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[Borodin]

The magazine has gone steadily downhill. I know some people who used to work for PC Gamer and left, and they claim that they were being critcized for turning in less than extremely positive reviews of bigname titles. The bulk of people now on staff are new to the industry, with little understanding of its past--and that works well if you want to get "gee wiz, what a great game!" reviews out of folks with no gaming history to offer comparisons.

I honestly don't think most gamer websites that I've seen are any better. Remember, many are profit-based just like the printed publications. And most gamers in any case again lack the knowledge of past games that makes some critical apparatus possible in reviews.

My opinion, for what it's worth: find a critic whose work you think makes good common sense in the longterm, and stick with them. Give no loyalty to a site or printed magazine.

[PrejudiceSucks]

I assume you're talking about PC Gamer US, not UK. UK gives some very, very scathing reviews of big name games. Also, the people in UK are extremely knowledgable about games old and new.

I've never read US, but I assume that it's crapper. Maybe that's just me, but I prefer UK magazines. They're just better made, and a lot funnier.

[xoopx]

Originally posted by PrejudiceSucks@May 8 2005, 04:47 PM
I assume you're talking about PC Gamer US, not UK. UK gives some very, very scathing reviews of big name games. Also, the people in UK are extremely knowledgable about games old and new.

I've never read US, but I assume that it's crapper. Maybe that's just me, but I prefer UK magazines. They're just better made, and a lot funnier.

US magazines do seem to be worse than UK.
i remember getting a US magazine once, i forget the name, and it was seriously just page after page of screenshots. with maybe some captions.

[Borodin]

I don't think any general condemnation-by-nationality can be made. PC Gamer US used to be a fine publication. It's management changed about 3-4 years ago, and it's been going downhill since then.

[DeathDude]

Yeah I agree PC Gamer used to be a good magazine, then a lot of the reviewers and writers left the magazine, pretty much it's just Greg I can think of that still part of the original crew, but the quality keeps declining, hopefully it might improve at somepoint in the future though...

[PrejudiceSucks]

PC Gamer UK is a bit up and down. The last issue I got (a couple of days ago) was not that great, but the one before was fantastic.

I guess it's all about the calibre of the games released that month.

[Stroggy]

Yeah, the quality of the games can affect the quality of a magazine. This month was very bad since the games are very "bleh". another football manager game, a matrix game, Stronghold 2, Empire Eart 2 (after all these years they still can't make a realistic looking strategy game... why are the units so big compared to the buildings!?) and some other small games and Doom 3/HL2-clones.

[Maktaka]

Actually, I have to agree with him. Whenever I've downloaded a game from this site that I played as a kid, I've usually regretted it. The game doesn't have the same level of fun that I remember and I end up being let down. On the other hand, when I download a game from here that I've never played before, I enjoy it much more because I don't have any preconceived notions about the fun factor. I think that's where he's coming from. He got an itch to play some old games that he hadn't touched in years and was dissapointed when they didn't live up to his expectations. Although I think he took it a little too hard, I do understand where he's coming from on this. I'm just glad that I never got a chance to play X-COM as a kid, man it would suck if THAT got ruined because it couldn't live up to my memories.

[Microprose Veteran]

Nope.

I agree that many oldies aren't that good.

But X-com is just a super game I guess. I played it a lot in the 90s and I beat it at the highest difficulty level. I've tried a few times at hardest difficulty again but I guess I lost my touch because I lost my entire team several times. Conclusion: it's still as challenging as ever (untill I beat it again).

Then there are a couple of old games I still play now and then on my C=64 and Amiga emulators...

[cheesegrater]

Gaming magazines are lame because they inflate review scores in order to promote games. Also games always get a score of 50% or more. Lame!