Independant Newspaper Analyse Videogame Magazines

[oorbroon]

Yep, fairly shit article in my view.  The magazine 'reviews' read like staight press releases from the desks of each publisher.  Virtually no negatives are discussed, with the writer obviously not aware that whilst official magazines *may* not be perswaded by publishers, it's incredibly debateably - Driver 3 reviews for example.

Of course it was the far more easily-led unofficial magazines that game Driver 3 the high scores.

[RIKT]

Glad to see NOM is still as classy as ever.

←

Stood in WHSmiths with either the choice of a Inflatable Mario Ball and another months dullathon from Edge i know which i'd be walking out with.

Here's a clue...It wouldn't be the one that was shit for playing football with.

[lau]

It reads more like a sixth form media studies review of popular publications. It's hardly the most cutting, or insightful critique, and comes to no real conclusions. Infact, review would be pushing it a bit far. No-one could possibly be in the slightest excited or annoyed at any point made. The literary version of vanilla ice cream.

←

I think it's a pretty fair asessment of those magazines. Of course, i wouldn't want any article to appear in the mainstream newspapers without someone calling it 'sixth form', such is the tradition that makes people feel above this sort of thing (without any kind of justification... 'sixth form' generally means amateur writing that tries to be more intellectual than it really is, which I see no sign of here... but if you've heard someone use the phrase before, go for it! You've got nothing to lose). To be fair, who should be 'excited' at someone describing the attitude of a videogame magazine? not NORMAL PEOPLE thats for sure. And I assume that's who they think will be reading the article, rather than videogame nerds who expect to be 'excited' or annoyed by the article.

[Captain Olimer]

Yeah NGC is still a good magaine, not as good as it once was but when you look at whats happening for the GC right now, they don't have that much stuff to write about, although thier new retro section and this months feature on Mario does show they still know thier stuff, and always put lots of useful detail into thier articles, something that other mags lack.

←

Agreed. Took out N64 issue 10 the other day just to read the "How To...Get Your Head Around Pocket Monsters" article ( I have all issues ). The quality is still pretty high, I just think the design got stale on me, they've hardly changed it too much over the years. I mainly miss the old folks. Zy doing a 5 part guide for Mario 64 ( last two being coin guides ), Wil showing which japanese magazines to buy. Making Boo shaped cakes. In-jokes regarding say, Tim's swearing over ISS or Paul's Plant or Andrea's Stick...

It just feels like they had real love for what they do. Even if they got paid peanuts.

I should pick up the Super Play ones someday. Anyone want to tempt me with good things about SP?

On note, they had a major error in this months issue, on the retro page they show super play, but they date it 98, which of course, SP couldn't have existed then.

Long live this fantastic publication!

-----

NOB

-----

[emjay2kay]

No, we just thought they were going to review the magazines, rather than describe them.

What we expected was: "The writing is clumsy, and the layout is so unorganised you wonder if the individual components of the page haven't simply been thrown there in a random way. That half the review is unreadable because it is pasted over a purple background, is seemingly unnoticed by the editors."

What we got was: "They have a review of Halo 2, which is apparantly very good. There's plenty of pictures, and like the rest of the magazine, they're in colour..This is good for the young readership"

[Alex W.]

They've just copied and pasted from the various mags' various press releases/"mission statements", surely? Even some of the phrasing's identical.

I mean, nobody seriously believes that OPS2M is impartial about things like The Getaway, do they?

[Mogget]

They don't mention that PC Zone is now utter shit.

That's because it isn't.