Gaming Magazines

rgiller

Just wondering what people's opinions were on these: which are the best for information, demos, free stuff, etc. And of course which ones are the worst. I don't subscribe to any, generally use gamespot.com for my gaming needs, but I usually pick one up in the airport when I go off somewhere. I've read a lot of different ones and found official xbox and PSM2/3 the best of them. Got Electronic Gaming the last time, which was a big tightly bound lump of dog turd that I wouldn't recommend to anyone. Any thoughts?

projectmayhem

i get all my news and whatnot from t'internet, but i do read edge magazine for the articles/debate and so on. i used to buy the official UK ps2 mag, because it's funny and has demos, but i've yet to buy an issue this year

Tusky

GamesTM by a country mile.

Dont be at yourself

EDGE, it is the only magazine that offers what the internet does not - in-depth features and interviews.

savemejebus

EDGE or GameTM tbh.

Used to read Play for PS2 stuff (had good freebies) but it's brutal now, pure fanboi central

Ho-Hum

Games TM is definitley the best one out there for me.

johnny_ultimate

Read Edge occasionally - only intelligent magazine ive come across (although i hear TM does the job as well). Although the cost makes me do this :eek:

Controversially, I am also going to nominate gamecentral on channel 4 text 305. Its daily, intelligent and they have damn good taste (without them the words katamari, phoenix wright, strangers wrath and psychonauts would mean little if nothing to me). I know they have their critics here, but for a teletext service it gets my numerous thumbs up.

Laguna

Ngamer and GamesTM. I used to read Gamesmaster until I found out it was ****.

redmosquito

I used to love C&VG, didnt miss an issue for years back in the 90's!

Naikon

PC gamer,PC ZONE,PC FORMAT,and PC Extreme are the business.

Dickmcsavage

I've been reading PSW for years. It seems to appeal to a more adult market with its style of humorous and intelligent writing. One thing though... In the last three months it has re-designed its mag much to my dis-like but once you get past that you'll see that its pretty good.

Nay Z

Edge by a mile, it's the only magazine i've continued to read for the past ten years. Its the only one that would trust with a review as I have rarely not enjoyed a game they recommend. Excellent writing without the usual biased reporting you get from single format publications. Super Play was great also.

shatners basoon

johnny_ultimate wrote:

Controversially, I am also going to nominate gamecentral on channel 4 text 305. Its daily, intelligent and they have damn good taste (without them the words katamari, phoenix wright, strangers wrath and psychonauts would mean little if nothing to me). I know they have their critics here, but for a teletext service it gets my numerous thumbs up.

I second that. They're all i've used ever since the good ol' days of digitiser. Surprised to hear they've got strong critics here? Fanboys maybe?!

Edge and Gamer TM are also very good, albeit (as mentioned) expensive.

BlitzKrieg

Sgea Saturn Magazine was a god among magazines.

*sniff* how I miss them...

rgiller

Some good suggestions there. I've got an Edge at the moment but I'm finding it hard work. I guess because they cover all formats they can't really be too biased and passionate towards any one particular one and so it all comes across very bland. I've read GamesTM, which was a bit better, but I find the single platform magazines more entertaining

Retr0gamer

Edge seems bland because it is. Can't stand that magazine, it's up its own arse and if gets reviews incredibly wrong but won't admit they made a mistake. Games TM at least injects a little bit of fun and mostly gives honest opinions. It's the best gaming mag at the moment but nothing compared to the glory days of Sega Power, Super Play, Zapp 64 or old school Gamesmaster.

tHE vAGGABOND

d'internet has made games mag's a usless waste of money imho..

"oh great, a biased review [cos the publisher has bought several full page add's in our mag] of a game that has been reviewed 900 times online already!"

This is why the sales of games mag's are patethic tbh

Trode

Retr0gamer wrote:

Edge seems bland because it is. Can't stand that magazine, it's up its own arse and if gets reviews incredibly wrong but won't admit they made a mistake. Games TM at least injects a little bit of fun and mostly gives honest opinions. It's the best gaming mag at the moment but nothing compared to the glory days of Sega Power, Super Play, Zapp 64 or old school Gamesmaster.

