The Sims 3 Late Night - Prima Essential Guide: Prima Official Game Guide

I've been into The Sims since close to the beginning and I'm a huge fan of the games. I debated the value of the Prima guides back when I was playing the original "The Sims," and its expansions, but liked having a reference, so pretty much always bought them. Over the years, I started just buying Prima guides on auto-pilot. A new expansion is out? Excellent; I'll get it and its corresponding guide, sight unseen. However, after the last two (Late Night and Ambitions), I've been re-thinking the habitual purchase.

First, it's really easy to get all the information from the Prima guides elsewhere. A guy named Carl has a Sims site that I find far more helpful, generally, than this book. I don't think he has specifics about how much the tomatoes at Mike's Cornerstore cost, but there is information on depreciation and where to find rare fruits and so on. The Prima Guide has a tendency to read like an inventory at times, which I've never found that helpful except for...Read more

Bursting with info and pretty pictures, it's a nice how to enjoy the new features in the Late Night Sims 3 expansion. On the down side. The book is physically small now and so is the text. The pages starting on 114 are off center and the text is cut off so I loose one or two words on every sentence. If you pick one up examine it for defects. 3 Star.

First and foremost, the text and graphics are so small they are difficult to read. That is my chief complaint, and it overshadows any good points this game guide has. I really have to use a magnifying glass to read this game guide. I've purchased the Prima game guide for EVERY release of the Sims since the beginning; if this is the format they'll be in from now on, this will be my last one.

1. Wire-bound format - this would be OK, even good, if the text/graphics (or the pages themselves) were larger. The book lays flat while you're playing, so you don't have to set your coffee cup on it to keep it at the page you want.

2. Several misspellings and wrong information - I could understand one or two items that might have been changed in the game after the book went to press, but not the half-dozen or so I found in this book. I also don't understand how there can be so many misspellings! As a professional author and reviewer, Ms. Brown should be ashamed (and...Read more