VF5 Brady Guide Comparison

Disclaimer: For those who don't know I am a VF fanboy and I think its the greatest fighting game on the planet

But that said, I'm just comparing my VF brady guide with my Soul Calibur IV and Tekken 5 guides.

What is it with Sega? Is it a matter of money? Or do they feel they don't have to put any extras into something like the Brady Guide.

The Namco folks seem to go out of the way with expansive back stories, movelists, combos, posters, etc. I have the art of tekken book, the art of soul calibur book.

Where The F!@# is the art of VF? Or is VF too good for that kind of promotion.

I just reserved a limited edition of Tekken 6. Its coming with all kinds of extras. I know the Brady guide is going to be off the hook.

When U compare the Brady guides for Tekken, Soul Calibur, and VF there is a very clear difference from the immersion perspective. W.T.F

Is just Sega doesn't have the advertising budget, or they just don't give a F!@#

 

Brady games guide for SF4 included the frame data. I think for everyone but seth and gouken (which was kinda lame).

The vf5 brady games does not include frame data...which makes it far inferior to the vfdc command section that does include the frame data. And ya sure i can write it in, but...i paid $15 for the brady games they should have included it. It sucks. I suggest people to not buy it.

 

Re: VF5 Brady Guide Comparison

No way! I LOVE game guides. When I buy one I read it cover to cover, maybe more than once. Like, I'll play the game and then read the guide in bed and still be in video-game-world. I like the Brady guides a lot. They are usually very well done and nicely put together. The authors really seem to put a ton of effort into every guide. I will always love these damn books - they're just cool. Tekken 6 guide ... can't wait. I hope it's huge, I'll read the whole thing!

 

I'm not saying the VF5 Brady guide isn't worth the money. I'm just wondering why its so basic. It has important fighting tactics, strategies, and combos, and so very good insider tips, but no posters, no real mention of the back stories, or stage descriptions, or good pictures of the items for each fighter, or full pictures of the,fighters for that matter. No discussions about fighter home stages, or even fighter styles. If I didn't know Lei Fei was Shaolin Kung Fu, prior to reading the Brady guide, it would have been tricky to get it out of the Brady guide. The Tekken and SC guides on the other hand add all the bells and whistles in their guides, and they have supplemental guides on top of the main guide(e.g the art of tekken). They write each guide as though the audience was seeing Soul Calibur and Tekken for the first time. That's a good marketing strategy, because some of the people who are buying the game are seeing it for the first time.

The VF5 guide, seems like it was written primarily for hardcore
and (already) fans of the game. The VF5 guide does not really introduce VF and the fighters to the absolute Noob.

The VF5 guide gives us the cake which is good, but leaves out the icing and the cherry on top. The tekken and soul calibur
guides gives you the whole deal.

Does Sega just not have enough budgetary dollars to produce a top notch guide book, or do they just don't care

The special edition Tekken 6 that I've ordered is gonna come with a Tekken Calendar and bunch of other stuff. Tekken 6 calendar How hard would've been for Sega to include a VF 5 calendar

I know the hardcore super VF players only care about the sticks and the disk, but there is a whole range of VF players that appreciate all aspects of the product.

The manual that came with VF4 was nice and (I think was in color) and the EVO manual wasn't bad either. But the VF5 manual sux! Its like sega ran out of money or concern or both.

You can say they rushed VF5 to market, that's why they dropped so many features that was in VF4 EVO, But damn, cutting corners on the manual, and producing a-just-the-facts brady guide

 

I have the Brady Guide, it's got good detail for Quest Mode.

I got it very soon after getting VF5 and I'm glad I did because it helped back then. VF5 was the first time I ever felt the need to get a strategy guide for any game, let alone fighting game.

Nowadays it gets pulled out every so often to see top throw escapes vs each character, but the one at http://gohnotes.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/top-throw-escapes3.png?w=436&h=823 is just as good if not better.

Anyway VF5 was my first time ever owning a VF game and the guide helped. But not nearly as much as the command lists here on VFDC.

