New Game Magazines: Also Surprisingly Good

Hey all. While nothing, and I mean nothing, beats the totally radical, jam-packed game mags of the 90s, over the last few months I've been checking new magazine issues out of the library (I've got seventeen sitting on the table right now... dammit library I'm never going to read seventeen issues in three weeks) and I have to say, they've really turned themselves around.

I kind of fell out of love with gaming mags riiiiight around the end of 2005, the last issue of EGM I own is a "PS3 vs. 360 vs. Wii" feature (with that cool PS3 boomerang controller that makes ultra-frustrating games suicidal). My subscription was kind of running on inertia around then; I would get issues, read through them (I mean, I had them there) and then... not care. And not renew. And I didn't buy a gaming magazine for a long time after that.

This wasn't just due to the internet doing everything the magazines were doing faster. They (by which I mean EGM, the only mag I was still reading) just really started to slack. Instead of reviewing every game, they'd have "review round-ups" with little blurbs for many games; sure, half the time they were mediocre licensed product, but other times they wouldn't review worthwhile stuff like "Capcom Classics Collection." Their preview section took the biggest hit. It kind of merged with features and tried to pass off meatloaf as steak, with more previews that were large screenshots with annotations, and other games that in olden days would get half a page now getting a 40-word blurb and a single screenshot. All this, with features not improving in quality in any noticeable sense. I don't mind reading a well-prepared content package even if the information is a bit old, but you could just see the content leeching out of the thing. The December 2009 issue of GamePro is about one-third the size of the December 1999 issue.

WELL ANYWAY from the issues of various magazines I've read, that's changed. They've started writing for an older audience, and delivering content more well-suited to the print medium. While the magazines are the same lean size, there's a lot more in the way of analysis and features, unique things you can only read in that magazine, and I've been finding them consistently entertaining. GamePro's even stopped doing regular reviews; realizing that they're going to be publishing weeks after release with dozens of reviews available online, they essentially aggregate the consensus of several other reviews and throw in the reviewer's own thoughts, looking to give a more thoughtful, considered analysis.

GamePro also started running a "state of the system" for each console, showing what games have quickly stopped being fun, which ones are still holding attention, and which are selling little and really need you to buy them. It's the kind of broad analysis beyond the NOW NOW NOW done gone that I quite like. I recall in the rating process for the "Top 100 Games of All Time" in EGM 150 that they disqualified from consideration stuff from the PS2's killer fall 2001 lineup because you really need time to sit back and digest a game before you can really say how good it is, but outside of that every game rater has always told you their experience after a hellish, deadline-induced marathon. It really serves the reader well to tell them how well a game fares after the newness has worn off.

(And that's not to say that GamePro is my favorite of the "relaunched" magazines, their editorial philosophy just provided the easiest examples of a generally smarter structure in all mags.)

In short, I'm considering subscribing to one or more, and that's new. So... new magazines are good, maybe buy one. Or check a bunch out. But I wouldn't hit the Rainbow Library for a few weeks, because I think I've got everything...