[CONTEST Update: Want this booklet for your very own swag collection?  Take a page from the booklet and PhotoShop (or MSPaint) something hilarious and we'll pick our favorite entry next Friday. We'll also send you a random shirt from our local thrift shop, so get P'chopping!]

You've read the crap Lair reviews. You've rubbernecked through the peculiar string of fatal car crashes that resembles the Factor 5's feedback about those dirty little playtime diaries. You're probably as curious as we were when we heard about the 21-page "reviewer's guide" that popped up today, so we've put the whiskey down for a second and scanned the entire volume for your clicking enjoyment. 

All jokes aside, the guide isn't chock-full of marketing-speak on why the game is revolutionary and more awesome than your God.  It's surprisingly devoid of lame attempts to sway a reviewer from saying anything unfair or negative about the game.  The only thing we can fairly pick on is the president's introductory plea on page 1 to give the game (and his horrible decision to force Sixaxis controls down your throat) a chance.  Instead of a review guide, this may as well have been more accurately labeled as the biggest instruction manual ever produced. Has anyone contacted the Guiness Book people yet?

While this slickness of this volume is appreciated, it's a fact of life that gamers (especially editors) are too busy/excited/intoxicated to READ THE F@#$%KING MANUAL so to send us a giant one seems, well, more likely to soak in more grease from last night's chinese food than the other things left abandoned on the coffee table. 

If the game is in our hands, figuring out the mechanics and story is half the fun.  We would have been better served by the arrival of Lair-themed Real Dolls to distract them from the painfully choppy frame rates, Neutrogena-pushing lead characters, and less than perfect control schemes*. But boy is this magazine pretty!  Maybe it could have made an impact had they shipped this to media three weeks before reviewers have the game. It would have a greater channce of nestling up near the toilet with our new issues of EGM.

IMHO, the money used to design, print, and ship this thing to a suspicious ocean of Sony-weary journalists would have been better invested in the much-needed patch that allows you to enjoy the game with the two analog sticks as mother nature intended. The public's respect for the game would jump overnight if they cared to listen.