But around 2005, either I aged out of it or the magazine got worse. Then I remember GameStop giving it for free at some point. I just remember it being a shell of a shell of a magazine, as the rest of the gaming industry moved to gaming blogs.

[–] Ashtear@lemm.ee 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The Gamestop deal would have been 2002-ish. I actually hadn't heard of the magazine before we started pushing it in the store. With Game Informer's features mirroring our store marketing, it was the first time I realized how incestuous the industry was (easy to see the signs of it now when looking back at even older mags). The bizarre amount of coverage it had on the PS2 game State of Emergency was one example from the time. It's wild to me to hear it being called reputable here and elsewhere today when it had such a fundamental conflict of interest for the vast majority of its run.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago

You're totally right.

I was in middle school when I had fond memories of gaming mags, and that's probably when I was the most infatuated by the publications.

And by high school (2000s) it was getting weird and slowly dropping off.

At some point was the whole Kotaku gamergate BS and completely checked out of gaming news because it wasn't just weird, but then it got real racist/sexist.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 month ago

I remember their reviews being fairly good, once you accepted that 70 was a minimal passing grade.

They were surely paid for coverage but I don't recall anything being wildly undeserved. At least once you got to their 9s and 10s anyways.

[–] Thomrade@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I'm kind of in the same boat as you. My mainstay for the longest time was RockPaperShotgun, probably from 2008–2016 or thereabouts. Once the old guard left the quality of the site drastically changed, and it became significant shallower in terms of reviews. Not really sure where to get the same kind of journalism these days.