edge - end of the road?

Chalk

well im writing this just to see if any readers of edge share my views.

i was a collector of edge for almost 3 years, recently passing on my collection to a fellow boardsie when i moved house.
i had hoped to begin anew when i got settled.
this was september

the next time i picked up edge was december,
afaik, the first of the new style issues.
the magazine had completely changed from something clever into another average games mag.

i thought maybe i was just judging it because it was new etc, but after 5 issues its more thatn that, the reviews are boring, every game getting average scores,
for years exactly what edge was against, a bad game got a 2 or 3, 5 not 7 was average.

a complete worship of rockstar as some sort of british gaming saviour..
just my opinion but gta:sa was no better than vc and manhunt was dull.

anyway i rant,
deceided to write this as after red eye and biffos columns being reducced to a few words and finally stephen poole off to pastures new i think its the end for this once great mag and doubt i will be back to purchase another copy.

anyone got an opinion on this?

dearg_doom

EDGE has been on the wane for a while, yeah.

I think Future have been flogging it as an 'intelectual' games mag for that bit too long now, and have realised that the masses would buy it religiously even if it consisted of badly written shiite, so they drop the experienced writers and save themselves a few quid, which means more profit for them.

The same will happen to GamesTM now that it's part of the fold now, unfortunately.

AND GTA:SA was good, but the PS2's performance ruined it for me, Manhunt was great imo.

Chalk

hmm never liked gamesTM at all,
that seemed, to me, to be what edge is becoming now,

i guess its lost now anyway, wish i hadnt given away my collection now lol

Captain Trips

/waits for Eurogamer to have a print mag.......

4000Holes

Wasn't there a big change of staff or something at Edge last year...when Tony Mott came in as editor. Edge has been getting worse. I only really enjoy some of the columns and Time Extended now. The PoP Time Extended was good.

About the reviews...looking at this months edition and there is nothing below five, even with the normal March crap being released.

ObeyGiant

To be fair to Edge, I've played a few of the games that they reviewed this month, and yes.. most of them are indeed just fives. Nothing awful about any of them, all just painfully average.

Their features are still a little up in the air - sometimes, they just have reprinted press releases, and other times they have genuinely interesting articles. But this is all made up for by the Time Extend features - their write-up of Eternal Darkness was beautiful and made me want to play the game all over again.

I think there was a fair few problems with Edge recently -- rumours abound of *massive* bribery and so on (but don't they always?), and they've been struggling to re-invent themselves, as they have done in the past. But I don't think they've let themselves down yet. And definitely not to the stage where you can actually compare Edge to GamesTM.

Now, comparing Eurogamer to GamesTM? That you could do.

And that's not a good thing.

super_furry

I bought Edge out of habbit for years but as soon as GamesTM came out, I stopped. I just find that GamesTM are less pretentious and not so damn determined to constantly intellectualise and justify videogames. GamesTM and Arcade are the only two videogame magizine's I've read cover to cover since Zzap64.

As for Eurogamer, I've never really understood the big fascination with it here, it seems to be just another videogame website to me, with nothing special or outstanding about it.

Jazzy

it is unfortunate indeed. especially that biffo has shorter articles, the rockstar worshipping is also annoying - manhunt was average and GTA:SA was just a massive sandbox of a game with no real depth to it.... still great fun though! I remember when their reviews and digitisers was wat i went on to buy games, the scores dont really matter - its the content of the reviews that count, for instance they scored GT4 at a 7, digi gave it 8. if u read the reviews u see why they did that. We need a revamp of the old edge is wat we need

KdjaCL

I missed a few and then got the very same mag and havent bought it since, it was like a paper version of EG.

Shame it went tits up.


kdjac

Tusky

GamesTM is by far the best games magazine out there in my humble opinion.

Retr0gamer

Edge was decent when it started up but it has gone to the dogs along with future publishing. they just got full of themselves and the mightier than thou attitude they developed turned me right off. I bought a copy a few months ago for the article on Treasure. i couldn't bring myself to read the rest of the magazine properly. It's the magazine equivalent of the film showgirls. Showgirls made me bored despite lots of naked women. Edge made me bored reading about my favourite hobby.

RicardoSmith

Yeah its rubbish now. Started off it was interesting but its gone downhill over the past couple of years or more. Long winded articles about nothing.

po0k

/me sheds a single crystaline tear



*sniff*

Deadwing

Bring back arcade!!!!!

best. games mag. ever.

ObeyGiant

Jazzy wrote:

it is unfortunate indeed. especially that biffo has shorter articles

Erm.

Biffo has always had a full page. I think that recently, they gave him full run of his article - rather than just having to produce $x amount of words, he could do a 'funny image' or something. And, being Biffo, he took advantage of this.

His latest article is back to normal. $x amount of words.

Chalk

my point was that they only gave him one page,
he did more for digi in a day than hes been doinf edge in a month, its silly to see 10 lines of text by a good write with an interest in the subject and the rest of the mag being taken up with drivel and pandering reviews.

another thing i noticed is the fiat / xbox compettion thats been going on,
is this the first time theyve run such an obviously commercial competetion as ive never seen it done before in edge.

dearg_doom

Retr0gamer wrote:

it has gone to the dogs along with future publishing.

