My review compares the old Fallout 3 Official Game Guide Collector's Edition (Hardcover) to the new Fallout 3 Game of the Year Collector's Edition (Hardcover).
I will from here on out refer to the old Fallout 3 Official Game Guide Collector's Edition as "the old guide".
I really loved this game and spent more time than I'd like to admit reading the old guide. Mostly, I purchased this new guide so that I could get all the maps for the DLC.
First: I love this guide. It's a joy to read and I can tell the Author loved this game. The vast amount of detail available in this guide is overwhelming. If you're intending on using this guide to its fullest, plan to spend hundreds of hours playing Fallout 3.
Second: My review may sound negative but that's because I'm comparing the old guide to this new one. For what ever reason, Prima decided to not include some very important sections from the old guide into this new one. By no means does it make this new guide unusable. It's still a fantastic guide. This review should merely be used as a reference to compare the two guides. Plus, this is all just my opinion. So, here we go:
Things that are missing from the new guide that shouldn't be:
- Perks Overview chart - Old Guide Page 14
Shows a brief summary of all perks and when you receive them. A very nice summary, but unnecessary. It would have been nice to see an updated version of this table in the new guide revealing all the new DLC perks.
- Character Examples - Old Guide Page 28
Section that helps you create your first character based on how you want to play the game. A real shame they took this out.
- The Wasteland Weapons, Armor, & Items Table Old Guide Pages 41-45
This is a big one. A very nice table showing a summary of all common and unique weapons and armor in the game giving it's weight, cost/value, clip size, ammo type etc... Why did you take this table out Prima?? They did leave in the section of this table dealing with Comestibles and Chems (page 40 of new guide). However, this part of the table is no where near as useful as the weapons and armor section. The weapon and armor section was replaced with a new chapter (chapter 4 pgs 104-148 in the new guide - see below) called "Wasteland Gear" in which it details every weapon/armor and gives a nice description of each. However, this omitted table from the old guide is a lot more useable in that one could compare the weapons and armor quickly. True, all the new extra detail in the new guide is cool, but at the cost of usability. Additionally, in the new guide, they reused the same picture of different versions of weapons over and over again - basically wasting valuable game guide space. This makes no sense.
- Exclusive Content (hardcover only). Like the other reviews already mentioned, Prima deleted the 40 pages at the end of the old guide giving an "exclusive insider look of how they recreated the whole wasteland, the idea(why choose DC, how they make use of the Oblivion heritage and keep the feel of original Blackisle game), the concept art, and the design" (thanks fellow reviewer - Shuhao Cao). This section of the old guide also had a cool little narrative from Moira Brown that was fun to read. Considering Prima wasted a ton of pages on other new sections (see below), it kind of sucks they didn't include this cool section.
Things they added that they shouldn't have:
+ Chapter 3 "The Wasteland Census" New Guide Pages 59-103
In my opinion, 44 wasted pages. This section gives tons of details with pictures of every non-playable character (NPC) in the entire game including downloadable content (DLC). Yes, it's fun to read through, but entirely unnecessary for a game guide. They should have omitted this section in favor of The Wasteland Weapons, Armor, & Items Table which is much more helpful. Additionally, this section should have been in the Appendix, not in the front of the guide.
+ Chapter 4 "Wasteland Gear" New Guide Pages 104-148
Again, a waste of 44 pages. This chapter must have been the reason Prima didn't include "The Wasteland Weapons, Armor, & Items Table" from the old guide. This chapter gives big fancy color pictures of each and every weapon on the game and DLC along with their respective locations and a brief description. In my opinion, this is really "neat" to read but not as user friendly as the old "Wasteland Weapons, Armor, & Items" table in the old guide. This just creates a whole lot more page turning than necessary to compare different weapons and/or armor. Here's an example of the wasted space: page 105 lists 4 Flamer weapons, three of which are unique. Because all 4 of these weapons look identical in the game, Prima decided it was a good idea to put the same picture for all 4 Flamers into the guide. They do this over and over again (3 Gatling Lasers, 3 Alien Blasters, 4 Laser Pistols, 4 Laser Rifles, etc... etc...). Attention: Prima! This section was better in the old guide! Tables are our friends. It's a huge waste of space. I would have no problem with this chapter being in this book if they would have also included "The Wasteland Weapons, Armor, & Items Table" from the old guide. Again, this chapter needs to be in the Appendix.
Things they added that I LOVE
+ All content related to the downloadable content. All the new maps are awesome.
+ Prima updated all appendices with new relevant information from the DLC. Very nice!
+ Prima took the time to update all the page references throughout the entire book to point to the new pages that they refer to. If you think about it, this probably wasn't an easy task.
+ The new magazine style paper is really nice and glossy. Sure made the pages thinner.
+ The big poster sized map is updated detailing all new DLC content.
+ Every guide is uniquely numbered. I guess that's pretty cool.
+ FINALLY - an Index! Hooray!
Mistakes they didn't fix - also in the old guide
:( Lots and lots of spelling mistakes - other reviewers already mentioned this. Prima, it's called spell check... use it!
:( Some minor map mistakes. Example - DC ruins Zone 20 Mason Distinct. The Pulowski Preservation Shelter (20.D) isn't located where it shows in the guide (pages 451-452 new guide). It's up by the statue (20.A). This doesn't happen a whole lot, but when it does, it's kind of confusing. Especially since this shelter holds a Dean's Electronics skill book!
In conclusion - Best guide ever made, period!
I just wish the Oblivion guide was as good as this one.
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