Prima vs. Gamefaqs

[ccjav]

In games around four to five years ago, i always saw ads for the prima guide. Also, when at electronics stores, they had racks of the guides. Now they are nowhere to be found. Could this possibly be due to the introduction of gamefaqs? Also, is there anyone who is still loyal to prima for their guides (when they need them of course), or is it more of a collectible thing

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

Prima guides simply can't compete with sites like Gamefaqs. Those guides are frequently published with errors, whereas Gamefaqs is a living, breathing community that checks itself and updates accordingly. The colored maps are neat, but I find that instructions written by a fellow gamer are far more helpful. And of course Prima guides don't have forums I can troll. Plus, you know, Gamefaqs is free.

The only reason I can think of for why Prima is still able to sell their guides is because they are "collectible" or some shit. That, or there is still a chunk of people out there who don't know about the Internet.

 

[TheGreenManalishi]

Whenever i get a game (which is a rare occurance) it is usually a pretty big realease one, but a year or so after that release, and as such, IGN usually has a pretty concise guide on it.

Problem is, anyone with some time on their hands can write as good a guide as Prima, but you dont get the maps and specific screenshots that £10 or whatever stupid amount people want for essentially a game-specific magazine. Maybe Prima should consider a cheaper .PDF downloadable service (with updates and edits) instead of their printed guides.

 

[GothmogII]

That need for updating is definately a must, this is espcially true of PC games, and MMO's in particular. For example, World of Warcraft had/has a printed guide (not sure if it's Prima's) however, WoW changes, and has changed quite a lot since then, so unless a company can afford to print updates for their guides that often, the guide is going to be pretty useless.

Though, some games guide do make okay reading material (y'know, just reading random trivia about a game for fun) on their own, and some have very good artwork too. They are also quite expensive, when you consider that you can get the same info or better on the internet for free.

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Prima is a hulking monstrosity. I have two examples to show off: the guide to The Orange Box, which I own, and the guide to Star Wars BattleFront 2, which I have read and therefore didn't buy. Both are ridiculous.

In The Orange Box guide, the maps are impossible to understand, even for someone who's played it all before. They have just no-clipped, then taken a screen shot from above. This makes it incredibly confusing. The key (for the Half-Life games) is always as follows:

1. Entry point 2.Clear Point (Or 'Exit') 3.Other Items

That is all the information provided. Very helpful. The guide through the Half-Life section is essentially a list of spoilers covered with tiny screenshots which are too small to be of any use, and yet still clog up the page. This problem grows worse in the section about TF2, where each page is speckled with bold titled hints labelled 'Hint', or 'Caution'. In many cases, this title is larger than the hint itself. Hints such as "The sniper can empty a full SMG clip in just 2.5 seconds". Wow! Even worse: "The TF2 dev team commonly refers to the soldier's critical rockets as 'Crockets'". Fascinating. The only helpful part in the entire guide is that for Portal, becuase it's impossible to screw up a guide for a puzzle game.

Now for the guide to Star Wars BattleFront 2. I opened this up in the game store, and flicked through. Looking at the section for the Death Star level, I could see the author didn't have a clue what he was writing about. If you haven't played this game before, bear with me while I rant. Now this guy said you could remove some of the bridges in the level by damaging them. Fine. He said to do this, you had to throw a thermal detonator onto the middle of the bridge. Wrong. You have to destroy the control panels on either side to make it drop, which might get caught in the blast if you're lucky. He then said you couldn't repair the bridge. Also wrong. An engineer can repair the control panles, replacing the bridge.

I don't know how they were able to mess up this badly.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I agree that old fashioned Strategy Guides cannot compete anymore, especially when sites like Gamefaqs provide the same information from multiple sources... and for free.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

the only thing the prima guides have are screenshots

the writing for some faqs are just as bad as the prima guides. i've read a few faqs, which really it's not a faq it's a walkthru, that the person writing it says something that is totally useless like in an uncharted one "jump from vine to vine", ok i could have figured that out but on a trickier vine you have to get the height right and i couldn't figure that out, another walkthru had it

tho in the same vein one of the uncharted guides had links to the author's flikr page that had screen shots, which was kinda handy when trying to look for the treasures, he even had video of one or two harder to find treasures.

stuff like that would make life a bit easier i think and would really make prima earn their keep. on a side note i've noticed that eb hasn't been pushing those guides on you as much anymore

 

[Logan Westbrook]

One thing that hasn't been brought up is that some people, myself included, prefer the tactile quality of a book over scrolling through text in a FAQ.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I'll agree with Nilcypher in terms of the tactile pleasure of books, and in terms of fiction, I'd always buy a book over downloading an e-book.

However, the convenience and quality of the Gamefaqs content, provided for free by everyone, being only an alt-tab away at any moment, beats balancing a book on my lap hands down.

I do admit to owning the warcraft atlas however, just because its a really nice , well put together item, and I figured actual geography wasnt going to change too much.

 

[stompy]

While having a physical copy is always nice, I refuse to shell out money for something I could just get on the net, and for free. It is a bit of an inconvenience when playing console games, but I'd rather save the money then rush to the computer once every hour or so.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I think also, Prima feel like they need to release a strategy guide for big games, like TF2, and to be honest, TF2 doesnt need more than about a dozen pages of info and a few maps with useful info, so, as above said, they end up padding it out with nonsense, til its large enough to count as a 'book'.

 

[Squarewave]

I don't feel bad for prima, brady guides, etc going out of style. During the nes/snes days guides were awesome as the internet wasn't around for most and many games were so cryptic it was almost imposible to find things out by yourself. Fighting games like Street Fighter II were unplayable almost without a guide on how to do the moves

However during the PS1 and early PS2 days many companies made games that you just could not finish without buying the guide in order to get royalties from the sale of the guide. Luckly the internet was starting to grow and you could get around the problem that way. One case I remember was Crono Cross, the only way to get an ending that was more then "game over" was to collect a hidden item and use it a pattern during the last boss. As far as I can tell the only way to have known about it was the guide, the way I found out about it was when I searched the internet how to get the multiple endings do to being pissed off on getting such a crappy ending.

Most modern games now don't require guides even if you don't have access to the internet. There are some exceptions, but fighting games now tell you how to do the moves within the game, and rpgs are more clear on what your supposed to do and less 'talk to everyone one in the town till the story progresses' the rest is just cheats that just ruin the game