Grand Theft Auto(TM) Double Pack Official Strategy Guide

Rating:
Summary: I love this game !!!
Review: It is a tough, challenging and very amusing video game experience! Plus it looks fantastic on the XBOX!! By all means buy the strategy guide !!! It has everything you'll ever want to know about the exhaustive world of GTA 3 & Vice City!

Rating:
Summary: A good starting point but not enough and needs improvement
Review: This Strategy Guide lays a basic foundation for a richer gaming experience with GTA III and Vice City.

You get a bunch of little sectional views from different areas of, for example, Vice City (Ocean Beach, Starfish Island, Downtown, etc.), but these make navigating throughout these games anything but smooth. You won't find a single, comprehensive map detailing all of the packages, weapons, mission locations, sub-missions, etc. in here. I had to keep flipping back and forth to compile the info I wanted.

Another thing is that this guide has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the way of cheats -- button combinations which, when executed in the proper sequence, restore your health, give you armor, different arrays of weaponry like a Rocket Propelled Grenade launcher, flame thrower, mini-gun, MP5, PSG-1 S/A sniper rifle, etc. Or make a Rhino (Tank) plop in front of you on a street letting you take a drive (roll?) over to the local Police station to deliver your own high explosive brand of support. I didn't even know Cheats were available for the Xbox version of GTA III/Vice City until I found out about them while reading a gaming mag while in line at the supermarket! Had I read only this "complete walkthrough" guide, I never would've found out!

Do an online search for Vice City Xbox (or PS2, etc) Cheats and you'll get higher grade intel than anyhing you might find in this guide.

On a positive note, this guide IS a very good source of general reference material, providing a full write up on all weapons, cars, basic Crayola-grade maps, nicely arranged mission descriptions, and info on the different, colorful personalities found in these two RockStar Games.

I'm not a professional gamer, just an average American consumer with an Xbox at home, so take my review with a grain of salt. Then again, it seems to me that professional gamers might not really need this book in any case. Do you need this book?