Sad about no more physical strategy guides

[Opal Knight]

I'm really looking forward to playing this game on the 5th, but I'm disappointed that Prima closed down and wont be making a physical strategy guide. My bookshelf is lined with The Elder Scrolls and Fallout strategy guides and I still take them down and have a peruse through them just for fun. They were really well written and had a lot of personality to them, making them works of art in their own right. I don't really use a strategy guide for more than a few tips, but it was a tactile entity that I always enjoyed alongside my playtime in the games themselves.

I get that physical strategy guides don't get updated like online ones do, but I hate online guides and I hate having to use online guides (if I really need one) while I'm playing a game. I used to have all my PC game boxes displayed around my computer and I still miss the days of looking at the manuals while the game installed off the disk. There is just something real about a tactile physical book that makes learning all the nitty-gritty ins-and-outs of a game more fun.

For people that have grown up in the digital-only age, there is a kind of magic that they will never experience. From all of the talk (even the very negative sides) about Starfield I can tell this game is going to be exactly what I had always expected it to be. So I'm going to be having hours of fun playing, but I'll miss that thick, weighty book sitting in my lap as I make my characters and start exploring.

[Sunday Driver]

Some of those prima guides were a fun read in the past. Quite collectable too.

They could have extra art and lore and all sorts of fun info beyond just the basic guide too.

[Sunday Driver]

The worst part of looking up online game info is so much of is now video. Even on Steam you look at a guide and it's just a video link half the time. Garbage.

You click on the video and you have to see the intro, the mandatory "whaaaatsup guys, it's X here" and then their baked in sponsor, then their begging for subscriptions and saying to follow and ring bell and what other videos they do, then a long intro saying what the game is and that people have issue Y. Then after five to ten minute of this padding they finally start to talk about what you wanted to know, dragging it out as slow as possible to get those ad sense advert slots. Finally the information you need was about 30 seconds and could have been a YT short.

Or I can just flick to a page or read from even a website (like gamefaqs...) and see it in seconds and much easier to refer back. The hard copy with a prima guide was the fastest and most useful to have by your side while playing so you can quickly glance at it.

[Penitent Pilgrim]

I miss those guides too, I have a collection going back to System Shock 2.