Official Edge Thread - December

[baad bwoy]

I don't really believe Edge enjoy playing games, hence the reviews generally say more about the reviewer and less about the gamesplaying experience of the game under review. Their reviews seem imo to be steeped in negativity more often than not and I dont find this helps me when choosing which games to buy.
I remember reading such magazines as Ace and the CvG Mean Machines section in my younger years, and the reviewers of these magazines actually gave the impression that they enjoyed games playing more than dishing out an impressive critique.

I felt excited to be reading these magazines reviews, I dont feel excited when reading Edge (the only exception I remember was the Halo review).
It would be nice to see the Edge magazine possibly looking at writing a critique upon their self, using the same criteria which is applied in other areas of the magazine, perhaps as a feature, this might be an interesting read

[Moodmon]

Interesting to note that out of the eight or nine full-time Edge staff, 7 have 'editor' in the job description.

[strokes beard]

Arrogant, Edge? Never.

[AllYourBase]

I remember reading such magazines as Ace and the CvG Mean Machines section in my younger years, and the reviewers of these magazines actually gave the impression that they enjoyed games playing more than dishing out an impressive critique.

Seconded, Edge do seem to review games with a view to being critical. All their reviews come out lifeless and jaded through these blinkers. I have read reviews that get 9/10 in Edge and still felt unmotivated to play it. I only buy the magazine to read their retro consoles section and to read about goings on in the gaming industry.

GamesTM offers much of the same content as Edge but their reviewers (editors?) aren't generally so down on everything. I can't even bare reading any of the 'official' magazines or ones with girls in bikinis on anymore though so I am sort of stuck magazine wize! I prefer depressing to that journalistic slop!

I remember how magazines like Sinclair User, Crash, C&VG, etc managed to pull off accurate reviewing but with a inspired joyous nature. Oh Jaz why did you leave us for wallmart? Get lost Biffovision, take yeh valium mate!

[gozaimas]

Seconded, Edge do seem to review games with a view to being critical.

[AllYourBase]

Seconded, Edge do seem to review games with a view to being critical.

OK when you take it out of context like that it sounds like I am complaining about nothing! hehe - you know what I mean, they approach their critcism from a negative perspective rather than a constructive lighthearted one. I get the impression the writers feel angry that these companies have again failed to deliver something worth their precious time reviewing.

[Crispin]

Yeah, it doesn't help when they devoted over a page to the faults of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, all in one go, pretty much giving you the impression that it sucked majorly and then giving it a 9/10 at the end.

A similar thing happened with VJ if I recall correctly (I may be confused). They really should space out criticism through the review.

Contrary to popular belief, one sentence below a whole page of criticism saying:

"But apart from all that it's good"

does not convince you. First impressions count as Edge says. And if the first 5 paragraphs list the game's faults in order, it really does not inspire you to buy the game, no matter how good.

The Magic Pengel review wasn't too bad. They gave you an impression of what the game played like, but I'm still not clear on the core battle mechanics.

And the Jak II review? All praise (apart from the GTA references) and then in the penultimate sentence "but after 12 missions it becomes the errand boy boredom of Star Fox" (paraphrasing).

It then scores 7/10. The review clearly gave the impression up until then that it was 9/10 stuff.

There was only one criticism mentioned in the review, and it got a 7/10?

I'm not fussed about the game, I just want to know why a game got 7/10 as opposed to 9/10 say when only a few sentences ago they were saying that people might believe it corrects all the faults that SMS had.

I'd like some justification for the scores.

Oh and the LTTP GBA version review in Edge recently. I don't give a **** about Edge's demographic. I'm clearly not in that demographic as I'm interested in the review. I didn't play it before. So quit wasting my time. I don't care who you write for or what age group. I just want to know if it is any good!

And half the time, it ends up with Steven Poole mentioning all the major flaws of a game in the next month's column.

The flaws that would make you think twice about purchasing the game.

The flaws that ruined those games for me.

(Examples including Metroid Prime respawns spoiling the mood and LTTP messed up save feature - I'm on the move, batteries do die from time to time)

[Bomberman UK]

Yeah, although they're well-written their reviews can be quite confusing. The worst was the Mario Sunshine review where they slagged it off through the entire interview then said "but it's still the second best platformer of all time!" Er, mind telling us why?

Their reviews should be more balanced.

[Crispin]

I suspect the same reviewer did all 3 of those reviews. Either that, or they are all as bad as one another.

It's a bit annoying when they start a review that is only half a page long, with a paragraph or two on something almost completely unrelated. I don't really care how much Rayman has made for Ubisoft, I'm interested in a review.

It can be rather tricky basing a purchasing decision on a review of 3/4 of a single column of text and a couple of screenshots where I could have easily got something similar off the net.

(Yeah, I use reviews to prioritise game purchases - I am a student after all! But I still try to play a game regardless if I'm interested in it. And obviously I never comment on any game I've never played.)

[nips]

I know that there are a lot of game comming out at the moment, and EDGE even mention this in thier Continue/Quit section, but I personally would prefer it if EDGE would only focus on 5 games MAX, and give really detailed reviews where they can back up all their opinions.