Future were ALWAYS the laziest publishers going.

EDGE was their flagship mag, which diverted attention away from their ball-sucking system dedicated mags.

Unforunately:

Retr0gamer wrote:

they just got full of themselves and the mightier than thou attitude they developed turned me right off.

This happened because certain journo's began to believe the industry depended on them, rather than took advantadge of them for free-ish advertising. A LONG TIME AGO.

What do you think is a better investment: Spend all your cash on slick mrketing, or spend a bit of your cash on marketing and the rest 'ensuring' a favorable EDGE score/write-up???

Hmmm

Retr0gamer wrote:

.... Edge made me bored reading about my favourite hobby.

This line is so true.

Chalk

ive never heard these bribery allegations until now,
i suspected it wrt certain games / publishers but is there hard eveidence that it was widespread in edge?

po0k

One has only to look at the demise of PCGamer

dearg_doom

Chalk wrote:

ive never heard these bribery allegations until now,

It's not just bribery, all of the associated 'perks' of being a games journo is the reason they get paid so little, compared to real critical journo's.

These perks include foreign launch parties, being brought to E3/(insert trase show here) by certain publishers/companies, free parties(game/system launches etc..)


Just because EDGE have a bit more cop-on than most mags, they still wouldn't be dumb enough to bite the hand that feeds them

They're just not as cheap/blatant as the rest

CiDeRmAn

Don't see most of the comments here as true.
I have been reading Edge for 8 years now and still feel its the best mag out there.
Don't see where you get the paid off reviews from, many of the big games previewed in their pages get average scores in the review.
By your reckoning you would expect the big publishers to be able to pay the most money for the most influence which is not to be seen when looking at review scores for the likes of EA or Infogrames.
Even the gamers favs Sega and Nintendo have their games reviewed and flaws described.
If you have some statisical proof of consistently high review scores from a particular publisher please share.
The example given of Rockstar is crap, GTA is a brilliant and higly influential series of games that every publisher is trying tio emulate, Red dead revolver was a great title and Manhunt was very clever although not to my taste, however EDGE have been critical of Midnight Club, Smugglers Run and Max Payne to name just three.

The changes in the mag have been drastic, more so than most of the previous ones but I get the impression that you had all made up your minds to not like it anyway.

I have no problem that treats our hobby in a mature way, I enjoy 90% of the articles, find that there is enough reading in the average issue to keep me coming back to it til the following issue and would challenge anyone to open the most rececnt issue and tell me what was so wrong with it.
If you can do that I will be impressed.

Chalk

maybe so,

but how many pages did they dedicate to the godfather this month?
wth is that all about,
if that game isnt the getaway with an italian acccent id be shocked,
surely the edge i used to read would be able to see that a mile away.
instead its being heralded as the greatest thing to happen to games in years.

as far i can see they stopped wiriting articles a few months ago too,
now its all just hype for games, ie articles talking up a particular feature of one game.

Dogg Thang

Edge has had far worse times than now. I do agree the magazine seems to have gone downhill a bit of late but I remember well a review of Darkstalkers (I think PS1) where it was clear they had barely touched the game. By this stage it was a well established arcade game and yet they didn't even know the names of the characters and didn't bother looking them up in the instructions before writing the review. That was just one example but I remember the magazine was atrocious at that time. It got much, much better.

Even if it is going through a slump at the moment I'm sure it will find its feet again. Many of these changes may lead to good things - they just need to play with what works and what doesn't. As it was with Edge, I had got bored with their huge features on upcoming 'innovative' games that invariably would never see the light of day or, if they did, end up slipping onto the shelves and into the bargain bins. Red Eye had been reduced to boasting about how drunk he was and Poole was usually just proving himself right by his own standards when it came to his game predictions. A revamp was in order. I look forward to seeing them pick up soon.

ObeyGiant

CiDeRmAn: About the allegations of corruption in Edge, as far as I know, they're just rumours. There was talk of a few layoffs within their editorial team for that reason. But these are only rumours as far as I can tell, and like I said, there's always rumours like this.

Chalk: You're really complaining because a game based around the best movie of all time (warning: subjective) is getting some coverage? Regardless of its merits as an original game, it is interesting to a massive amount of people who want to read about how their favourite movie is being turned into a game. Besides that, Edge isn't alone in giving coverage to the Godfather game. 1up has done it, gamespot has done it, and even everyone's precious eurogamer has done it.

This is a big thing. Get over it.

Everyone else: If you like Redeye's style of writing (rocking the 'New Games Journalism' before Kieron Gillen had even noticed there was something wrong with old games journalism), Ste Curran (one of Redeye's many alter-egos) has a blog where he's posting a collection of his old reviews and Redeye columns.

Zombrex

Chalk wrote:

ive never heard these bribery allegations until now,
i suspected it wrt certain games / publishers but is there hard eveidence that it was widespread in edge?

