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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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 Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:02 pm |
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Rogue Galaxy is clearly the best PS3 game released so far! (see, and you people thought I could only joke about the Wii's blah early lineup)
I actually haven't played it yet, but I'll be picking it up in the next day or two. And I still haven't finished FFXII either. Or Devil Summoner. Fucking RPGs indeed. I hope I can knock out at least one of them before Persona 3 comes out. Shit, I've still got random PS1 RPGs in my "to finish" pile. One day when I become immortal and have no obligations at all... |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 4:53 pm |
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About Doublejump guides...
I don't get what's such a big deal about them. They aren't awful, but I don't get all the fanboyish raving about them either. I own a couple - Phantom Brave and Nocturne, and I've seen the Disgaea one. Nocturne I like just because of the maps, but anyone who could print accurate maps would have satisfied me.
I just don't think they have any style! There's a ton of data crammed into the book, but it just looks like someone vomited a spreadsheet into there. It's ugly. They either waste space in the design layout - e.g. Rogue Galaxy having lots of dead space, small map sections, and large blocks of walkthrough text that just look lonely, or they cram a ton of data in 9 point font to make some chart for information.
The Rogue Galaxy one also uses HORRIBLE quality paper. It's almost newsprint quality, just utter crap. Does NOT make me want to pay $20. If I just want raw data, there's plenty of that on the internet. If I pay for a guide I want some style, some nice art, some glossy pages. The FFXII guide? Now THAT'S a nice guide (good job SuperWes!). Rogue Galaxy? Bah, I wasn't impressed by looking through it.
I know some other companies also use this shit quality paper sometimes too (Prima, IIRC), but that's no excuse.
I do like the change to the large page format for Rogue Galaxy - my eyes don't really love the squinting at the smaller page sizes, especially when there's a bunch of text tossed up there and Doublejump loves to use tiny fonts. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:05 pm |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
| Doublejump guides sometimes feel like I'm wallowing in an anime convention. |
Well said. Yeah, I feel almost a little embarassed to have the super-bubbly style (some of the heading fonts in the Phantom Brave guide... ugh) and fan art quality "bonus" artwork. I mean, I'm a total video game dork. But even I think the anime convention vibe is a little TOO geeky. Of course, perhaps some of it is fitting with the Nippon Ichi style for those games. The source material sometimes makes me a little ill with anime humor anyway, so maybe they're just being consistent. The Nocturne guide is fantastic - has a very Japanese guide feel and it's like a serious encyclopedia of the game.
I completely don't get why people would get psyched up for guides on games like Genji and Aria of Sorrow though. They simply don't have enough information to warrant an expensive ($20?? for a DS game guide??) book when the only really useful information is easily found by free FAQs, and is actually probably formatted in a way that's easier to read.
My 5 minutes of leafing through the Rogue Galaxy guide didn't show me too much that looked like it would be tremendously useful. Nothing like the complex maps of Nocturne that can't be recreated well in text format, not a very aesthetically pleasing design. It's almost as if they didn't know what to do with the added real estate of the full size pages after coming from the small book style. And again, there's no excuse for the absolute garbage quality paper.
Oh, and I forgot I have the Devil Summoner book too. Just purchased it on a whim, for the games I'm really excited about I sort of like the "event" mentality around it and the ritual of making it feel special. That guide also uses an 8.5 by 11 full size, and they again don't do a great job with it. The pages just look so boring. Way too much straight text in the main walkthrough section, and the game doesn't really have very detailed maps. If you don't have enough art to make the pages lively, use some well places screenshots that compliment the text walkthrough at least.
I think Doublejump is admirable in that they seem to care about doing a good job of including all the data one could hope to want (even some charts that are borderline irrelevant and would rarely be consulted). They just need some good graphic design people.
The only guides I'm always tempted to buy are Brady's ones for Square-Enix games. They consistently have nice looking layouts, with clean inset boxes for side-questy stuff and a nice balance of text to pictures. Good easy to differentiate page design for stuff like Boss fights or callout boxes discussing secrets. The art is usually excellent stuff and worth looking at for fans (part of this must come from the source material given by S-E). Screenshots are used with about the right frequency. They always have nice glossy pages. It feels like something that's worth paying a few dollars for just to leaf through if you're a fan, like a coffee table book. Not like some rag with plain information that I could get in a FAQ (Prima is especially bad about this). It's not all about getting information, you better also have style and presentation to make that guide worthy of a purchase. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:15 pm |
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| Joe wrote: |
| I guess I'm the only person bothered by the upskirts. |
At the risk of droning on about guides even more than I already have (hey, I'm getting the game today - I can talk about it later). I noticed that even in the guide it looked like a page of Maxim whenever there was art of that character. They're really trying hard to sell the sex with her I guess...
Oh, a note on game/character design. I do LOVE the fact that Rogue Galaxy and the last game I purchased (Hotel Dusk) have ADULT main characters. The main characters aren't whiny teens. About time to start selling to those of us who weren't born after the SNES launch. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:25 pm |
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| Oh, and yet one more comment about guides. "Japanese style" doesn't necessarily mean small. Some of the best guides I've ever seen are the Gamest/Arcadia fighting game mooks for Capcom and SNK games. Packed full of ridiculous amounts of data, sprite captures for every move, frame data, combos, etc. Almost all are the same size as our traditional larger page size guides. RPG guides I guess are a different animal though. I don't really look at a whole lot since I don't read Japanese fluently though, only Japanese RPG books I own are the super cool Shining Force III guides. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:17 pm |
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| Joe wrote: |
| Uh, the main character is 17. |
Oh for real? Fuck. Guess my point still stands for Hotel Dusk though. I swear I was reading somewhere that Rogue Galaxy was a mostly adult cast and didn't get into the "teens saving the world" thing. Guess not, too bad.
I just picked up the game at lunch. Whoo. I'll play it later. |
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firenze
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Bonus Round
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| Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 5:20 pm |
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| Joe wrote: |
| That's not Comic Sans, though. It's similar, but not Comic Sans. I'd know Comic Sans if I saw it. |
I love the font, whatever it is. Nice and big so I don't strain my eyes. It doesn't look gritty and serious, but it's not so bubbly that it's cutesy. It's a really clean look, consisitent with the crisp clean style of the game graphics.
I am mildly nearsighted, so I wear glasses when I need to see far away things. Driving to read signs, in large auditorium lectures back in college to see the board, etc. Usually for RPGs, I need to wear glasses when I sit back on the couch and play or else the text is just blurry enough that it's annoying. I don't have to do that with Rogue Galaxy and I like that.
More games should use easy to read fonts. |
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