As you say, youtube has become pretty great for gaming videos & strategies. Why just read about it when you can actually see it done? When I'm not using youtube, I usually just google the problem & more often than not, someone else posted the same issue on yahoo or some forum with answers.
Or I come here & ask you guys. Gamefaqs really is becoming obsolete I guess.
Youtube and "Let's Play" videos have probably taken a big chunk of the audience away. I'm sure a large part of the younger audience prefers watching video rather than having to search and read.
To a lesser extent though, I'm not sure FAQs are quite as necessary as they were 15 or 10 years ago. It just seems like the way games are designed they're either a lot easier or they do a better job of directing where you're supposed to go. That could just be my personal experience though. Maybe it's the types of games I'm playing now, or just that I'm not as insistant on getting everything out of a game that I can now.
gamingeek said:I use Miiverse. Much more useful.
Depends on the game. Do you know how hard it is to get someone to give you advice for Funky Barn?
I have GameFaqs bookmarked and still visit there VERY regularly. There's a few reasons, really. It's the best place to get hands-on impressions quickly on literally --ANY-- game. You can ask questions on Faqs and get responses quickly too. I find the Let's Play's and the Youtube videos to be borderline obnoxious. A lot of the times the makers of the videos are either trying too hard to get their "15 minutes" and their personalities are grating --or-- the specific part of the game you are trying to get by is embedded somewhere in the middle of a 1.5 hour video. It's hard to get an accurate opinion from the videos too, as the makers... if they are actually taking the time to make the video in the first place are either die-hard fans that are over the top optimistic or haters that are overboard trolls. The videos seem to focus more on the personality of the players, Faqs still seems to focus more on the GAMES.
robio said:Depends on the game. Do you know how hard it is to get someone to give you advice for Funky Barn?
It's time dependent too, you get a lot of traffic when a game is out then less and less people playing and checking the board for a particular game.
The gamefaqs boards seem to have suffered more than the walkthroughs. Since they were removed from GS they lost a huge amount of traffic. Some games with walkthroughs don't have any posts at all.
robio makes a good pont that games aren't designed in the same way these days. I find it easier to follow along with a FAQ than a video if I'm stuck in a trouble spot, but that's better if I'm already intimately familiar with the game. Case in point, the last games I used a FAQ for was Resident Evil HD, and that was the speed-run guide. Can't use YouTube if the entire point is to go fast, you'd use up all your time paused while the video played.
And there is a lot of acheivement guides presented as FAQS these days.
It's no wonder that sites built around writing about games (IGN, Gamespot) can't make it then something as technical as gamefaqs is in the same boat.
Funny observation (cultural editorial) that howlongtobeat.com replaced gamefaqs.com.
That's tongue in cheek of course, but it kind of sums up what many have said, gamefaqs (in general not neccesarily the site) was about appreciating and getting the most out of a game, but in today's world it's about "how long do I have to play this before I beat it" or "How do I extract the trophies and acheivements out of this product".
I like the HowLongToBeat website....its a nice way to gauge how long its gonna take to finish your games, especially if you have a ton of them and you wanna finish as many as you can in a certain timeframe.
I actually get linked to Gamefaqs quite a bit...as I said, I google whatever issue I have first these days, and usually the first thing that pops up is either Yahoo Answers, Gamefaqs boards, or the Steam boards. So its not useless...yet.
edgecrusher said:I like the HowLongToBeat website....its a nice way to gauge how long its gonna take to finish your games, especially if you have a ton of them and you wanna finish as many as you can in a certain timeframe.
I actually get linked to Gamefaqs quite a bit...as I said, I google whatever issue I have first these days, and usually the first thing that pops up is either Yahoo Answers, Gamefaqs boards, or the Steam boards. So its not useless...yet.
Oh yeah, I'm not shitting on howlongtobeat, it serves the same purpose for me, just using it for borader commentary in the quote above.
I use gamefaqs for:
1. seeing how many chapters and where I am in the game.
2. Seeking direction, not specifically puzzle solving
I like their daily poll too, which is what I am guessing drives most of their traffic these days.
edgecrusher said:
He's put on somw weight and is less angry. Still did not mention gameunder.net though.
Speaking of GameFaqs, I went there today to see if there were any early impressions of Bloodborne. A lot of game-store employees usually take home street dated copies of games and then post about them before launch, for better or worse. A lot of people are claiming to have Bloodborne already, they keep on posting "impression reviews" and giving the game an 8.5. Some are posting they saw a leaked GameSpot review, also an 8.5...
...and it's driving the usuals there absolutely NUTS!
It seems as if most of this is just trolling as quite a few of them are claiming they have it but can't provide a real PSN Profile name to confirm. Either side is acting ridiculous: One, the legion of trolls giving false impressions and "reviewing" the game while giving "back of the box" details about it, and, Two, the RAGING fanboys that cannot accept that a "Souls" style game could possibly score less than a 9. 8.5 to them is like admitting the game is an absolute failure.
WHY do people get mad over 8.5 review?
People who have early copies. I WANT THE TRUTH!!!!!
gamespot has reviewed this a 8.5
...
Hey Yoda, we still need that animated eye-rolling smiley! <3
I'd give it a 8.8.
Can I say it...? FLOP!
You might, if any of these topics are serious, but I kinda doubt it.
Not just the site, but in general are text faqs another casuality of YouTube?
Seems like everygame I look up over there is either absent, or written by one of a few of the same ardent FAQers.