A new blog deal

Game Informer, in a nut shell

A New Blog Deal/Game informer in retrospect

Right so I’m still new to the whole blog idea, and I’m still trying to adjust to this. I made it when I had a lot of free time and now I well…..don’t. But I’m figuring this stuff out. Now I write uber mega long articles and as my editor can attest, they tend to be full of grammatical errors, so even after I get it back, it’s a week before I can put it up. And now my editor (WG if you don’t know) is writing his own review at the same time, so it’s a very slow process (good luck to you WG). To make things worst, my email has been faulty, and communications aren’t working to well. But I feel guilty about not writing anybody anything for long periods of time, I’ve imagined a possible system. Since it’s a blog more than a review site, I figured that I might just write a short piece, maybe a page ½ long every day, just on things I’m feeling right now and what not.

Right, today. Now I’ve had the debatable good fortune of getting a free year long subscription to Game Informer and my last issue just arrived yesterday. So yeah, what I think in retrospect. Kinda of a complicated question, one that requires you to go a good deal into the nature of the gaming industry, the games the’ve reviewed this year, the new technologies/conclusion we’ve had so far but in short um…..they are a bunch of hacks. Every article is just a endless stream of generally worthless platitudes and trite remarks you could get by asking any gaming frat boy there views on something. The magazine really should get credit for sticking to its title of game “informer” because that’s pretty much it, they inform you about games, but they don’t really tell you anything about them. If you read the title of the game, go onto there website and read what the game makers have to say, because your just as likely to get an unbiased option from them. Gameinformer just spends there time making broad declarations and giving you some basic details about the game, most if which you already know if you’ve been paying attention at all in the gaming industry. For example, in the most recent issue, there was a 5 page article of God of War III (actually IV but what ever), where Kratos the greatest mass killer since Genghis Khan returns with a vengeance to slaughter even more pagan deities in the most gory manner you can imagine as part of his plan to emulet Jason. The article, in short said this

1) Kratos is awesome and can kill lots of things

2) You can not fight new monsters and use new weapons to kill lots of things

3) And there are fancy and new graphically advanced ways to kill lots of things. Actually on this not, they go into vivid detail about how the new PS3 graphics allow you to beat a man to death with your hands with the most realistic appearance and noises the gaming industry has ever seen. And they are saying that without sarcasm, which is really disturbing.

Now I’m rather neutral when it comes to god of war, but the article didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already imagine from the last game. They don’t try to ask any difficult questions (like the possibility that a gamn where you can rip a creatures eye ball out of its socket with your hand might be a tad bit of a bad influence) or if they want to avoid controversial topics, at least go into some detail about why they like it. They just go “Blood, gore, violence, good”, which is good enough for some people I suppose, but when I hear people talk about good games, its like when I want people to recommend me books. “Its awesome” isn’t actually a very good recommendation. For example, they mentioned and praise the amazing story line, but they don’t really say anything about it that makes it amazing. I mean, the story line isn’t bad I imagine, but it certainly doesn’t compare to the much better stories out there. Another example is when they declare Resident Evil 5 the most scary video game to ever been seen. Now Resident Evil is kinda fun, but its hardly scary, its more like shock humor (Silent hill, now that’s scary), and giving it such a big fancy title without any backing just seems trite. But in the end, what annoys in the end is that these recommendation just seem so…flat. I mean, if you know the public option of a game, don’t even bother reading the articles. Gears of war was popular, they give its sequel good marks. People expect to like God of War III, they say it is good. People liked Resident Evil 4 so they declare it the best, despite the total loss of the survival horror genre with hardly more than a comment. I mean, love or hate him, you have to admit that Yahtzee at least addresses game from a critical perspective, rather than just saying “Its awesome”.

So in the end, you cannot expect much, it informs, doesn’t offer any more. So I won’t miss it. And this is my gripe for the day, I hope you enjoy

From

EE