They are an esoteric mag in many ways, so why review games that only few EDGE subscirbers will play. - Note this is just a generalisation, but I do think that they may do better to only review high profile/highly anticipated/strong games...

I'd much prefer 5, 4 page reviews with loads of pics and text, other than some nice reviews to begin and then 12 1/2 page reviews...

But this is my opinion, what do the rest of you think?

[Crispin]

I suppose so. But, then what would be the selection criteria?

The 5 best games of the month? Chances are they'd be covered in other mags with even more space devoted to them. Especially if it's a Nintendo game in NOM or GTA: Las Vegas (???) in OPS2 etc.

The 5 games least likely to be reviewed by other mags? Well, chances are most of these would never see a PAL release, thus alienating non-importers.

But yeah, maybe some games shouldn't be reviewed. I mean you could tell Enter the Matrix was ****e after 5 minutes of playing! And didn't the review come out AFTER the game was released? And to waste good pages on that seems worrying.

Should they review certain stuff? Hmm, I'm not sure. After all, if Edge never reviewed licensed stuff (or stuff with licenses in) then we'd never have seen a Goldeneye review (actually they ****ed that one up - if that wasn't revolutionary, then I don't know what the hell is!). Nor would we have seen a GTA:VC review because it contains famous songs.

Hmmm, I don't know. I'm happy about what they review, I just don't like the way they review it. Sometimes they can be totally obsessed with style and very little on actual core mechanics (so why doesn't shoulder button attacks work in Primal? Don't just say, explain!).

And tbh, I play games for fun. Not for some amazingly artistic/stylistic experience. If I wanted that I'd play Metroid Prime instead of Monkey Ball.

And Halo - "sci-fi pulp plot"? That was what made it so great you fools! It was quite clearly tongue in cheek! Idiots....

And WTF, has heckling comedians or books on totally unrelated stuff got to do with computer games?

And of course they made a big song and dance about that BBC journo slagging off games. I'd like to have seen some of the quotes he said so I could at least know what the hell Edge was going on about!

[angel]

edge review games with a sense of their history. so zelda gets all its flaws highlighted because of its past history being so distinguished..yet the games worthy of a 9. if you need a zelda game explaining then your reading the wrong mag.

same with sunshine, 99% of edge readers know mario 64 so why waste time with the plot and mechanics? you can buy countless other mags that detail all that irrelevance.

[FelixofMars]

I think EDGE has started to use a dartboard marking system, whereever the fickle dart lands is the score for that month, unless it a Nintendo game then they randomly choose a number between 8 and 10

My mate has resubscribed but he doesn't know why, I think its just habit.. he is acctually hoping they will stop making them so he can stop buying them...

[Bomberman UK]

unless it a Nintendo game then they randomly choose a number between 8 and 10

Try telling that to Kirby Airride, Smash Brothers Melee, Doshin The Giant, Animal Leader and Mario Golf Toadstool Tour.

[Crispin]

edge review games with a sense of their history. so zelda gets all its flaws highlighted because of its past history being so distinguished..yet the games worthy of a 9. if you need a zelda game explaining then your reading the wrong mag.

same with sunshine, 99% of edge readers know mario 64 so why waste time with the plot and mechanics? you can buy countless other mags that detail all that irrelevance.

Yes, but both Primal and Magic Pengel were brand new franchises. So how the hell would I know how they played? Especially with Magic Pengel, which, as Edge admits, has received scant press coverage.

Reviews really should be for everyone, not just some "Elite" group that is above a certain age and played a previous game in the series. It is fairly logical to suppose that not everyone has played every game ever in the history of mankind due to fairly obvious reasons.

For starters, I've never bought a single Biohazard game, gave up on Football and F1 games during the Game gear era, and until recently, hated "racing line" games.

And when you begin to review a game based on it's past history, surely your feelings for the previous game gets in the way.

People above a certain age tend to lambast Mario Kart 64 for not being frantic enough (or whatever) compared to the SNES version. They call Mario Kart 64 all sorts of names.

To people slighlty younger, we find this sort of amusing. We've played both, the latter more significantly though, and we like Mario Kart 64 simply because it's a nice relaxing game. And Yoshi's valley gets goddamn frantic.

Edge believes that many older people are beginning to give up videogames. If that is true, chances are they going to quit buying Edge soon.

Edge is going to have to adapt soon, to the slightly younger generation.

I'm not asking for a review of FIFA every year or something, all I want is some explanations of why something doesn't work (or why it does work or how it works).

Unless Edge changes, it's going to alienate any potential future readers.

I remember picking up Edge when 16, reading and putting it down is disgust. I thought it was elitist, seperatist and pretentious. I still think this is the case, but I buy it. Just for the main previews (Far Cry etc.).

I hate the reviews. Take last month's Colin McRae review. They wasted two whole paragraphs on the actual driver. Woopee do. If I was at all interested, chances are I would have found that off teletext, internet or a sports magazine already.

[goldbricker]

Did anyone see the typo on Mr Biffo's column where a highlighted quote mentions something about Microsoft being the "pubic" part of the games industry?



EDIT: Or was it it a typo?