You love them, you hate them, but you can never escape the grasp of strategy guides. Be they in paper, digital, or video form, they are everywhere spanning the gamut from terrible to amazing.
Since our fearless leader is still acclimating to his new environment, I have the honor (a.k.a. sucky job) of editing this week’s Pinekast. After a long day of moving Jango into his new box of a residence, the boys sit down and hash it out. From our first memories as little tikes, to the detailed video walkthroughs of today. So join us on this magical journey won’t you?
- Jedah Doma
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Think the first strategy guides I had were some of those ‘How to Win at Nintendo Games’ books. I was never big on guides since on most 1 player games they just ruin the experience. Although I am guilty of going to GameFAQs when I am stuck, but usually only in instances where I have to find out how to trigger some event that the game never eludes to.
I do approve of some guides. Personally I think MMO and fighting game guides act as a suppliment tool to the game. I use alot of the fighting game guides on GameFAQs, SRK, Dustloop and other forums sites since they go beyond move lists and combos and cover character match ups, frame data, and what not. They will usually have good videos displaying top level play or examples of tricks. The new Joo MvC2 guide videos are a great example of this.
My first strategy guide (both the first time I used one and the first one I bought) was the NES Game Atlas.
http://tinyurl.com/my-first-guide
I use guides of all sorts mainly when Im most the way to earning an achievement and can’t find the last few of something for said achievement or in occasional instances where the game does a piss poor job of letting you know where to go to proceed.
Also I guess Im sort of marketing sucker because whenever I get a new game I feel compelled to get the guide regardless of said guide is actually any good…if anything they tend to be a good read as far as the back story for the weapons, enemies and various other goings on in the game.
I will still stand by my fighter guides but the one strategy guide that help my enjoyment of a game has to still be the Pokemon guide. That game was so huge and at the time, I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Gameboy game.
One of the first I remember getting was a guide for Mortal Kombat 2. In fact, I still have on my bookshelf.
Guide books, for the most part, are wastes of money at this point. Any information about a particular section of a game or finding a specific item can be found online now. The amount of detailed information is staggering.
I miss older Game Informers. They used to print retro game stratagey guides for games like Super Punch Out and MK II. They probably stopped due to pressure from Gamestop when Gamestop stopped carrying snes games and what not.
I never buy strategy guides anymore, I just find it pointless as all hell. The last guide I bought was for FFXII, and I hated that game. In games I never use the strategy guides for whatever reason anyways… usually when I get stuck in games, it’s more of a skill based thing rather than being clueless about where to go.
Nowadays I’ll just use Gamefaqs or Google to find my answer, does a much better job and is a lot easier, but I will respect my classic guides such as FF7, Pokemon Red and Blue, etc.
The one guide I miss NOT getting was the guide for Star Fox 64. I would kill to have that thing…