Prima's Achievement Book Reviewed

Recently, Prima put out a guide book for xbox 360 achievements, made in conjunction with xbox360achievements.org. As someone who generally likes having hard-copy guides, I picked up a copy, and thought I'd pass along my opinion of the book. Trust me, you'll be glad I did.

Unofficial Xbox 360 Achievements book
MSRP: $14.99
432 Pages
Pros:

1. Hard copy of the guides, so internet isn't necessary.
2. Some of the guides, like Tales of Vesperia, are very good, and probably better in print form.
3. Guides for 70+ games.

Cons:

1. Original authors are not credited.
2. Tiny type
3. Numerous editing issues
4. Poor layout
5. You can get this information FREE on the internet.

Cons (expanded):

1. As a writer, the fact that the people who worked so hard to write those guide don't even get acknowledged, while others make money off of their work, really makes me mad. I feel those authors were exploited. Prima couldn't even spare a page or two to recognize and thank authors.
2. It's easy to lose your place on the page with the tiny type. They tried to ram as many words onto a page as they could, which makes it hard to read through, especially for the longer explanations.
3. Prima should be embarrassed to have put this guide out in this condition. On the top right corner of the right page is the name of the current game guide. Why "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is the page tab for Fight Night Round 3 baffles me. On the left and right side of the pages are tabs indicating the current genre. On the left pages, sports are called "Old Skool Sports" on the right page, it's misspelled as "Ols Skool Sports." I found those errors in 30 seconds... I stopped looking after that. Also, why are several games called "Short Sports" when they're listed as 30+ hours to complete? Lego Indy is correctly named in the table of contents, but called "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in the actual book.
4. Poor layout comes with the tiny text. They don't even give you an extra line or an indent between paragraphs... good luck following that CSI guide. Also, why is the table of contents in alphabetical order, when the rest of the book is divided by genre? A more logical approach would have been to list the games by genre and the order in which they appear.
5. With the above flaws mentioned, do you really want to pay for info you can get for free from x360a? Some of these guides I will actually use in print form, but I simply cannot recommend this book. I hope x360a gets a cut of the sales, but let someone else do the buying.

Grade: D- (Only the quality of the RPG section keeps this from failure)

Don't buy it. You can't say I never did you any favors =P