EDGE: Christ on a bike, it’s a knuckle sando! - The Bear and Badger

Elmlea

Dinostar77 wrote:

When games such as Half Life, Â Goldeneye and GTA 3 donâ€™t get tens that tells you alot about how high the bar used to be. Now they hand them out to games that simply donâ€™t deserve them, Bayonetta, Rock Band, and Little Big Planet. Can anyone honestly say that GTA4 was better than Vice City or San Andreas? How on earth is Dark Souls not a ten?

Absolutely not the route we want this thread to go down, but I think you're miles off the mark there. Â GTA4 was demonstrably better than San Andreas in every measurable metric. Â Bayonetta, while I don't get on with it at all, was hailed as the absolute pinnacle of the DmC-alike, with some of the greatest dynamics and deepest fighting ever seen, and a perfect "pure" videogame. Â Rock Band 3 was the realisation of everything the rhythm action game had been moving towards, the peak of what it achieved before collapsing under its own weight, and such a surprise compared to everything else. Â LBP, again a game I didn't like, was still a reinvention, with a unique approach to user-created content that meant it was something incredibly special.

Similarly, Gran Turismo now is total shit. Â The lack of a damage model means you can win races by driving at full speed and ignoring corners. Â But in terms of what it did to the racing game, the degree of adjustability, the involvement it pulled out of the player because you had bought "your" car and tuned it in exactly "your" way means it was absolutely astonishing at the time. Â

Half Life, Goldeneye and GTA3 had their own faults which means I think 8s and 9s were entirely the right choice for them; faults you can't really aim at any of the games in your list of 10s above. Â

Dinostar77 wrote:

What happen to the retrospective feature which was a great monthly trip down memory lane?

They've explained this; they kept "Making Of," but Time Extend died to be replaced with the more detailed look at certain elements of games/interviews etc that follow the lead reviews in each issue.

Skade

Something about Japan is sadly missed by me.

ayns

Ditto.

Mouldywarp

Skade wrote:

Something about Japan is sadly missed by me.

Through video games I developed a bit of an obsession with Japan in my youth. In recent years though I've started to realise that I'm not really that bothered about Japan without video games. Simultaneously though, I'm not that bothered about video games without Japan.

Billy

Yes let's not turn this into a EDGE scores vs other magazine scores thread please.

On the EDGE website at the moment they have a feature up where you can look at every magazine cover from issue 0 onwards.

Looking through the first 100 I remember many of them, but what's interesting is how many of them are of things you wouldn't find on a recent EDGE cover.

for example -

An unknown character/scene from a tech demo for some new engine/lighting tool.
A person from a studio or publisher.
Company logos.
Some random artwork drawn just to make a point for a story/opinion.
The insides of some hardware.

What stands out the most is how many covers were hardware related, a LOT of hardware was being brought about then, loads of innovation, fast moving.

As others have said we need that next gen to come along to get us all going again.Â I'm totally ready for it, it's been too long already.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/every-edge-magazine-cover-ever

WorKid

I still get it, but I've barely flicked through the previous editions. It might be me, it might be the summer drought, but I seriously doubt I'll be renewing.

Unless they do an awesome free gift.

Off topic, but does anyone want a cheap ugly messenger bag?

WorKid

Also, let's face it. Without online/offline, what's the point?

Mod74

Dooop dee doo.

Stick to the reviewing not the predicting, EDGE.

WorKid

Don't forget the NINTENDO AM DOOMED cover. Or covers, probably.

WorKid

three1ne

Is their current lack of forum doing them any damage? It cant look great for new readers but is that how a magazine is judged? Do no readers normally check out the mag's forums?

WorKid

My favourite:

Mod74

A little early perhaps, but if Sony move to an x86 architecture in the PS4 then that one isn't that far off.

adkm1979

It's easy to look back at articles analysing the videogame landscape and laugh. Â That doesn't make the articles less interesting or justifiable at the time. Â Out of interest, did any of those articles conclude that the answer to the questions posed was a resounding 'yes'?