I'd kind of agree. EDGE of old used to be the arrogant and snobby mag that knew its stuff and was spoke as if from authority. Then they had a change in staff and accompanying editorial direction, and they've lost a good deal of the aloof attitude. Unfortunately they haven't really replaced it with anything, leaving it a bit soulless and dull. I still like some of the reviews though(even ones I don't agree with), and when they get a writer arguing with passion(such as often in the games retrospective bit) its excellent. And it's nice to have a magazine that doesn't think all Nintendo players are under twelve.

Zombrex

Edge and GamesTM

Edge isn't as good as it used to be (I never thought it was snobby, but it took the "art" of games seriously), but it is still a great mag

GamesTM is filling the void that Arcade left back in 2000 (best games mag ever TBH)

madrab

i used to love n-force back in the 90's, it was the first game mag i ever bought

Kiith

I've always liked PCZone and PCGamer. Generally give good reviews, and get some good exclusives. Also like GamesTM, especially since my college has a subscription, so i can read it for free.

super_furry

Games TM is the only one I bother with now. I gave up on Edge because they're so desperate to try to legitimise gaming as an artform that they're articles and reviews often sink into rants about the industry.

Retr0gamer

I used to love PCzone and PCgamer but it really wnet down hill around 2000. The editorial staff all changed in Future Publishing and the old school journalists from the 8 and 16-bit days started to disappear. It just lost it's sense of fun and there was a lot of console hating when the cross platform staff left. I don't know what happened to PCzone since I didn't read it regularly. PCZone will always to fondly remembered by me for giving us Blokebird

Fidelis

I used to really like PC Zone, but then every second screenshot caption contained the word "yesterday". Very, very annoying

thelordofcheese

BlitzKrieg wrote:

Sgea Saturn Magazine was a god among magazines.

*sniff* how I miss them...

Amen brother, amen.....

satchmo

Amstrad Action ftw!

I don't really care for reviews in any magazine because it's much easier to get a better feel for a game on the net (screenshots, trailers from GameTrailers, reviews from MetaCritic etc.). But if I'm in an airport or getting a train, I'll buy Edge because of their features, interviews and general industry overview.

Chainfire

I also think Gamecentral is very good,I would have never played Psychonauts,Katamari or Disgaea without their constant nagging about how good they were.

TheAlmightyArse

Trode wrote:

And it's nice to have a magazine that doesn't think all Nintendo players are under twelve.

You should give NGamer a try. It's single format, but miraculously has a sense of perspective, honest reviews* (including tonnes of import DS stuff) and even a two-page spread about what's happening of note on other formats. And it's got almost all of the decent UK games journos, with a refreshing passion and sense of fun. It's fairly expensive and the DVD is soulless and pointless, though.

*Honest, but occassionally WRONG. Rhythm Tengoku short; my hole.

BlitzKrieg

can I point out that Sega Saturn Magazine introduced me to the world of Hentai, and mad japanese dating games, that and the fact that when the saturn had actually died in the UK, it still continued for months surviving on pisstake articles and little news of the dreamcast (oh and import reviews, that magazine also opened me to the glory of imports.)

Waltons

Retr0gamer wrote:

I used to love PCzone and PCgamer but it really wnet down hill around 2000. The editorial staff all changed in Future Publishing and the old school journalists from the 8 and 16-bit days started to disappear. It just lost it's sense of fun and there was a lot of console hating when the cross platform staff left

Spot on. I used to subscribe to PcGamer, but when the staff started changing, it went ridiculously downhill. Can't really stand it any more now. I remember one night using the IRC spinoff from their forum (a bit after a lot of the decent staff leaving), one of the writers came on - Richard Corbett if I remember correctly, one of the last writers who joined the mag that I actually enjoyed - as he did some nights, and asked what we thought of the latest edition, or somesuch. Cue much proverbial shuffling of feet as not a single person in the PcGamer fan room had bought the mag in months

Only picked up Edge a few times; never really latched onto it

CiDeRmAn

Nice to see that Edge bashing is alive and well, I have to say its the only magazine that I can read for the four weeks until the next issue comes out, its articles are information dense requiring a certain amount of effort from the reader but so what, do you take gaming seriously or not.
Tried to get into GamesTM but found they were a couple of weeks late with the game reviews compared to Edge and the "Fun" tone of their articles just seems hollow.
Magazines that gave me the obsession in gaming to begin with were Maximum, the best next gen mag of them all, Boot, cracking US PC mag, Crash and Your Sinclair, also loved that old Nintendo mag, SuperControl and a Sega one called Megatech, enjoyed C+VG back in the 80's and PCW back at the dawn of time itself.