Strategy Guide Advice: Including Collectibles in the Walkthroughs

I haven’t “submitted” a tip for future strategy guides in awhile, but while using the Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary strategy guide this past week, an issue came up that spurned me into enough annoyance to proffer some advice to guide publishers. And here it is: if a game has collectibles–no matter how strange they may be–always include the collectibles locations with the walkthroughs.

Granted, this is the first time I’ve come across this issue. In the Halo Anniversary guide, none of the Skulls or Terminals are marked in the walkthroughs. If you want to collect them all, you’ll have to use an appendix in the back of the guide.

Newsflash: I should only use appendices for collectibles when I’m replaying something or if I need to find where a certain collectible is. When going through a game for the first time, I want to know where all the collectibles are instantly. I don’t want to flip back and forth to find them. Even just marking them on the chapter maps would be nice.

The whole point of having and using a strategy guide is to make gameplay more efficient for the gamer. Not including collectibles in the walkthroughs is a far cry from being efficient. It’s annoying, and if I wanted to use a guide like that, I’d rely strictly on online guides, which are typically set up that way.

Strategy guide publishers…please do not make this a new trend with print guides.