[MdaG]

I'm thinking of subscribing on a game magazine. Does anyone have any experience of different magazines. The language has to be either English or Swedish . What I'm looking for is a professional and independent way of writing about games. I want a magazine where the journalists are proud of the magazine they work at and strive to write interesting and fresh articles about games and related subjects.

[Eregian]

Edge magazine! Seriously, it's the most professional game writing I've ever seen, with spot on clever insights. It's subtitle is 'videogame culture', I think it speaks for the maturity they use to discuss the theme.

A few remarks. It's heavilgy geared towards game developers themselves and uses 1/4 of the magazine for job recruiting advertising. The cost of the magazine is also quite high, but the supreme writing makes up for that.

Lastly, it covers all genres and platforms, so at times there can be features on lots of meh-games. But those are just the times, every time and again, another NBA, Madden, generic shooter number 362158. Once again the writing makes up for it, it's also fun reading about the not so interesting sounding games.

They're pretty tough on scores too, but fair. Recent examples: Bioshock (8), God of War II (7). Two examples of games glorified worldwide, but once you play them and compare your experiences with Edge's review text and score you'll notice they're always closer to the truth than other media. If Edge gives a game a 7, it's worth your hard earned money. If you see higher scores, it can be seen as a must-buy game!

They have given 6 games a perfect score:

- Super Mario 64
- Gran Turismo
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Halo: Combat Evolved
- Half-life 2
- Halo 3 (just recently ofcourse)

Halo 3 wouldn't interest me, but now Edge has given it a 10, I'm even tempted to buy a 360. As you can see, they earn your trust quickly.

Try one isue, you won't regret it. Also post your findings, curious to know what your opinion is...

[MdaG]

Thanks!
You're the second person in two days recommending Edge. I think I'll just have to subscribe for a quarter and see how I like it.

*edit*
Ouch! £68 for 13 issues! You weren't kidding when you said it was pricey... I think I'll have to pick up one issue before I order a subscription....

[Monroeski]

I will agree on both counts; Edge is awesome, and Edge is REALLY expensive, at least here in the US. 9 bucks each issue, ouch.

Actually, checking the website right now, and the subscriptions don't cost as much as they used to, apparently. Used to be over $100 for a year, now it's like $71.87, which is still really expensive. I've never seen a magazine with a price over $20 a year before, at least not a gaming mag.

[RLacey]

I'm probably one of the few people to hold this position, but I actually prefer Games™ to EDGE. I'm not quite sure why, mind you.

[Eregian]

Hmm, never heard of GamesTM. Apparently it's geared towards the older demographic too. I should pick up an issue to compare. From what I can find on the net, GamesTM delivers more pages for the same amount of money which could justify a switch, if indeed it tackles the industry with a nice degree of maturity...

I'll keep you up-to-date on my impressions!

[Melkor]

I haven't read any magazines regularly in a good while, but PCG UK used to be pretty damn good. Anyone still read it?

Might be to specific for you though.

... and giving any Halo game a perfect score is silly. Period.

[GageBlackwood]

I read Game Informer, but that's purely because I get it for free. It's a decent magazine I suppose but not worth recommending to anyone. Certainly not over EDGE or GamesTM.

[Eregian]

Originally Posted by Melkor

... and giving any Halo game a perfect score is silly. Period.

EDGE does make sense of it. It focuses on the fact that the third one perfects the user input, giving you the astonishing production values to use in a huge and creative community and adjust them to your tastes.

Don't know how they justify giving the first Halo a 10, didn't read the review.

[samIamsad]

I can only speak for myself, but for me the gaming magazin as it is now, that is, a more ore less pure mag for testing games, has long since run its course. Back then in the early 90s, a print mag was pretty much the only source of information one had at their disposal. Previews, reviews ad nauseum - that's all information I can gather online now. For free. I haven't bought a gaming magazine since ca. 1999. Granted, I'm not sure if I would regularly buy another one even if its focus was any different - say, in-depth stories on developers, the industry, retro corners, much, much much more editorial stuff - my interest and thus the amount of money I'm putting into it isn't what it used to be.

Hell, I remember times when the entire pocket money of months was spent to buy a game or two. What I meant to say is: Can't help you there.


Anyway, this doesn't have so much to do with the question at hand, but I found this rather interesting. Those numbers are quite a few months old, and they have been dwindling for years now. Recently, another German PC gaming magazine closed its doors forever, but if I'm comparing the sales numbers of German game mags with those of other European mags.. I have no idea why Germons buy that many mags though. It's rather interesting to see that. I'd imagine that quite a few readers are from Austria and Switzerland as well. The author pokes fun at PC Gamer for claiming to be the "World's biggest PC gaming mag", which, given those numbers is a little understandable.

[MdaG]

I've read the october issue of Edge now and I'm off to buy the november issue as well. I really like this magazine and I think I'm going to order a subscription for 2008. The writing is generally more mature (I'm not claiming that other magazines are childish) than most online magazines I usually read. As stated above though, Edge is expensive, I have to pay £67 for one year, which stings a little. Buy, what the heck, it's Cristmas soon and I deserve some juicy paper reading

[Marek]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Anyway, this doesn't have so much to do with the question at hand, but I found this rather interesting.

