The world of reviews, previews and all things game related is quite a weird one I suppose. I'm a follower of IGN and I like to check up on there every now and again to see how games are fairing and the latest announcements. For a year I probably stayed up to date with the gaming magazine Gamestm , it was nice whilst it lasted but its £5 price tag took its toll and was eventually dropped for it. What I did with the magazines after that.... well I cut them up and used them in my sketchbooks. But anyway....
The issue I started with.
The good thing about Gamestm in comparison to just reading for free off ign was that I had everything in nice little sections; some short stories near the front, previews, reviews, then a retro section near the back and video game art pages between each section. It was nice but I don't think I ever fully read through an issue just about 15 pages of it. I've also realised that instead of forking out £5 to read just some of the articles I could just quickly flick through the magazine to the pages I wanted to look at and never have to buy it.
In regards to their reviews, I valued them more than ign's just because I was paying for theirs so it had to be better right? But I found myself every time just comparing igns reviews against Gamestm and they would almost always come out the same. Yet there I was freaking out whenever any of the games I was following appeared in the magazine and got a good review. Now that I think about it though I was just paying for them to tell me that a game was good. If they had reviewed a popular game negatively their followers might be angry and they may lose costomers. I can say that I have also bought games just due to them receiving good reviews. I would never have bought them otherwise so maybe they are useful for showing off some of the best games out there. But then what if those reviewers are being bribed by the games companies?
The good thing about Gamestm in comparison to just reading for free off ign was that I had everything in nice little sections; some short stories near the front, previews, reviews, then a retro section near the back and video game art pages between each section. It was nice but I don't think I ever fully read through an issue just about 15 pages of it. I've also realised that instead of forking out £5 to read just some of the articles I could just quickly flick through the magazine to the pages I wanted to look at and never have to buy it.
In regards to their reviews, I valued them more than ign's just because I was paying for theirs so it had to be better right? But I found myself every time just comparing igns reviews against Gamestm and they would almost always come out the same. Yet there I was freaking out whenever any of the games I was following appeared in the magazine and got a good review. Now that I think about it though I was just paying for them to tell me that a game was good. If they had reviewed a popular game negatively their followers might be angry and they may lose costomers. I can say that I have also bought games just due to them receiving good reviews. I would never have bought them otherwise so maybe they are useful for showing off some of the best games out there. But then what if those reviewers are being bribed by the games companies?
Games I bought purely due to their good reviews
The majority of reviews I have ever read are purely objective just telling me the different elements and why they work or dont work. I had never seen a subjective game writing until I read "Bow, nigger". Its such an unusual take on a game and feels more like a short story than anything else but it really gives you a feel for that gamer and what hes experiencing in the game rather than the games individual elements. It makes you think how people spend so much time in a game rather than how good a game is by its individual elements.
Though I'm a bit of a nit picker myself and I like to try to explain all the different things, maybe to make it clear to myself so I'm probably more of an objective writer. Thats not to say that subjective writing isn't valuable, to be honest it would be nice to be more subjective with my writing but I don't think I'm a skilled enough writer to pull it off. So I'll just keep pulling stuff apart and trying to explain my experiences to you aswell as the facts.
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