 

To be fair, if I remember correctly, frame data hadn't been published anywhere back then.

 

Frame data had been published in the Black Book. One of the writers even started a thread to peddle the guide and apologize for the lack of frame data (publisher was skittish about infringing upon Black Book intellectual property).

As is oft the case, the thread exploded. The fella who started the thread even went so far as to have his posts deleted. Check it out.

 

The best books have always been things like the Black Book or Orange Book. Japan is loaded with top data books for fighting games, which include raw frame information, top player flowcharts, and the absolute best combos for all situations. Not only that but Japan has some 4FT and VF5 DVD tutorials and guides and even DVDs of local or regional tournaments. You watch those matches and you learn a ton (though YouTube/Zoome are killing that market). Even Arcadia puts VF matches on DVD in its magazine and then attaches articles that explain why the matches were included. So you'd get a match on DVD, and then an article, explaining the flowcharts and techniques used in the match. We will never have anything like that unless we make it ourselves for free for the community (which does happen enough thankfully).

The thing is that those books or DVDs often consist of mostly hardcore information in Japan. The target audience is hardcore players. They explain things like the most effective match-up strategies, difficult combos and flowcharts, analysis of high level techniques (like ARE or Minami-Step or Heruru Dance).

The Brady or Prima or console based guides are not aimed at the same audience. The console guides are usually very, very basic, and basically exist as a larger more comprehensive game manual than a complete guide. The only 'official' English guide that I remember being good was the SF:AE guide (which I think was written by some of the better and more knowledgeable SRK members). Other than that most of the guides are glorified manuals.

This is pretty much universal for all fighting games. If you want to fully learn to play SSF2T then you get as many X-Mania and SBO DVDs as you can and pick up a copy of the Yoga Book Hyper (which is actually not printed anymore). If you want to learn SFIII:3S then you need Kuroda DVDs, Cooperation Cup DVDs, whatever Mikado offers, the SBO DVDs, and whatever books offer frame data. Though nowadays most of this stuff like frame data and match play is up on the internet for free (YouTube is filled with SBO videos for example).

What sucks is that Arcadia doesn't have an English translation (as far as I know anyways) and we (as the international fighting game community) often miss out on a good chunk of information or have to get it second hand because of this. Because almost no one on this site is in Japan or playing VF5R there is tons of VF5R floating around in Japan that we know nothing of. If VF5R came to consoles we'd have to pick up all of the pieces. Do we even have VF5R command lists at VFDC?

Nevertheless, I have the Brady and Prima type guides for most of the last and this generation of fighting games. Do I read them? Not really. They are neatly resting on my bookshelf as they don't really do much for me in terms of playing those games. If I wanted to learn a new character in VF I'd consult this website, TZ for Tekken, SRK or Zetaboards or DustLoop or whatever.

Lastly those written guides are antiquated now anyways. I don't want to read about a VF flowchart or a new ST corner trick. I want to see it. That's why Arcadia would put out an article saying "at SBO someone had a new trick in ST in X match", they'd do a writeup about it, and then you'd watch the match on DVD. It's so much better now to be able to see everything you read about. Someone discover a new combo? Throw it on YouTube and everyone can watch it with a full explanation.

Even the official guides for games like Metal Gear Solid 4 or God of War are antiquated. I was stuck on a part of MGS4 for a long time on Extreme Mode. I just couldn't figure it out and the guide book was of little help. So what did I do? I went to YouTube, found a video walk-through, and copied that person's pattern for beating that level. Years ago finding a full video tutorial wasn't easy for most games. Now pretty much every game has a full video walk-through on YouTube.

 

Being a guide author I think a lot of you do not understand how the process works.

The authors can only include what the game publishers provide in a lot of cases. I know for every fighting game guide I've ever written, I always ask for frame data, but I've only ever gotten it once. I included it in a second guide based on information I already had that did not come from the publisher.

