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Are my rose tinted glasses on or were ""old"" magazine reviews significantly better?

B

bomblord1

Banned
So I have a small collection of old Nintendo power magazines lying around and was flipping through one for a nostalgia trip and I couldn't help but notice how much better written, stylized, and generally well done their review sand review format was.


dsc_000418hokc.jpg


Let's just take a look at this. The writing, grammar, etc are all much better done. The reviews flow from one section to another with no harsh breaks. Humor is well placed throughout (but not too distracting) and they even give a second opinion.

This excerpt from an old Nintendo power may single handedly be better than any modern review I've read. Period.

What do you think?
 
B

Big_Al

Unconfirmed Member
Absolutely and I don't think it's even that outrageous to say so. Being someone who grew up with game magazines in the UK they were muuuuuuuuch better than the shit that passes as reviews today - old CVG, Digitiser on teletext, Arcade, Mean Machines, old PC Gamer, Amiga Power and many many others

https://i.imgur.com/tRqsVR3.jpg
 
G

Gamesgbkiller

Member
I think that the standards are different from magazine to websites.

articles in magazines need to be written in a specific way, so maybe that's a reason.

But there are a lot of good reviewers today.
 
Living Proof

Living Proof

Member
I wholeheartedly agree. I've held on to my old gaming mags, and I enjoy scanning through them to read a well-written editorial or review from time to time.

Of course, it's not as if the state of gaming journalism today is uniformly bad, just like how there are many older, long-forgotten gaming magazines who couldn't hold a candle to the likes of others, or even certain writers amongst the same staff.

Also, it's hard to make a direct comparison; I haven't picked up a gaming mag in years now, but the time they have to compose their articles and edit everything puts them in a unique position compared to the practically necessary-to-survive "must publish ASAP" mentality in online establishments.

That certainly doesn't excuse some sites from having perpetual streams of puerile articles and embarrassingly prevalent spelling and grammatical errors, but that's a whole other issue.
 
J

Joe Shlabotnik

Banned
Gimme a minute to shake off the realization that I remember reading game reviews 20 years older than this "old game review"...

Okay. Anyway, the more traditional publishing structure of print means this review was likely vetted by two or three editors and may have passed back and forth between the writer and the editor(s) several times before being published.

I'm not sure if any online publication even has a copy editor anymore.
 
SmokedMeat

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
I think part of it is rose tinted nostalgia. Some reviewers I enjoy go far more in depth than the short blurbs I used to read in EGM.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Maybe related: when I first heard of Famitsu, I was told that they were infamous for their hard marking. They almost never gave perfect scores. From 1986-2007 (21 years) they gave out only six perfect scores.

Then from 2008-2013 they gave out sixteen perfect scores, two to four a year. Now all I hear about Famitsu are jokes about much the publishers are paying them.
 
A

Aeana

Member
L Thammy said:
Maybe related: when I first heard of Famitsu, I was told that they were infamous for their hard marking. They almost never gave perfect scores. From 1986-2007 (21 years) they gave out only six perfect scores.

Then from 2008-2013 they gave out sixteen perfect scores, two to four a year. Now all I hear about Famitsu are jokes about much the publishers are paying them.
Click to expand...

That was the case before, too, though. They've always based their scoring on things other than game quality. If it isn't favoring publishers who spend more on ads in their magazine, then it's a game they feel is "important" for Japanese consumers to play and/or support. The Japanese industry has been doing worse recently, which is why there have been more perfect scores.
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
It's too hard to compare. The space has changed - you have online publications now, and loads of sites out there trying to complete. There were only so many magazines before.

Now, in terms of writing and how they reviewed games, older magazines were every bit as bad as ones today in a different format.

There was a review of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for the PS1 back in PSM. One of the strikes they gave it was against the fact that the game didn't use all the buttons on the controller or something. In fact, the review was glowing otherwise.

Even more hilarious, PSM wrote this big 7 page article on the Playstation 2. One of the things on this wishlist for the new system was advocating for microtransactions in RPGs.

Read that again.

Microtransactions in RPGs. And they were more than for it.

That isn't to say those older magazines didn't carry awesome articles or features. But they weren't as flawless as people think they were.
 
S

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew

Banned
L Thammy said:
Maybe related: when I first heard of Famitsu, I was told that they were infamous for their hard marking. They almost never gave perfect scores. From 1986-2007 (21 years) they gave out only six perfect scores.

Then from 2008-2013 they gave out sixteen perfect scores, two to four a year. Now all I hear about Famitsu are jokes about much the publishers are paying them.
Click to expand...

