are forgotten, and so it's nice to have a reference manual which you can refer to.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I miss the manuals.

I think it's a conspiracy to get people to buy collectors edition game guides, just to fill the void.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

They do seem to be dying off. There may have been many bare-bones manuals last generation, but as you said, the current generation has manuals that contain only health warnings.

This is a shame, too, because I absolutely love well-made instruction manuals. The Metal Gear Solid series is especially noteworthy of these. A good instruction manual gives me faith in a game, faith that the developers actually gave a damn.

This was probably why I held on to Marvel vs Capcom 3 as long as I did; though ultimately my good will faded as I was beaten in the face by the realization that I had been ripped off. Capcom's fighting game manuals as of late are of impressive quality.

 

[Gindil]

The last few years I can only remember a few game manuals that actually gave background info, and weren't just a dead-tree tutorial.

Generally a simple google query gives better information on how to play the game, so I can't really say I'm sad that's gone.

The TF2 manual was about how to hit a sentry with a wrench. Yeah, manuals just don't have the same feel as playing through the tutorial of games or first few stages.

 

[imnot]

One thing I have noticed is that these days, game manuals are more integrated with the game. Rather than being an instruction booklet, they are faux guides and handbooks. I can't remember the last time I read a guide that said "This is a game".

Same, I think the first one like that was Fable 1 that i remember, although I quite like them that way.
A bit odd though .
Welcome to the army marine first thing in your training is to push the thumbstick forward to move!

Seems a bit odd.

 

[Fiirdraak]

I really liked game manuals back in the day of NES. I used to browse them through multiple times and use them as inspiration when I drew stuff. To me, they weren't only about teaching you about enemies and items allthough some manuals proved to be very useful since trying to figure out what a few pixels worth of a sprite was meant to be was sometimes a bit hard on the NES. So, reading the manual helped to identify each item better.

But the most important part, to me at least, was the artwork they had. I remember especially The Legend of Zelda manual because of the awesome little pictures of Link doing stuff and the cool monster pictures. Same was with the original Metroid game. Sweet stuff. So it is quite obvious that to me the development of getting rid of physical manuals is sometimes irritating because they could be a place where the developers could show some cool artwork that you don't see in the games themselves. I think Metal Gear Solid also had a nice manual with pictures of every important character in the game.

I guess nowadays the graphic side of manuals is re-located into the artbooks and so on.

 

[The Cheezy One]

One thing I have noticed is that these days, game manuals are more integrated with the game. Rather than being an instruction booklet, they are faux guides and handbooks. I can't remember the last time I read a guide that said "This is a game".

Same, I think the first one like that was Fable 1 that i remember, although I quite like them that way.
A bit odd though .
Welcome to the army marine first thing in your training is to push the thumbstick forward to move!

Seems a bit odd.

I think the last 'real' one I saw was CoD4, which I got at the same time as Gears of War 2. Very different manuals to say the least. The worst I have seen is AC:2, with the scientist leaving notes saying 'Remember to press Y at the top of a building to activate eagle vision' or something.

It's like admitting you are selling game will lose you points in the world of game design, you need to sell an 'interactive experience'. Which sounds great, but when the game is Gears of War, it just sounds weird.

 

[Weaver]

Most of them are just PDFs on the disk now. I don't truly mind that.

 

[imnot]

One thing I have noticed is that these days, game manuals are more integrated with the game. Rather than being an instruction booklet, they are faux guides and handbooks. I can't remember the last time I read a guide that said "This is a game".

Same, I think the first one like that was Fable 1 that i remember, although I quite like them that way.
A bit odd though .
Welcome to the army marine first thing in your training is to push the thumbstick forward to move!

Seems a bit odd.

I think the last 'real' one I saw was CoD4, which I got at the same time as Gears of War 2. Very different manuals to say the least. The worst I have seen is AC:2, with the scientist leaving notes saying 'Remember to press Y at the top of a building to activate eagle vision' or something.

It's like admitting you are selling game will lose you points in the world of game design, you need to sell an 'interactive experience'. Which sounds great, but when the game is Gears of War, it just sounds weird.

In fairness in AC 1 I think they told desmond they linked the animus up to a console controller, I remember because I Was loling

 

[The Cheezy One]

One thing I have noticed is that these days, game manuals are more integrated with the game. Rather than being an instruction booklet, they are faux guides and handbooks. I can't remember the last time I read a guide that said "This is a game".

Same, I think the first one like that was Fable 1 that i remember, although I quite like them that way.
A bit odd though .
Welcome to the army marine first thing in your training is to push the thumbstick forward to move!

Seems a bit odd.

I think the last 'real' one I saw was CoD4, which I got at the same time as Gears of War 2. Very different manuals to say the least. The worst I have seen is AC:2, with the scientist leaving notes saying 'Remember to press Y at the top of a building to activate eagle vision' or something.

It's like admitting you are selling game will lose you points in the world of game design, you need to sell an 'interactive experience'. Which sounds great, but when the game is Gears of War, it just sounds weird.

In fairness in AC 1 I think they told desmond they linked the animus up to a console controller, I remember because I Was loling

Oh yeah, something like that. It was actually quite good, so I'll give you that one. But most attempts at making it seem like a handbook fall flat as soon as they have to actually teach you the controls. A couple are alright, but I don't think the gaming world would collapse without them.

 

[Bostur]

I miss manuals. I miss the smell of paper and chemicals and dye when opening a game box. I miss the detailed cloth map of Ultima V. I miss the complex and confusing keyboard overlays of "F19 Stealth Fighter" and "Red Storm Rising". I miss the charming background info of "Railroad Tycoon" and "Civilization". I miss the poster and short story of "Elite". I miss the crazy tourist guides of "Grand Theft Auto".

Tutorials are nice and needed in modern games. But tutorials and internet can't replace the usefulness of a good manual. If I forget how a feature works, it doesn't help me much that the tutorial told me 2 hours ago. Tabbing out of the game to do a google search, while praying the game wont crash, isn't as convenient as simply browsing the pages of a manual.

In-game encyclopedias are great, but they take up a lot of screen space and usually makes the rest of the game unavailable for interaction. Switching between the in-game encyclopedia and a game window is tiresome and ineffective compared to a manual.

Besides paper is a much better medium for reading than pixels ever will be.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Meh. I don't think I've even looked at the manual for half the games I bought in the last 6 months.

 

[Hairetos]

Console game manuals are certainly getting thinner. PC games usually seem to include a PDF somewhere on the internet or on the CD.

I personally loved all game manuals. I read that shit between commercials or whatever. You ever bought an old retail copy of Neverwinter Nights and picked up that manual? That fucker is huge and I read it multiple times because of my fascination with the D&D system. I learned a shit ton about D&D from it. Now I'm lucky to get more than 5 pages in a console game.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

Most manuals are just

1) Controls
2) Credits
3) Repeat in French and German.