Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(39 customer reviews) 26 of 29 people found the following review helpful
They should have modeled it after the Vice City guide...,
December 15, 2004 Steve Wainstead (Las Vegas, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
In addition to the things others have pointed out -- the inaccuracies in the maps and screenshots -- I find the guide hard to use. For example, the map for all the hidden horseshoes in Las Venturas is about 100 pages away from the screenshots of all the locations. The Vice City guide was a great guide, very high on usability. You'll spend a lot of time flipping back and forth with this one. The typeface is really tiny, and the mission descriptions tend to be very simplistic (at least the VC guide gave you some actual strategy tips; much less so, I think, with this guide).
It's big and slick and pretty to leaf through... but that can't justify its cost. You will find less than 50% of what the game has to offer without it, so you're stuck with buying it. Brady should publish a second edition with corrections, or at least publish online corrected versions of the maps and an errata page.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
One Of The Worst Guides Ever Written,
June 28, 2005 Matt Benecke (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
This strategy guide was so bad that I actually wrote a letter of complaint to BradyGames. I am a huge fan of their guides and purchase them for nearly every game that I own that has a BradyGames guide. The San Andreas guide, however, is an embarrassment to what is usually a very thorough and respectable company.
For someone who is simply playing the game and needs maps to get around then this guide should be perfect. If, however, you are a fanatic who is seeking to get 100% in the game then there are some major concerns that you should know about.
1) The number of Horseshoes that you need to collect is 50, not 100 as it is stated in the book.
2) Something like 4 or 5 of the photos for the Horseshoes are incorrect. I think they are taken from a Beta version of the game.
3) Nearly ALL of the Photo Op pictures are associated with the wrong locations.
4) There are at least a dozen weapons locations that are incorrect and three...Read more
29 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Some inaccuracies, especially where it counts,
November 3, 2004 Erik R. Impson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
Odds are you are buying this guide to complete the game to its fullest. While it will certainly get you closer to completion a lot faster than just running around aimlessly, you should know that there are a lot of errors in it.
It will get you through the missions okay, but the maps leading you to collectible items are horrible. One map has the items marked half an inch to the left of where they actually are. On another the numbers do not match up to the corresponding screenshots AT ALL, and it's the one where you need the screenshots the most. There are numerous other incorrect pictures and descriptions. And the screenshots are tiny! They wasted a ton of space printing artwork from the game, but skimped on the useful stuff.
Also, in several places you can see that they had a slightly different version of the game to work from. Detail on the maps is terrible and does not always match what's on your screen.
If you are looking for a guide I would...Read more