Haha! Pretty accurate. Famitsu was the ultimate line of truth when it came to Japanese game reviewers. What end up happening is that publishers introduced moneyhats to the equation. Now Famistu is a scale of who pays the most money for 40/40 reviews.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Page layouts definitely seemed to be a lot more creative in the 90s.
 
H

HyperOne

Banned
L Thammy said:
Maybe related: when I first heard of Famitsu, I was told that they were infamous for their hard marking. They almost never gave perfect scores. From 1986-2007 (21 years) they gave out only six perfect scores.

Then from 2008-2013 they gave out sixteen perfect scores, two to four a year. Now all I hear about Famitsu are jokes about much the publishers are paying them.
Click to expand...

Half the reason people do not trust reviewers is the perception (probably justifiably so) of inflated scores.

I am one of those people.
 
autoduelist

autoduelist

Member
Scorpia is the best reviewer of all time. She used to do cRPG reviews for Computer Gaming World back in the day of Bard's Tale and Ultima.

As soon as the magazine came in the mail, I'd flip through it looking for her articles.

She was the best.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Aeana said:
That was the case before, too, though. They've always based their scoring on things other than game quality. If it isn't favoring publishers who spend more on ads in their magazine, then it's a game they feel is "important" for Japanese consumers to play and/or support. The Japanese industry has been doing worse recently, which is why there have been more perfect scores.
Click to expand...

I suppose you're right. I don't know one way or the other. But I remember reading somewhere that some game or other (Wind Waker maybe?) had gotten a perfect score and everyone should pay attention because that never happens. Then much more recently, when I started reading Andriasang (RIP) and seeing the numbers, I was really confused as to why it had that reputation.
 
C

Coxy

Member
they had less games to play, more time to play them, didnt have to rush to be first, didnt have to clickbait, of course it was vastly better
 
B

BKatastrophe

Member
I used to like EGM reviews back in the day. Three different points of view on a game. Then sometimes you'd get what was basically a cumulative review from EVERYONE., like the Soul Calibur 2 issue.

Good times.
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
lostsupper said:
The internet gave everyone a voice. Not everyone deserved one.
Click to expand...

Eh. It's always been about the same. EGM issued some stupid reviews back in the day.

"I hate the VF series so VF2 didn't impress me much. 7" (Paraphrased, but that was essentially one of their reviews.) They also shat on Jaguar Doom but thought the same code running in a tiny window was worthy of 9's on the 32x.

Then you have Nick Rox with his blue shadows.

The whole Next Gen thinking they should get to dictate the future of game design so therefore all 2d games are crap now was stupid backwards thinking too.

I don't see a whole lotta difference now.
 
P

Poimandres

Member
I kind of felt like gaming magazines were more informative (and had to be) in the pre-internet days where they were often the only source of information available. These days it almost seems like people are assumed to have a certain level of knowledge from the internet etc.
 
Sanctuary

Sanctuary

Member
ShinUltramanJ said:
I think part of it is rose tinted nostalgia. Some reviewers I enjoy go far more in depth than the short blurbs I used to read in EGM.
Click to expand...

EGM had short reviews by 3-5 reviewers though, and they would often have a two or three page spread full of text for specific games. They also got to the point and didn't spend four paragraphs full of superlatives on what could have been said in a few sentences. EGM was the "workmanlike" magazine of gaming review magazines.

bomblord1 said:
I never read EGM but Nintendo power was always so wonderfully written.
Click to expand...

I hope you now realize how almost completely useless magazines like Nintendo Power and Playstation :TOM were for legitimate reviews...

Diehard Gamefan sure looked the nicest though.
 
Freshmaker

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
henhowc said:
seems like we are still going round and round in a circle after all these years
Click to expand...

In Gamepro's case prior to the introduction of review scores they basically just presented raving PR fluff pieces for every game they "reviewed". It was basically a multiplatform Nintendo Power.

Aslo all the gaming mags back then seemed to go for curiously obscure games and push them suspiciously hard. Rad Gravity comes to mind. There's no way that wasnt' a result of a marketing campaign.

I preferred EGM at the time just because they actually used ratings and said negative stuff about games like Captain Silver.
 
FrostuTheNinja

FrostuTheNinja

Member
M

Malreyn

Member
i would presume it's because writers had more time to review their drafts before the monthly print, and they weren't enticed to write shitty reviews to go against the consensus for "clicks"
 
R

Raife

Member
I think that newer reviewers are just as qualified and have interesting articles and opinions as older reviews. It's more that there are so many voices now that finding the better ones is a lot more difficult. The cost of entry was a lot higher back with print magazines than it is with websites. The pressure for faster reviews and clickbait articles also seems to have a really negative effect on writing quality. It's like writing a final paper the night before it's due as opposed to taking your time and reworking it til it represents your best work. I also feel like a lot of talented reviewers are more drawn to video/youtube reviews because of the higher profile/money in them right now.

