Re: game manuals, PC vs. console games

[Klumpfot]

I've been going through the manuals to a lot of my games lately out of boredom mainly, and I've gradually come to the conclusion that I generally find manuals for console games to be a lot more fun to read than PC manuals. The PC manuals are more often thin booklets filled only with technical information and such, while the ones for consoles (especially older ones) tend to have information on the characters, items and plot (though less so in recent years).

What do you think?

 

[Ironic Pirate]

The manual for Giant's Citizen Kabuto was excellant, it was thick, colorful, afnd hilarious.

I've only seen a couple PC manuals, but based on them I agree with you.

 

[Jaranja]

Generally, MMO manuals are the best.

 

[Nwabudike Morgan]

PC manuals used to be amazing, and often really creative and interesting. The manual for Crusader: No Remorse, for example, was written in the style of military field manual.

And then there was the awesome tendency of PC games to include the most classic of pack-ins, the cloth map.

The best manual ever, though, has to be Gran Turismo 2. It had two, actually. One was a manual like any other, the second, though was something else entirely. It was basically a textbook on the physics of racing, car control, how to approach different types of corners with the different drivetrain setups, the art and science of car tuning and setup, and a million other things. It was amazing.

 

[Ganthrinor]

What is this "Manual" you speak of?

Oldschool PC game manuals were awesome. Lots of RPG's gave you maps. Cloth, fold-out or otherwise. Now companies are limiting that sort of thing to "Limited" or "Collector's" Editions. Which sucks. Both Console and PC manuals are getting more and more barebones these days.

 

[Shock and Awe]

From what I have seen it depends on the genre, RTS and RPGs have a decent booklet of at least 20 pages and shooters hace the bare minimum.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

I have my manual for Alpha Centauri nearby. It's 200 pages long. Three quarters of it are about the game mechanics while another quarter is about astronomy, the game fiction, suggested reading and designers notes.

The pamphlets that come with games these days can't really be called manuals.

 

[Wolfram23]

My all-time favorite manuals are Starcraft and Homeworld.

But yeah, I always read the manuals (if I couldn't actually play at the time). I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point they just stopped making half decent manuals. So many of them suck balls they give no helpful info about the game, half the pages are schizophrenia warnings. And especially now, buying games on Steam, you don't get anything. They should at least include a nice PDF manual.

On the console side, they're at least still putting manuals in the games and some of them are alright. I'd say right now, console easily has the best manuals.

 

[Whitethunder]

WTF?!? Wow anything will be discussed in this forum! Really enjoying this place lol...

Awesomeness=Whitehunder=this forum

 

[GloatingSwine]

Manual?

What is this manual you speak of?

Anyway, the best manual of all was Daggerfail. It was full of such blatant lies that it basically bore no relation to the game it came with.

 

[Whitethunder]

oh ya...I don't read manuals anymore...but my favorite one of em all to read was an MMO manual, so I'll have to give pc the nod based on what I know. Never really noticed a difference with console vs pc manuals.

 

[mad825]

it rather depends on the game not the format,I prefer the GTA manuals as it comes with a map and something random

 

[squid5580]

I dunno. I am finding there is more and more bare bones manuals for consoles. Singularity's is like 3 pages. All technical info. Although Nier's was impressive.

 

[Tharwen]

Do we even get manuals any more? Oh well, at least they're better than those pieces of crap folded into the cover of CD-ROM cases...

 

[The Singularity]

Generally, MMO manuals are the best.

The original WoW basically came with a bible. Whereas in console manuals its about controls and weapons or whatever a lot more.

 

[Axzarious]

The PC Manuals from Blizzard Entertainment and Team 17 would disagree with you. Team 17 made the worms series, and the first Age Of Wonders game also had a brilliant manual that was fun to read. I would regard these examples equal to, or superiour to game consol manuals, but in general, the older console ones were superior. The trend of interesting manuals seems to be falling for console games as well.

 

[-Samurai-]

I used to read console manuals all the time. I still have the Legend of Zelda(NES) manual and map.

Recently, though, they've become single page booklets. Some of them don't even have one page. They're just controls on one side, warnings and copyright stuff on the other.

 

[ZephrC]

I think the manual for the first Fallout game was better than most actual games. So the PC had some good ones as well.

 

[L4hlborg]

I guess that the lack of good manuals nowadays on the pc is because of big portion of the sales being digital. There is no point putting money in making a manual, that nobody will get to see.

Since console games are mostly sold in physical form, they have to have a manual, atleast to fill the manual holder in the package.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

It does make sense though. The console is a simpler system to deal with. There's no need to dick around trying to get it installed, you don't have to worry about specs or anything. If you've got the right console, the game will work instantly. Plus, the console has much more universal control set-ups, whereas the PC has a lot more potential control set-ups. Because the console requires less information to deal with then, it makes sense that when making the instruction manual for a console game, one would have a lot more room to have fun with it.