Advantages: Beautiful Artwork, Excellent guide
Disadvantages: Spoilers!

...If you are a Final Fantasy fan, as I am, you will appreciate the true complexity and vast nature of these games. Towards this end, this strategy guide (a nice name for a 'walkthrough') has been released. After I had done my research for the game and decided I was going to buy it, I purchased this book at the same time. It was available as a prompter if I got lost, but it also provides insight on the finer points of the game, and the many hidden aspects and side games too. Firstly the presentation of the book is immaculate, the artworks are taken from the developers original designs and are truly breathtaking. Each character has their portrait rendered faithfully along with a detailed bio. Also, each stage of the game is accompanied by not only fine art, but also poignant screenshots depicting key areas in each level. The layout... Read review

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Advantages: Great Colour Book
Disadvantages: None At All

...The GTA IV Strategy Guide is one of the best ones around because of its all colour pages that really are high quality. The book gives you a real insight into the game and really does give you hints and tips in every single mission and will help you to achieve the coveted 100% that all GTA gamers are trying to get too. The book will help you in finding the little missions that are hidden like finding the pigeons and the side missions which you need to do to get the 100%. The book is laid out well and I have found no errors in the game and have nearly completed the entire story mission with the book and without it. I feel the book is a great way to help you if you are stuck as it will give you step by step instructions in every part of the mission. It is simply a great strategy guide and i have no complaints at all... Read review

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Advantages: this guide is very helpful with most things like main and sub missions
Disadvantages: for the photo ops quite alot of the maps show the wrong numbers on them and do not pair with there photos

...For Christmas I asked for a copy of san andreas (almost definitely the best game on earth so far) and me being me I love to complete games 100% without using any cheats so along with the game I thought it would be a good idea to get the official walk through guide (published by Brady games). Anyway Christmas came and I got my game and my guide and I thought "great" ill jus sneak away from the family to go and play san andreas. So I started playing and all was fine until I got to one of those hard @ss missions where u just feel like giving up and throwing in the towel. It was only until I stopped playing san Andreas that I realised I had my guide. So I thought perfect now I can put to use some of the books tips. So I opened it up and flicked through the pages to find the right mission. As I was flicking through I noticed the map with all... Read review

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Advantages: Comprehesive guide of the campaign mode, interesting artwork, great value.
Disadvantages: Gaps in the multiplayer guide. Not useful to experienced Halo players

...Halo 3 is arguably one of the biggest and best games of all time. It is therefore necessary that a player gets any advantage over the huge online community that owns this game, especially in the Multiplayer modes. This guide might well provide one. The game provides in depth detail of all of the levels, including annotated maps and in-depth guides on some of the larger battles in the game. For players on the Legendary difficulty this can be the difference between life and being spawned back at the last checkpoint, especially in the more complicated "Metagames" where players are encouraged to work together to either compete for points, or work together to score as many as possible. One feature of this guide that is especially helpful is the locations of all the secret "Skulls" that are located on the various levels on the campaign... Read review

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Advantages: 228 pages of all the details you need to know
Disadvantages: Screen shots could be a little bigger

...to the screenshots very regularly, and some details shown are hard to see because of the great visual detail in the game. Lots of colours flow out throughout the game meaning some items would loose themselves when captured as a screenshot. Have you played the game? If so you'll know that especially in Bevelle, those cloister of trials can be quite dauting at first. Well this guide is great for not only completing the trials but for also getting those bonus items hidden by the destruction spheres. It splits up each stage at a time making it rather easy to follow. Boss strategies appear often as well offering the fullest advice on how to beat them. Not only is there a picture of them but a list of details you would expect to see. HP, MP etc but also it guides you on what characters are best to use, what abilities are best to use including ones... Read review

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Advantages: It helps you on your way to completing the game
Disadvantages: Can be prone to give away the important plot points

...the players. So what's in the stragedy guide you say? Well, in reflection to the game itself, the layout of the guide is also sort of dark. Dark colours, high-quality glossy pages, in-depth step by step walkthrough. There will be pages that are marked, "Waltkrough" and others will be marked with their relevant headings such as sub-games/mini-games and so forth. There's a glossary of all the monsters in the back, with information of their HP, MP, items you can steal, their weaknesses, their strengths and any other relevant information that the player needs. Bosses and common monsters are all included - every monster is present in every form - in case they change forms during the course of the game and storyline. There's many pictures of Cloud and co from the actual game in the form of cutscenes or screenshots or fmv scenes... Read review

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Advantages: Helps you understand how to play the sims 2
Disadvantages: You may follow certain storylines and be afraid to explore the game

...This is very useful if you are new to the game. When I first started playing the game I did not have this which resulted in most of my families dying out. Once I purchased the guide I found out where I was going wrong, it also offers help and advice as well as many tips as to how the game works. The guide also includes full career listings which includes how much you get paid for each job and what hours you work. As well as this, the guide lists all objects in the game as well as their descriptions and what effects they have on your sims. Sim relationships are also explored in the guide which tells you how you can improve or decrease someone's relationship with another sim by listing all the interactions and what effects the have on sim relations. The guide gives you tips on how to manage the pre-made Maxis families which come... Read review

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Advantages: great art work and prints, covers everything in game, good value for money
Disadvantages: none at all

...With most final fantasy games there are countless little hidden side quests or secret items or weapons hiding somewhere, that allows you to achieve that 100% completion rate. But we are all unable to find these little extras that can make such a big difference in game enjoyment and game play difficulty. The official guide gives you all the information on these little side quests and how to achieve the best gamer result you can. Features The guide has everything in it. from the story line in a step by step explanation to a list of every single item available to you in game. There is a list of all hidden aeons (creatures that are summoned by one of the main characters), every characters special weapon and how to go about collecting the. It contains detailed maps of each area found in game and presents all the hidden chests and side... Read review

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Advantages: Covers all aspects in detail, coloured maps and screenshots
Disadvantages: Details are crammed, small font size

...When I first played through Final Fantasy VIII I followed this guide closely only to encounter a problem with levelling up (too much powering up I did). Upon starting again I played the game properly and never reverted to the guide, except for at the end. Without it I'd never have finished this game. The cover of this strategy guide features the cover of the game itself, and you'll notice that this is produced by Piggyback not Bradygames, who did the guide for the previous Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy VIII logo is such that, if you rubbed your finger across it you would feel the bumps of the letterings, a nice touch. On the back, there is a description as to what is covered and at the bottom, an R.R.P of £12.95. This book has 196 full colour pages, softback cover and is binded. Upon opening it you are presented... Read review

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Advantages: Clear, concise, essential for finding sub-plot locations
Disadvantages: Maps are presented for the first time you visin an area - hard to flick back

...It was a stunning game, but an extremely long one, spanning 2 Playstation 2 discs. Like the Final Fantasy series (also produced by Square) there are so many opportunities to go wrong in the game, and miss out vital things (or simply not pick up valuable equipment/potions that will help throughout the game). There are even different ways of doing the plot, and so many options to take that affect the outcome…you can even leave areas before you're ready and then (annoyingly) be unable to return. So how do you get the best from Star Ocean III: Till the End of Time? …You buy the strategy guide! It's not cheating, I swear! It's just making sure that you play the game to the fullest. You can completely miss out events that you would otherwise not know even existed were it not for the strategy guide, so it's simply enhancing your gaming... Read review

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