One site that I've found that still puts an emphasis on well written reviews is usgamer.net.
It's run by Jeremy Parish and some other people from the 1UP days. They have a lots of coverage of older games as well as newer stuff.

Retrogamer Magazine is also quite good. Their reviews aren't their main focus though. The features and interviews that make up the majority of their magazine are fantastic. They're well written and have a lot of the interesting second opinions and sidebars that some of the people in this thread mentioned. Only downside is that since it's a UK magazine getting it in the US is about $12-13 an issue. You can track it down in any Barnes and Noble bookstore though which is nice.
 
Z

Zia

Member
The examples in the OP are amateurish and woefully written. And no, I don't think it's the case at all that writing was better in those days as now there are more actual writers actually writing about games in a hyper-competitive environment. Even flicking through one of the few American mags that had decent-good writing from that era, such as Next Generation or Computer Gaming World, the writing itself pales in comparison to sites people on message boards like to slag off like Polygon or a good chunk of IGN.
 
B

big_z

Member
I stopped reading reviews when it felt like I was reading the same long winded template. Now I go by personal interest and use quicklooks/podcasts to get an idea on how a game is.
 
R

RickGhastly

Neo Member
It's relative to how you approach reviews, I think. I was flipping through some old EGMs the other day and found a review where Sushi X gave a game a low review score just because it was on the Gameboy. His rationale was literally "I don't like Gameboy games so this one sucks". Today, the internet would eat itself from the crazy drama a review like that'd set off. There are also a ton of instances of games like Cool Spot having review scores that dwarf a lot of classics that've stood the test of time.

That said, if you long for the days where no one'd get a death threat over a game's metacritic standing, those shitty old reviews are a fairly viable trade-off. In that regard, I miss how much they "didn't matter" and the fact that a little intuition on your own part could lead to some nice surprises. It sorta illustrated the inherent subjectivity of it all that a big portion of the culture has forgotten.
 
M

MHWilliams

Member
You're saying these examples are far better than current reviews like this?

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/egm-review-far-cry-4/#
http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/alien-isolation-review/1900-6415897/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-11-20-never-alone
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/cap...ii-u-review-a-visitor-from-a-brighter-reality

I'm biased of course, but I'm just not seeing it.

We do second opinions, but it's logistically difficult to get two people on a game during the holiday review season. An example:

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/fan...ot-particularly-massive-multiplayer-or-online

And hey, we even covered Nintendo Power, in this excellent look back Jeremy Parish wrote.
 
K

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
My own sense is that reviews which present a controversial opinion, are poorly written, intentional clickbait, or just batshit insane get held up today far more than they used to. Today, every review "counts" as a critical piece of the scene, due to shit like Metacritic. Any review no matter how inane, can become the center of a controversy and made to seem as there will be grave consequences unless everyone gets in there and starts slashing throats.

Think about how things go today when a game is released. Everyone gathers around and waits for "it" to come in; That One Fucking Review, the one that's going to inevitably turn every internet thread about the game in question into arguments over the review.
 
D

dofry

That's "Dr." dofry to you.
A looooooong time ago, there was a review of a game called Legend of Valour. I remember the game being given high points from certain publications even though it was shit. The reviews were written with content not in the game and if I remember correctly, even one of the reviewers being a game character. So, maybe we have a bot of a rose tinted glasses for game reviews as there are some controversy in many magazines accepting money for reviews. But, the internet wasn't available so the blatant cash-for-a-review wasn't so easy to spot and didn't spread like fire like we are used to now.
 
I

I am Christina Aguilera

Member
Rentahamster said:
https://twitter.com/misterbrilliant/status/483224360418041856/photo/1

This is the review that got me blacklisted by EA. Some shitbag executive wanted me fired.




https://twitter.com/misterbrilliant/statuses/483625602747203585

I was told to "just stick to the facts" in my review of the next Sims expansion.




lol
Click to expand...

Man, it's been too long since I've read magazines written in the UK. Whether it's music, games, movies, whatever, you guys always seem so much more reasonably skeptical than the American press, and you seem to get away with so much more.

