EHKOS said:
Not only great bathroom reading material, they also were nice to satisfy you on the way home from the purchase until you could get to your platform of choice.
Exactly. I used to love reading the manual on the bus home after buying a game, I recall when I bought Alan Wake a while back I spent the journey home reading up on the Taken and all the characters, and when I bought the walkthrough guidebook I did the same thing then. What annoys me though is when developers spend time and effort making manuals that are interesting and a part of the gameplay experience, then suddenly stop. For example, Ubisoft. The first two AC games had little notes written in them from Lucy and Rebecca and Vidic, and it was almost as if the game manual was an actual Animus manual written, complete with emails, from Abstergo or the Assassins. Then for Brotherhood, I open it up eager to see what there is to add to the game experience, and find nothing but a brief rundown of the controls and a note saying that for a full manual you have to access it virtually, in-game. No fictitious emails, no extra backstory, not even any character descriptions. Just gone, to 'save paper'. I'm all for saving the environment, but seriously, how many trees are going to be chopped down for just a few extra pages per booklet? Couldn't they just use recycled paper instead?
