Game Informer Magazine

Game Informer is essentially yesterday's gaming magazine in today's game industry. Available mainly through FuncoLand as a part of their gamer's membership, this magazine gets points for effort, but at the end of the day, there are other, much better magazines on the rack.

So what makes Game Informer so average? Every game magazine (particularly of the multi-platform variety) needs five things: informative reviews, in-depth previews, hard-hitting features, good writing, up-to-date news. Game Informer doesn't really have any of these features. Sure, their writers are decent enough, but you definitely won't find any Pulitzer Prize winning material here. The reviews, while somewhat competent, really don't get into the intricacies of the game in question and use a pointless ratings system. Fact is that they don't really give you the full picture; you come out of the review with more questions than answers. The previews are nothing more than screenshots and captions, and you won't really find any hard-hitting features here. No Top 100 Games Ever, no Console Wars, no interviews with the bigwigs of the industry, none of that. Even the news, which should be the easiest part of any game magazine, is behind the times in Game Informer. Game informer broke the story on PSOne games not working on the PS2 a whole two months after the fact. They're not as bad as GamePro, but that doesn't make them good either.

Game Informer does, however, get points for giving us high quality screenshots and respecting the old days of gaming (maybe this has something to do with their association with FuncoLand). But when you get to the pointless reviews, uninformative previews, out-of-date news, and general lack of ambition on the part of the editors, you'll find that Game Informer is a magazine for the casual gamer, not the hardcore audience. I will not be renewing my subscription.