I don't think that Nintendo Power reviews were useless -- at least with the old NES-SNES-era ones, you just kind of had to read into it with a more critical eye. If something made the cover or was being praised to the high heavens, it was a good or great game. If it was being damned with faint praise (3s out of 5s and such), it was probably mediocre and not quite worth it. If Nintendo Power actually went so far as to explicitly criticize something about it or said that "it might only be good for _____ fans," it's a horrible game, and their bad review was Nintendo's second form of developer natural selection after the game squeaked through the initial NOA quality evaluation.
 
ReyVGM

ReyVGM

Member
Mag reviews where shorter, so they tended to be more to the point with less rambling or complaining.
 
S

Sp33Demon

Member
I can't speak for the scores as I really never paid a ton of attention to them as much as I read the article (I'm still the same to day).

I think the "quality" of reviews back then were much better than those of today. A few reasons.

- When it was all print, there was a lot more scrutiny over what was published as once it went to press it could not be corrected unlike a website of today.

- There was less of a social media aspect back then and as such I think reviewers were more liberated to like a game. You could say what you wanted and would not be killed on twitter as at most you would get a few letters from the REALLY passionate.

- Like the real news media, being first and provocative has become more important than being objective and thorough.

- Games were generally viewed differently back then with a less critical eye. Today, it is splitting hairs to justify scores or even worse setting really high expectations that the game was never designed to meet.
 
M

Mman235

Member
If we're talking purely about what's left of magazines I'd say most have lowered in quality overall (in part because a lot of the talent has moved out of magazine work), but if we're talking about reviews as a whole I'd say they're the same or better; especially taking into account the more in-depth reviews and criticism outside of standard games journalism that either didn't exist or was much harder to find when books were the only source of it.

Kai Dracon said:
My own sense is that reviews which present a controversial opinion, are poorly written, intentional clickbait, or just batshit insane get held up today far more than they used to. Today, every review "counts" as a critical piece of the scene, due to shit like Metacritic. Any review no matter how inane, can become the center of a controversy and made to seem as there will be grave consequences unless everyone gets in there and starts slashing throats.

Think about how things go today when a game is released. Everyone gathers around and waits for "it" to come in; That One Fucking Review, the one that's going to inevitably turn every internet thread about the game in question into arguments over the review.
Click to expand...

I think this is important too; if a dumb or controversial (the latter isn't a quality judgement BTW, just any review that sends fanboys into frothing outrage whether for good reason or not) review existed before they were spread out so most people didn't see them. Nowadays any review of that sort is instantly spread everywhere, and the negative response also gets amplified as a result.
 
O

Occam

Member
Rentahamster said:
https://twitter.com/misterbrilliant/status/483224360418041856/photo/1

This is the review that got me blacklisted by EA. Some shitbag executive wanted me fired.




https://twitter.com/misterbrilliant/statuses/483625602747203585

I was told to "just stick to the facts" in my review of the next Sims expansion.




lol
Click to expand...

You are awesome, and that is the most awesome gaming-press related thing I have seen in years! Too bad most of those third-party marketers referring to themselves as video game journalists now have backbones (or brains) made of jelly.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
RickGhastly said:
It's relative to how you approach reviews, I think. I was flipping through some old EGMs the other day and found a review where Sushi X gave a game a low review score just because it was on the Gameboy. His rationale was literally "I don't like Gameboy games so this one sucks". Today, the internet would eat itself from the crazy drama a review like that'd set off. There are also a ton of instances of games like Cool Spot having review scores that dwarf a lot of classics that've stood the test of time.

That said, if you long for the days where no one'd get a death threat over a game's metacritic standing, those shitty old reviews are a fairly viable trade-off. In that regard, I miss how much they "didn't matter" and the fact that a little intuition on your own part could lead to some nice surprises. It sorta illustrated the inherent subjectivity of it all that a big portion of the culture has forgotten.
Click to expand...

Sushi-X: It's an RPG, 0/10
 
Y

Yjynx

Member
Because most of the reviewer today seems to determine score first then made up the content later. They're clearly biased especially towards sony exclusive lately. I mean what the hell is next gen gameplay? Gives us example explain to us.


I remember back in the day how game reviewer were more harsh and I took their opinion higly. Right now I feels it only a matter of time before someone leak how corrupt they are.

Advancement in tech like share play and streaming would kill them sooner than later. They should rise their standard but they lower it instead.


Yes bloodborne and the order guaranteed low scores no matter what. Quote me on it.
 
P

Pimpwerx

Member
Those glasses are tinted blood red. Sorry, but reviews weren't any better in the past than today. Some reviewers are better than others, but that's always been the case. I wouldn't claim today's reviews are better or worse today though. Nostalgia omits a lot of the past flaws. PEACE.
 
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