I did not get the VF5 guide, but I did browse through the Soul Calibur IV guide (written by the same authors) and it was lackluster at best for anything more than a casual audience. I know time is a huge factor in what you can put into a guide, but I always make sure that the strats I recommend for fighters inform the reader if the attack is safe or not. The SC4 guide claims some extremely unsafe attacks are some characters best options, which is completely false. A simple punishment test would have made it clear which moves were superior.

The Tekken 6 guide is being written by the same authors that did VF5 and SC4. I have frame data for Tekken 6, but I doubt it will be included in the guide. As far as I know, the authors are not experience Tekken players, despite the fact that they're experienced SF players. No offense, but SF experience does not translate well to Tekken.

Anyway, if you want bios and all of that, it's usually provided by the game publisher. However, I go out of my way to find bios if the publisher doesn't provide them. There's always a basic set of information that I try to find whether the publisher provides it or not. Having never spoken to the VF5 author, I can't say if he does the same, but there are plenty of VF character bios around the web, and I know Sega made them available to press long before VF5 was released so I don't know why Brady didn't get them.

The main thing you need to understand about print game guides is that time is a huge problem. Sometimes I've had as little as 5 days with a game that I'm supposed to be writing the guide for. Other times I'll have a month or two. It varies from game to game and publisher to publisher, but it's a huge reason why some guides are better than others.

 

Look at the Fallout 3 Limited Edition Guide. That thing is enormous. It is a multi-hundred page gargantuan encyclopaedia of information. It has statistics on everything that's in the game. Anything and everything that you can think of. Locations of every side quest, huge fold-out map of the subway and wasteland, locations of random encounters, it's chalked full of information. It is one of the best guide books ever assembled. There are so many screen shots and image captures to help you. Tons of neat information. Thorough, detailed, amazing. Most other guide books don't even come close to being in the same stratosphere as the Fallout 3 LE book.

But this is infinitely superior.

The Fallout 3 Wiki, put together, for free, by fans, is better in every way than the LE book. Not only that but the official guide book can never be updated. So you need a walk-through for the DLC? Where are you going to find that? Not in a book. You'll get it online. Most likely from a wiki or FAQ. And you need a walk-through for an unofficial quest from a game mod? You'll never get a book for that either.

Wikis are great because new information can be added to them. They can store far more data. Need exact locations of parts to make weapons on Fallout 3? The Wiki has them. The guide book only has some rather vague suggestions.

Look at fighting games. Every time a revision is made to VF a new frame book would need to be made to be up to date. With a wiki you just change the values or make a new list (just like VFDC has). 15 years after SSF2T came out new strategies are still being discovered. They can't reprint the entire Yoga Book Hyper because Taira discovered a new block string in the corner.

As good as guide books can be (the old Chrono Trigger guide back in the day was amazing) they can never top things like online Wikis.

I love guide books but mostly to read them for fun. They rarely offer me anything better than what's been freely available on places like GameFAQS. I actually own more guide books for my PS3 and X360 than I do disc-based games.

And that's another thing...with downloadable games you don't see guide books anymore. No HDR book. No reissue of the old MvC2 books for MvC2HD. And if SFIVash is DLC? Blazblue Reloaded is DLC? KOF XII Black is DLC? VF5R is a download title? Will those get guide books?

 

I'm not really sure what the point of that post was. I wasn't arguing the validity of print guides compared to online resources. I can argue that, but I didn't have any plans to do so here.

I was simply explaining some of the guide-making process.

That said, there's a print guide for the Fallout DLC. There are also video strategy guides for MvC2 that were available when the game re-released. Not arguing what you just said, simply correcting some of your statements.

 

Thanks for the good info on guide writing...

Do the game publishers see the guide as a marketing tool,
or as a expanded manual for basic gameplay? Are the game publishers aiming the guides at noobs, casual players, intermediate players or advanced players

 

The publishers have very little input on what goes into the guide. They have final say in whether or not the guide meets their standards, but that's usually more about "does this accurately represent the product" rather than checking to see if it has the top strats and all of that.