Escape

Elmlea wrote:

Gran Turismo now is total shit.

Let's go outside.

JonB

adkm1979 wrote:

Out of interest, did any of those articles conclude that the answer to the questions posed was a resounding 'yes'?

No.

beano

It's a sad one deffo. I don't get that excitement looking forward to heading into town to grab a copy.

We are desperately in need of the next gen consoles and so are Edge. Likewise an editorial shakeup, it is stale as said. I'm not saying Craig David Ben Alex a tron, aren't right I mean the Future fuckers that clearly directed the current incarnate abomination version of the Edge brand still have the best print mag for all industry stakeholders despite missing Japan, Biffo but having Randy Smith. When he turned up and Poole left was when the cheese started rolling down the hill.

I still pick it up and read a few pages but I get nowt new out if it and frankly some of the formating for their large essays can make them almost illegible. It's almost tiring to read. I've got three copies of the new format all with an article or two in them that I've not been able to finish because I find it so lacking in aesthetic typography that I lose interest, even though it's something I want to read about. So there's usually a third I can get through, hype, reviews, letters, continues, soundbites, site of the month, Poole. The rest is mostly the fuck.

But hey, maybe it's just me.

Oh yeah just remembered what else they're missing...

Skerret

Wariospeedwagon wrote:

Billy_Hologram wrote:

I don't like the new format, the entire last 1/4 of the mag particularly.

that last part of the mag does nothing for me either. since ditching hard copies for tablet downloads i don't even worry about skimming, it's really not for me. 'not really for me' sums up an awful lot of Edge's content at the moment - reviews have all been read by the time the issue has been released, and the up coming big games are rarely up my alley. as i get older all i can pre-emptively get excited about are rpg's with highly customisable player characters. halo 4 or far cry might be great, and i might even buy them close to release date if there's not much else happening at the time, but no way am i reading pages of expostion about them months before release. i reckon things will get more interesting when the new range of consoles come out - nothing terribly exciting happening right now, or at least exciting to me. wouldn't mind a new crop of opinion writers, leigh alexander and brian howe aren't my cup of tea (although i remember reading some of howe's non edge stuff and quite liking it), while randy smith and clint hocking dont write about things i care about. still a reader though, thanks to ipad version; would give it the flick if i were still paying $17.00AUS for it per month.

Why aren't you participating in the Secret Australian Business thread?

Diluted Dante

Rock Band 3 is absolutely, definitively a [10], certainly more so than GTA 3, Goldeneye and Half Life. In all honesty, I can say that the games you mention getting 10's are better than the games you mention not getting them. So there.

Also Something About Japan was an utterly pointless section in the mag. Despised it with every fiber of my being.

Mod74

adkm1979 wrote:

It's easy to look back at articles analysing the videogame landscape and laugh.

For reference I laughed at the one I posted when it was published as well.

There's a huge difference between and interesting or justifiable article and a shock headline designed to make you notice the mag and buy it.

See also Kinect 32X

Diluted Dante

No, that was fair comment.

Mod74

You'd love it to be, but it wasn't.

Diluted Dante

Not in terms of sales, no, but in terms of usefulness.

Mod74

That's not what the 32X is a byword for though is it.

If the experts at EDGE thought it was going to sell shit loads but not be very useful then they should have compared it to a Furby.

By the by, I happen to find Kinect extremely useful when I'm lying on the sofa using it to control Netflix.

beano

Yeah but that gesture technology is coming into all smart tvs.

Mod74

I don't useÂ the wavy arm stuff, the voice control bit.

Diluted Dante

I still prefer to use the pad, as I like things to happen within the century.

Mod74

It's quicker to use the voice than to wait for the pad to switch on and re-connect.

regmcfly

I'm with Mod, it's okay to say 'they got it wrong' because they absolutely did with Kinect. We might find it useless, or maybe if we're Elm, we can use it to say things into, but it does not have the same connotations / stigma attached to it that the 32X does.

Bollockoff

Crotch thrusting needs to be an essential menu movement really.

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