BradyGames's Grand Theft Auto V Strategy Guide leads you through the entire game, providing a comprehensive walk-through, detailed character outlines, complete mission and mini-games coverage, highly detailed maps and more...

When you see the BradyGames stamp on a strategy guide book you know you're in for an in depth and heavily illustrated read. So it was no surprise to discover that the Grand Theft Auto V guide is a lovingly crafter work of art that covers every aspect of the offline game play to help you complete the game 100%.

This 448 page guide kicks off with Basics, which gives you a brief run down of all of the main aspects of play that you'll need to familiarise yourself with. It includes things like getting around the island and also more in depth aspects like what the achievements and trophies are in the game. It also has a detailed look at the weapons so that you can weigh up which firearms will be best to purchase.

Next up is Vehicle Showroom which is spread over 22 pages and broken down into vehicle category (boats; military; planes; sports etc). Not only is there a detailed specs breakdown, but also for special vehicles there's information on where to purchase them and what price they are.

The main meat of this book, Main Story Missions, is next. This will take you through the various missions and help you complete each quest with 100% accuracy. This is followed by Characters and Freaks and Random Events which covers all of the side missions. Hobbies and Pastimes looks at things like races; strip club lap dances; hunting; property management etc. And finally we have Miscellaneous, which covers everything else - spaceship parts; hidden packages; ariel challenges; letter scraps etc.

The final pages include full page illustrations (they're actually the ones that appear when the game is loading) of some of the more interesting characters in the game.

Having already completed the game, I found this a useful guide for tracking down all of the hidden extras as well as how to get to the start of some of the parachute jump challenges (because when you turn up to the spot on the map it's not always easy to find the starting point). I have to admit to not having found a single spaceship part until I used the guide.

It's the sort of book you can pick up and easily flick to the relevant page to get you out of a jam or maybe you want to read through the side missions to see if they take your fancy before you actually attempt to do them in the game.

There's a cheaper paperback edition, but personally for a guide of this kind, which will be well used, the hardback edition is the only real option. You also get an exclusive lithograph which contains an illustration of the three main characters.

Some may be a little disappointed that there's no mention of the online multiplayer aspect of the game - with some tips on the various online games - but to be honest that's something you can pick up on your own as you go along. And, if you've used the guide for the offline game then a lot of what you learn there will come in handy online.

So, once again BradyGames delivers the goods. If you own Grand Theft Auto V, and want to get the most out of it, you really should pick up this indispensable guide.

10

Darren Rea