The art book for The Last of Us is pretty awesome and I found it useful for lighting reference in my final animation film for school. But typically, yes, they're garbage.

If they're more than just a pile of "concept art" and offer some insight to the methods behind the creative process, then they're okay.

But I think the conversation behind the genesis of most "art books" goes like this:

MARKETING GUY: "Hey, what are you doing with all those papers?"

ARTIST: "Oh, this is just a bunch of old rough concept sketches and shit I'm throwing out."

MARKETING GUY: "NO! Wait! We can totally sell those!"

ARTIST: "These are mostly unfinished and bear no resemblance to the finished game. Who would want them?"

MARKETING GUY: "We'll make them into an art book at about two bucks per unit, bundle it with the game and sell it as 'collector's edition' for a hundred bucks!"

ARTIST: "Oh yeah, I forgot you had that soulectomy last week. How's that working out?"

MARKETING GUY: "Great! I can be a complete bastard and not even feel a thing!"

More like

Artist: I'm starving. Sounds good.

I can't imagine they get paid anything extra for their art being used in an art book. I think it's more likely the company contracts them to do the art then relinquish all future rights and royalties.

Can anyone inside the industry confirm or deny this?

I'm not in the industry but I can neither confirm nor deny this claim. Good-day gentlemen.

I enjoy art books that show how the production evolved, like that Darkstalkers book where you can see how each character went through half a dozen bizarre and completely different designs before they worked out the final versions.

But a Titanfall book? Eh.

The only artbook I've ever received was a free one from spending far too much money at Games Workshop in Aberdeen, Scotland. After collecting "skulz" and mailing in some thing or other I got a John Blanche artbook (it was a hardcover black book with "John Blanche" written on it, still in absolutely perfect mint condition after all these years. Anyone with an idea of a price please share). Anyway, while the artwork itself could be kinda here or there in terms accepted technique or whatever they were awesome in setting the mood, proper brill I tell thee. His artwork seems to be a lot cleaner nowadays while still retaining that atmosphere which is right good.

The price of said unmovable statue is pretty crazy too.

Could get the best gundam kits for that money, and they are articulated figures with lots of functioning details.

Hey, at least Evangelion was the result of some poor Japanese man's nervous breakdown. Titanfall isn't going reach the standards set by that.

Six-a-side FPS with robots as far as I can tell. Nothing Battlefield 2142 hasn't done a billion times better before, probably.

it looks a lot faster and acrobatic than the battleduty games, so it's probably closer to Tribes. With giant robots.

the 6v6 limit kept me from getting it though.

Is that 6v6 limit on the PC version too? The last FPS I played with wall-running and shit was Blink which was a putrid vomit stain of a game. MAKE OF THIS WHAT YOU WILL DEAR READER!!

I haven't read much about it because professional reviewers can't say anything about it other than SHUT IT HATERS YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY FOR 6v6!!!

Tom Chick was an especially huge cunt about it.

Brink sorry, not blink

Are you fucking kidding me, it's not even open world or anything? Jesus....

That and from what I've seen it's one of those games the Penny Arcade guys have done some comics about where the "punchline" is OMG THIS GAME IS SO FUN AND AMAZING YOU GUYS, which is always a good sign a game may be overhyped.

Battlefield 2142 really was the pinnacle of military team shooters. BF3 was a Call of Duty clone with unlock grinding hell and BF4 was the same only broken.

You should have seen the others that came up in the search.

Most consisted of professional game reviewers pretty much doing an infomercial for this piece of shit. I swear, some of them had QVC-quality banter about the "quality" of the plastic robot statue.

The rest were all just terrible and featured hardcore gamer archetypes from the skinny acne-pocked geek to the fat beardy nerd gushing about the statue from inside their cluttered bedrooms.

This guy at least has a good schtick and a clean house.