Post by ie on Oct 28, 2006 16:47:43 GMT -5
As your collective attorney, I advise everyone here that is interested in either video games or art in general to no longer $3. (Now it's about $19.)
Value wise, this book is 90% off. It's smaller than I expected, but that's not too bad.
Quality wise, there are plenty of full-color, professionally printed art here. It's at about 320 pages, and about 200 pages have either full-page or partial-page images. The rest being an essay that I can assume is about the credibility of video game art as a respectible and legitimate art form.
Qualm 1: The spine is really stiff, so you can't really lay it down. You could probably work it to a nice medium, where you don't break the spine but you can still open the book.
Qualm 2: The focus is on more obscure video games, mainly from the Game Cube / PS2 / X-Box generation. (And by that, I mean, there aren't any Mario or Final Fantasy pictures. I don't think I saw any Metal Gear pictures either...) I have yet to see any art by The Man, Yoshitaka Amano, but there is plenty to make up for it.
Qualm 3: There is no directory or index for the video games listed, so you can't see all the Oddworld art in one go. You'd have to flip around (like I did), or read the whole thing.
Overall, definitely worth $3. $5 might still be decent, $10 might be a little bit too much for me, and the list price of $30 would definitely be too much for me.
This is the size of the book. It's not hard cover, but it's not paperback.
Did I mention it was holographic?
Some of these drawings are really impressive, because of their attention to technical detail. Others are just fun to look at, and, there are a few large pictures of sexy babes to distract you.
footnote: The shipping was a little expensive on this book. I might suggest going with the $25-and-it's-free-shipping deal, but if you don't have a whole lot, I guess $3 + tax + shipping might still be reasonable.
