I, along with probably 250,000 other folks received the launch issue of Future and Best Buy’s partnership magazine, @Gamer. My first glance at the cover and I knew exactly what this was, a glorified video game ad for Best Buy. I was wrong, it isn’t just an ad, it’s also a legitimate magazine, aaaaannnnd that’s not necessarily a good thing.
When a magazine launches one of the very first things I do after fanning through the pages is read the Letter from the Editor. In this letter you often get the tone and direction of the magazine, they mostly all read the same; every magazine wants to be different from the rest, have a unique style, blah blah blah. @Gamer, according to Wil O’Neal, wants to “Help gamers quickly figure out which games are hot and worth your hard-earned money.” That’s a noble goal, unfortunately that’s pretty much the noble goal of most gaming magazines and websites.
Judging an entire magazine based solely on the launch issue isn’t fair. The magazine hasn’t found it’s stride, it still has some soul searching to go through to find what works and what doesn’t. The primary problem is the format. The gaming landscape changes so fast that a month by month magazine just isn’t as relevant as it was 10 years ago. With the Internet, we have up to the second knowledge of gaming news, reviews, release dates and delays. A magazine like this has a 2-3 month lead time so they may be working on stories in August that may not be published until October.
One glaring example of this is the new information Microsoft released about Fable III on page 9. The new information is that your character is the son or daughter of the hero in Fable II. Old news, whatever is happening now or in the last month isn’t covered. They most certainly didn’t have enough time to even touch on E3. I don’t hold @Gamer responsible for that, that’s just the issue with the medium.
What I can hold @Gamer responsible for is the writing. It isn’t terrible or technically bad, it’s generic. It’s written like a gaming magazine. It’s informational, as it has set out to be, but certainly not entertaining. There is practically no personality. Take this paragraph from the Crackdown 2 review,
“The original Crackdown added a fun multiplayer component that boasted collaborative co-op action. Crackdown 2 supports four-player co-op to satisfy players who enjoyed it from the first game, but also adds a 16-player competitive element with team-vs.-team and every-man-for-himself deathmatch modes, as well as an incredibly frantic Rocket Tag mode that lets you say “You’re it!” with a missile.”
The paragraph has no voice, it doesn’t convey the excitement or the pleasurable side of playing a 16-player competitive deathmatch mode. I thought reviews were supposed to be an opinion, but this one reads like the back of the box. The only opinion in the piece is the last paragraph where he writes,
“Crackdown 2 will surely be a big killer of personal productivity and spare time during the summer.”
This game received a 4.5 out of 5 and that’s what he had to say? That was his opinion? I don’t know about you, but when I talk about a game that I love, I gush about how amazing the story was, how the action was intense and non-stop, that the control was tight and spot-on and how the art direction fully immersed me in the rich, colorful world. It’s all about my experience, and when I talk about a game I love or hate, I want that sense of emotion to be felt by the person I’m talking to. That was absent in this review and I’ve noticed that’s the case with a lot of gaming reviews, they’re clinical and factually based.
Above each review score there is a handy “What’s great” and “What’s not so great” list. This is where they boil the review down to a couple bullet points. I’ve seen this in other magazines, “Wired” being one of them and I generally find them helpful. I always focus on the “What’s not so great” because I want to know what’s wrong with a game. So, “what’s not so great” about Crackdown 2? “At some point, the game will end and you’ll be done.” and “In September, Halo: Reach will come out, which is great on its own, but not for those who want to keep playing Crackdown 2.” Really? Is that why Andy Eddy scored it 4.5 instead of 5? Because it ends and Halo comes out in September?
I would have liked to have read more “I” statements in the reviews. This again, isn’t the fault of the reviewer but the problem with game reviews in general. I find it interesting that reviews are like how games were 15-20 years ago, dispassionate. Games these days convey so much sentiment and are cinematic in scope and story. Reviews, lack any emotion. There’s no color or scope to reviews, they’re just a series of facts laid out and from those facts consumers are supposed to make a buying decision.
The best part of the magazine are the coupons. In the launch issue alone they have a couple of coupons I’m interested in using, one for Bioshock 2 and the other for Halo 3 ODST. These savings alone would pay for 2 years of the magazine which makes a subscription worth the $20 for 10 issues.
So, is the magazine bad? No. It’s a gaming magazine with all the pitfalls of every gaming magazine out there. They are, to be fair, doing one thing differently, readers can submit their own reviews to be printed in the magazine. While I’m not ready to subscribe now, the coupons are enough to get me to seriously consider it. If the quality of the information remains, I probably won’t consider it a source for gaming information. However, I will subscribe if the coupons are as good in the next issue.