Halo. 10 out of 10. Nuff said :rolleyes:

When Halo came out on the PC I played through the whole game waiting for the "brilliant" beach landing level that Edge went on and on about. Then when I completed it I realised they were talking about one of the earliest levels. You run up a hill. You shoot a few things. Lasts 30 seconds. Balls

And the Library level (the one where you run and run around exactly the same level style) annoyed me so much I nearly stopped playing the game. I would have given Halo 7/10 .. good, not great with some very annoying features (this is on the PC mind, I suppose when it came out on the X-Box it was the best FPS for the format)

I still buy Edge every month, but since its redesign I think it has gone a bit to the dogs (but no worse than any other console mag out there). I loved the minimalist style it used to have, I can't stand all this we-just-got-a-new-photoshop-plugin style flashy background crap they have now, it makes my eyes sore. And they pretty much ignore PC games. Half-Life 2 got a very quiet 10/10 .. personally I would have given it 9/10 ... 10/10 used to mean something at Edge. HL2 is a great game, but it is more an evolution on the orignal that a revolution like Super Mario 64 was. 10/10 should be reserved for the games that change video gaming. Hl2 was great but it didn't do that the way Half-Life did back in 1999

Oh well... what else are we going to read .. still trust Edge's reviews more than any other console mag because the rest are far more sh*t ... I loved Arcade but Future cancelled that ... muppets

Chalk

ObeyGiant wrote:

Chalk: You're really complaining because a game based around the best movie of all time (warning: subjective) is getting some coverage? Regardless of its merits as an original game, it is interesting to a massive amount of people who want to read about how their favourite movie is being turned into a game. Besides that, Edge isn't alone in giving coverage to the Godfather game. 1up has done it, gamespot has done it, and even everyone's precious eurogamer has done it.

This is a big thing. Get over it.

my point was more that just because its the biggest movie of all time doesnt meean it will be the greatest game of all time, sure the possible ramifications as edge so wondefully put it for "the future iof the entire industry" are huge,
but in all its an ea game with little innovation ebing shown, besides lovely graphics and "pulll your punch" system,
the whole article talked about how to do justice to the film they would have to deal with different characters not central to the story, as the godfather films wouldnt "translate well".

so basically their making a game and have tacked a license on, woopy de do,
back to my point, i dont understand why edge, with its standards of old, would, give print space to this.

surely the other links you have given are websites who have little discretion in what they post?


ps, thanks for the red eye links

baxterfly

I think the change in the mag was mainly cosmetic, to make it make it more attractive. The time extened is great, sometimes games should be reviewed in hindsight.

As regards to the reviews I dont think they are lazy or biased. MAny times they have done a front cover 6 page feature on how good a certain game is shaping up to become, only to give it 5 out of ten when they review it. They always seem to play the major titles through before completing them, and often hold off a review until theyve considered the game fully (As theyve done with World of Warcraft this month, which I'll eat my hat if they give it lower than 9, by the way theve been sh*ting on about it.)

They ran a feature about a year ago in one of the issues about how Edge reviews games, ie: how they're reviewd by different ppl and so the scroes are subjective and I think its well worht reading before you get pissed about certain scores.

CiDeRmAn

Agree with comments about The Godfather, but then I was never a fan of the movie, perhaps when we get a look at the finished game it will be more relevant, the only reason I ran out and bought the first available PS was 'cos I saw a similar article on a then unknown title called wipeout in Maximum, the best games mag ever, back in '95 I think.
I guess just because we are older gamers (I'm assuming this) that aren't teenagers anymore doesn't mean we all have to read the same magazine just for us.
Its good to have an alternative, Games tm, that at least lets us have choice in mature reading on our beloved subject, just because I don't read it doesn't mean I can't appreciate its splendid presentation and variety of article in each issue.

The only reason I don't buy it is 'cos I already buy Edge, have done for 7 or 8 years and have all the issues still, the wife would kill me for hoarding even more stuff.
Her eyes have been on my bulging game and console collection for quite a while now and the deal for the PSP is ditch a quarter of my paperback collection! Ah well, hey ho.

This has been an interesting debate about a mag that has obviously affected a lot of people for the good, if not now then certainly in the past, otherwise why would its changes of late upset so many people.
Lets hope whtever the spark you all find so lacking is found once again.


I was waiting on a giant Monkey Ball Deluxe article, maybe with posters, models, things to colour in!!! Or maybe thats just me!!

projectmayhem

i only ever bought edge once or twice before going on holidays and what not. i always pick it up in the shops to have a flick through though. it's one of the best gaming magazines out there. i don't buy it because most of the information is useless. i stick to my OPS2 UK sony propoghanda

Retr0gamer

No matter how much I like Games TM they consistently annoy me every week by making some really stupid mistakes especially at the end of the magazine. I don't know how many times I've seen a saturn game with a release date before the saturn was even out (radiant silvergun out in 1989 among others) and saying how Suikoden 4 was the first suikoden released in Europe (then where did I get my beloved PAL Suikoden 2).

Zombrex

projectmayhem wrote:

i stick to my OPS2 UK sony propoghanda

All hail the mighty Offical PS2 Mag ... resistance is useless ... 10/10 for all Games ...

I, for one, welcome our new Sony overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves ...