Video Game Manuals - Do We Still Need Them?

PostRe: Video Game Manuals: A Discussion by **SEP** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:51 pm

Prototype wrote:Wait 'til you guys see the manual for HeartGold on the DS. It's made out of what seems to be Chinese scroll.

or maybe just really good quality paper.

I can't wait!

When I was younger and I didn't buy alot of games myself, I read the manuals all the time, even more than once on some of manuals. Nowdays though. I got alot of games, I rarely read manuals.

It's shame.

That and these manuals are getting crap, too. Especially White Knight Chronicles one :fp:

I haven't really sat down and read a manual in years. I find that most of them are pretty rubbish, and the vast majority of games have good tutorials to tell you everything anyway. You also get the situation of manuals telling you stuff from later in the game, which seems to undo some of the good work "going in blind" does.

Tales of Vesperia had a wonderful manual. I was surprised by how my pages it had, and in full colour too, so I ended up reading the entire thing. The FFXIII manual is very well made too, nice and colorful.

I'd quite like to see games just make the manual into a quick-reference guide, maybe something that folds out into a poster but has a bunch of information on the other side.

PostRe: Video Game Manuals: A Discussion by **SEP** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:23 pm

I do like the style of the GTA manuals, though. Always full-colour, and set out like a guidebook for the city, packed full of humour. Plus you get a fold-out map, too.

EDIT: And the hardback book you got with the PC version of San Andreas was truly sublime.

I liked the Halo 2 collector's edition manual, it was written from the view of the Covenant. The descriptions of the human weapons as puny and inferior devices made me chuckle, and using the Covenant names for everything was great. Was really surprised when I opened my friends standard Halo 2 to find a different manual, thought it was a great touch.

Cal wrote:
pyxl-8 wrote:Final Fantasy XIII's manual is sublime. Flies in the face of the 8 pages of black and white games ship with nowadays.

Hardly comprehensive is it, though? Not really of too much use for those willing to dive into the game's complex levelling mechanics. If charts and lists are your thing as a JRPG player wishing to understand the minutiae of every possible weapon, spell, etc...it's pretty much compulsory for true FF fanatics to buy the tome-like player's guides.

www.gamefaqs.com

And Baldurs Gate 2 was one of the best manuals ever. Comprehensive and amusing.

The Katamari Forever one actually has a small spine! :shock:

PsychicSykes wrote:And Baldurs Gate 2 was one of the best manuals ever. Comprehensive and amusing.

I was about to mention this as well as it was a very nice introduction to some of the core rules of AD&D (2nd Edition) which could be intimidating due to it's sometimes stat heavy nature. The pages and pages of spell explanations were particularly good.
I bet a lot of people jumped straight from that to the full pen and paper games Players Handbook without to much effort

.

Peter Crisp wrote:
PsychicSykes wrote:And Baldurs Gate 2 was one of the best manuals ever. Comprehensive and amusing.

I was about to mention this as well as it was a very nice introduction to some of the core rules of AD&D (2nd Edition) which could be intimidating due to it's sometimes stat heavy nature. The pages and pages of spell explanations were particularly good.
I bet a lot of people jumped straight from that to the full pen and paper games Players Handbook without to much effort .

Yeah, not only is it fairly detailed in the rules and various spells available, the little biting comments between the two characters narrating always made me smile.

I used to read every manual I had, before I started playing the game. These days, I just flick through while the game's loading or installing to see if there's anything interesting in there. I still appreciate good manuals, where you can tell that thought and effort's been put into it. I also find them useful if the game in question has a lot of modes/weapons/control schemes/etc, just so you can check out differences and such. Nice to have, but not really necessary anymore.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:
consolegaming wrote:For the amount we pay we should be getting mini colour strategy guides with every game, these black and white pamphlets are a disgrace imo. I used to love having a read of the manuals, but now don't even bother as I know they are crap.

With the storage media for video games getting larger, you now get what used to be in the manual in the game itself. So you're hardly losing content here.

Spoken like someone who's never had a video-game with a "Feelie" in the box.

Prototype wrote:Wait 'til you guys see the manual for HeartGold on the DS. It's made out of what seems to be Chinese scroll.

or maybe just really good quality paper.

Erm. Perhaps not on the PAL version. :evil:

Atlus gives good manual. Cubivore's is one of the best ever. There's a mini strategy-guide with the LE of Demon's Souls, which is probably cheating a bit to say it's a manual, but it's that kind of size (if not thickness). Square-Enix's and Nintendo's are usually fairly comprehensive, too.

Bit Generations manuals... :wub:

Website

Lotus wrote:I used to read every manual I had, before I started playing the game. These days, I just flick through while the game's loading or installing to see if there's anything interesting in there.

These days, I rarely can be bothered to read the words. Most manuals are thin black & white pamphlets. We pay so much for a game, it would be nice if publishers spent a bit more of our money on a manual that can aid in setting the scene of the game world - although lavish game guides seem to have reduced the manual's role to just illustrating buttons and game controls. Not many new games have nice manuals. The FF XIII manual is in colour, I have enjoyed smelling it almost as much as the new season's Argos catalogue!

Cal wrote:Hardly comprehensive is it, though? Not really of too much use for those willing to dive into the game's complex levelling mechanics. If charts and lists are your thing as a JRPG player wishing to understand the minutiae of every possible weapon, spell, etc...it's pretty much compulsory for true FF fanatics to buy the tome-like player's guides.

Personally speaking, I think that having every minutiae spelled out clear as day is a negative, not a positive. It takes away the fun of discovery, experimentation etc..., and working out the best combinations of weapons, spells etc... is part of the battle system too so I'd feel a bit cheated if someone was to put everything in front of me. I don't think it's compulsory for me to run out and buy the guide for 13 and it's almost like you're saying the true FF fanatics can't figure the game out for themselves.

I don't read them but I do still like to smell them from time to time :shifty:

The Battlefield Modern Combat 2 manual has a classic "manual aroma" and I highly recommend it.

Seriously though, I like a nice thick manual in a PC strategy game or a big RPG but I never read them for other types of games.

PostRe: Video Game Manuals: A Discussion by JK » Fri Mar 19, 2010 11:18 pm

A manual should give you the bare basics of the game, possibly with a slightly off the wall presentation of the minutiae (as in, by'written' by a character in the game or something like that), not a point-by-point breakdown of how to play the game.

To people saying paper manuals have been rendered useless because they're pretty much still there, only in-game in tutorials and the like:

A good manual is not about teaching you how to play the game. The game, if designed just right, should be capable of teaching you how to play the game all on its own (without the use of any tutorials or handholding)
What a good manual is all about is providing something extra, an introduction to the game world you're about to be immersed in. It should be something that really meshes with how the game was designed and possibly also provides the player with a meaningful connection between the game world and the real world (like Pokemon's manual being a 'Trainer's Guide').

The Civ IV manual is immense its around a centimeter thick, much better than the piss poor excuses for manuals that most games come with nowadays.

Another fine example of the state of the manual - Elite. It even contained descriptions of things not actually in the game but which COULD have been, which helped flesh out the universe.

Indeed, these things were eventualy incorporated into the Acorn Achimedes version.

Video Game Manuals - Do We Still Need Them?

Video Game Manuals: Still Relevant?

Who is online

Affiliates