The author and to a significantly lesser extent, the author's immediate superiors, determine what goes into the guide. The only exception to this is if the author requires assets from the game publisher and doesn't get them (frame data for example).

I target my guides based on the people who will buy them. A fighting game guide is almost always purchased by noobs. Far less "good" players pick them up and the ones that do only get them for art or collecting purposes for the most part. However, I try to make sure that by using my guide, a beginner has the tools to build on and become a top player on their own. I even go as far as to name online resources. If I had written the VF5 guide it would've had frame data and it would've linked here.

Tekken I would've knocked out of the park though. I have too many years of high level Tekken play not to kill that thing. I would've had to trim content because I doubt they would've let me write a 300+ page Tekken 6 guide. lol

Time is also a factor as I would put frame data in all of my fighting game guides if I had time to figure it all out manually. I already have frame data for Tekken 6, so that would've been a guarantee for the guide had I written it, but for the two Brady authors, unless they know where to find the data and can work around the issues they faced with VF5 (which I have never faced), I don't see them having enough time to manually figure out frame data for 40 characters.

EDIT

On a related note, I've taken a look at the VF5 guide. It looks like they did exactly what I do, and ran into the same problems I do. They didn't have enough time to expand the guide beyond the novice/intermediate strategies.

That's always a problem with fighting game guides and something that I'm curious to see them address with the Tekken 6 guide. I've been playing Tekken 6 for well over a year and could write the guide now without having the home version right in front of me. That was how Brady did their SF Anniversary guide (for games that were 10+ years old).

Tekken 6 is a beast though and I'm not seeing how the authors will have time to do more than what they did on the VF guide. I know at least one of them is not a Tekken player (or at least doesn't play with his local scene).

I'm not saying the T6 guide will be bad, but it'll probably be limited by the same issues that limited the VF5 guide. Nothing can be done about it though. It's the way things go.

 

Didn't Alex Valle write a Tekken guide in the past? I think it was for Brady as well, and it was for Tekken 3.

Was he playing Tekken then?

 

Yeah he did.

 

Excellent explanation on the guides.

Considering then what you guide writers are up against, why not focus on the art work, screen shots, and basics for the guide, and then get the publisher to pay you additional money for doing a electronic supplement to the guide that could be sold as DLC. The publishers make money, and the guide writers would have the extra time needed to really put together the information that they would like to. The intermediate to advance players would probably go for that.

Anyway thanx for the info.

 

With some guides it would be worth it. I know the Prima Madden '10 guide has online supplements once a week. But Madden sells ridiculous amounts and a lot of Madden players pick up the guide for it. Fighting games are not the same.

The best selling fighting game guide in recent history was my MK: Armageddon guide. I'm sure many of you will agree that VF and Tekken offer far more depth than MKA. But the players don't buy the guides in droves so the incentive for the publisher to do additional guides after release is very small.

 

My favorite guide book to this day is still the one for Secret of Mana.

 

MK Armageddon Guide I understand small incentive now, but
as DLC, patches, and updates become more pervasive, there will be a bigger and bigger gap between the guide that matches the original release of the game and the patched, DLC'ed, and updated version. Seems like electronic distribution of mini-guides, or DLC-guides would be a win/win. The authors can make a little more money, the publisher (without having to go to press) or worrying about distribution or refunds etc, can make a little more money, and the gamer has guides that match his current rendition of the game

Look at Fallout 3's massive guide, now with all of the DLC that's been added, there's a huge gap between the Fallout guide
and game with the DLC added. Won't publishers have to address
this eventually? and if they can see a profit there, then distributing fighting game mini-focus-guides shouldn't be that big of a stretch.

 

At least 80% of the lifetime sales of a guide come in the first two weeks a game is available. So it doesn't really matter if a few months down the road DLC is released. Most people would've already used the guide to the fullest.

That said, for big games there are updated guides. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, there's a print and eGuide for the Fallout 3 DLC.