Interesting numbers. Does that first graph show subscribers only or total sales? I can read some German but I couldn't figure that part out.

[RLacey]

There are graphs?

The ABC figure in the copy of PCGamer that I have here is 43 000-odd, so the numbers there look like total sales to me.

[Marek]

Um, I wrote graph but meant table. Whenever I see tabular data my imagination just runs wild.

[samIamsad]

But yes, those were supposed to be estimated total sales numbers. That blog belongs to the ex-editor in chief of Germany's most popular PC gaming magazine. Which reminds me, it's also pretty interesting that the upper third of those tables is pretty much all about PC mags only. Which of course reflects the big market share that platform still has over here.

[SamandMax]

8 for Bioshock and 10 for Halo 3? I don't know if I could trust that.

[MdaG]

Originally Posted by SamandMax

8 for Bioshock and 10 for Halo 3? I don't know if I could trust that.

I think that 8 is a fair "objective" grade for Bioshock. Giving Halo 3 a ten though feels like much. In the review they justify this by claiming that Halo 3 basically perfects FPS gaming + adds immense possibilities through the online community.

I just bought Halo 3 and hope it'll live up to the hype.

[Melkor]

Reviews are all subjective, I'm sure one can concoct some (in my opinion, ridiculous) way of justifying giving Halo 3 a perfect score, but if we are to take any merit in any form of objectivity (or rather intersubjectivity) when dealing with games, I can say with certainty that the score is simply false. It's not that good of a game. Not if you actually start looking at the actualities of the game in comparison to other FPS games. Is it a thrilling experience to be part of the phenomena that is «Halo»? Maybe. I don't think so, but some might think it is. But from a technical perspective, if we are to be objective and empirical about games at all (not saying that we should use it as any kind of definitive grading), it's not a perfect game.

I mean, the hype for the Halo-series is just silly. The games are all relatively good games, but they have never been anything else. Not spectacularly good in any aspect. Simply a string of relatively solid console shooters (solid in the same way that Knocked Up is a solid Hollywood romcom), that's it (and considering that console shooters traditionally aren't all that good, that's not saying much). I can't for the life of me understand all the praise the games have gotten, it's ludicrous (from my perspective).

Games that push the limits of what the artform of gaming can do can be categorized as games of top quality in my opinion. Games that excell at what they set out to do (within the already established framework), that are effective games in terms of affect it instills in the player, they can also be very good games, but as far as I'm concerned, they simply can't compete with the prototypical games that was there before them. If anything, the Halo-series is the latter type of games, and not even very good ones at that (from my perspective). So, I wouldn't trust anyone giving Halo 3 a perfect score, it just doesn't compute with the way I look at things. For me, the potential of the Halo-games are simply weak, and the execution in that potential is also pretty weak, but hey, enough of my rants, if you're into Halo, then I'm sure Halo 3 is, at the very least, better than Halo 2. I wouldn't expect much other than a semi-solid console shooter though.

[insane_cobra]

Originally Posted by Melkor

Reviews are all subjective, I'm sure one can concoct some (in my opinion, ridiculous) way of justifying giving Halo 3 a perfect score, but if we are to take any merit in any form of objectivity (or rather intersubjectivity) when dealing with games, I can say with certainty that the score is simply false. It's not that good of a game. Not if you actually start looking at the actualities of the game in comparison to other FPS games. Is it a thrilling experience to be part of the phenomena that is «Halo»? Maybe. I don't think so, but some might think it is. But from a technical perspective, if we are to be objective and empirical about games at all (not saying that we should use it as any kind of definitive grading), it's not a perfect game.

As it's explained in the review, the score is not so much for the game itself, but for the whole package. Really, even when you compare it to something like Orange Box with its five distinct games, it's hard to beat the amount of high quality content you get with Halo 3: the single player campaign, multiplayer, four player co-op with the whole skull system, Forge and the saved movies feature. They scored the whole package and said its abundance of player-centric features represents the way of the future (I sure hope they're right).

Now, I'm not going to argue your opinion of Halo as you're entitled to it, but it's a great game that almost lives up to the hype. I recently replayed Halo: CE and I found that I actually liked it better than the first time around. Maybe it's because I played on a higher difficulty setting that really brought out the great enemy AI or maybe it's just that once you get familiar with the game's shortcomings, it becomes much easier to concentrate on its good sides. And I don't know if you've played it, but there are many good sides to it.

[Eregian]

Originally Posted by insane_cobra

Really, even when you compare it to something like Orange Box with its five distinct games, it's hard to beat the amount of high quality content you get with Halo 3: the single player campaign, multiplayer, four player co-op with the whole skull system, Forge and the saved movies feature. They scored the whole package and said its abundance of player-centric features represents the way of the future (I sure hope they're right)

Funny enough, and good news for us, EDGE scored the Orange Box with a perfect 10 too. A logical conclusion since Half Life 2 itself rightfully earned one 3 years ago. A package with the same game + 4 'others' is one hell of a deal!

Now it's waiting for Mass Effect, curious how that one turns out...