Which is the best PC games magazine in the UK?

[Cromulent]

I've just cancelled a subscription to a magazine I don't really read that often and thought I'd use the money I saved on subscribing to a new PC games magazine.

It has been years since I last read a PC games magazine so I feel a bit out of the loop. If I remember correctly I used to read PC Gamer or PC Zone but after a quick Google search it appears that PC Zone no longer exists (which is a shame).

So should I subscribe to PC Gamer or is there a better magazine out there that I haven't heard about?

 

[Cromulent]

Ah, OK.

I just like having a magazine to read sometimes. I used to do that with the magazine I just cancelled. Nothing in it was unique to the magazine but sometimes it is nice just having all the information in one place without having to go out looking for it.

Maybe I'll just buy one issue and see what it is like and make my mind up from that.

 

[Cromulent]

All PC Gamers articles are now published on their website first pretty much, theres very little reason to actually buy it.

I used to get it every month until the main content of the mag was just copied word for word from the web article

Oh OK. Guess I won't bother with it then. Shame because I do a lot on YouTube / Twitch and a lot of that work revolves around knowing what games are coming out and when, what to look out for and rumours etc. Having a decent magazine that did some or all of the work for me would make my life easier.

Problem is that most gaming news websites suck frankly. IGN is only good for watching the 3 - 4 minute reviews even though their scoring system makes no sense most of the time and I haven't found any other sites that I like.

OK. How about I change the subject of the thread:

What gaming news / reviews websites would you recommend?

 

[Cromulent]

I personally still read the physical PCGamer, whilst I admit there's not as much "news" (given that you can find out more on websites), I still find it nicer to sit and read a printed magazine whilst drinking my coffee in the morning for example. The reviews are still useful, and I often read reviews or articles about games that I would normally ignore if looking at a website.

PCGamer isn't normally sealed any more, but does still contain "freebies" (* I know they are not free - just subsidised by it's £5.99 price tag), such as codes to redeem for indie games on steam, and other bonus codes e.g. for freemium model games such as World of Tanks etc.

I'm going to pick up a copy tomorrow from the news agent and see for myself what it is like.

I had a look at the Edge magazine website and even though I have all the major current gen consoles I'm pretty much only interested in PC gaming news at the moment so Edge would be mainly a waste of time for me.

 

[Cromulent]

Gaming sites:

I like RockPaperShotgun. it's PC-only, and has a lot of Indie stuff.

Eurogamer is good too. It's grown-up coverage, but a bit more mainstream as far as AAA games go, and covers the consoles.

IGN and Gamespot etc are junk.

There are others, Destructoid, Kotaku, Polygon... but I've never really tried them.

The Giant Bomb 'Bombcast' podcast is worth a listen. Never really used their website otherwise, though.

RockPaperShotgun looks good. Thanks. I'll bookmark it and make sure I check it out everyday. That is exactly the kind of thing that I was looking for.

 

[Cromulent]

Yeah I think I'll probably subscribe to PC Gamer. I bought the current edition from the news agent and while it isn't anything ground breaking the writing is OK and I learnt about a couple of games that I had slipped under my radar.

 

[Cromulent]

Metacritic can be very useful, it’s a good starting point, like when a friend highly recommended some game called something like Stalin v Martians (it did sound cool) and I bought it and tried to play it but it was so abominably bad that I had to stop. Now I start with Metacritic and if a game has a metascore below 70%-80% then I can pretty much ignore it. Even allowing for normal individual reviewer bias, there cannot be many games scoring less than 80% in general that I have time for.

No way they should be including “reviews” that mark out of 5!

The thing that annoys me about Metacritic is that some games get awful scores on it because at release they sucked (which is fair enough) but if you wait for a year before buying it they turn into the best game since sliced bread.

I've missed out on games like that in the past because I paid too much attention to day one scores and not enough attention to the game and its potential only to re-discover the game 5 years later all patched up and wondering why I hadn't played that amazing game before. Of course the advantage to that is that you do get the game for cheap but sometimes I like to support developers if they make games that I enjoy to ensure that they keep making games that I enjoy.

Edit: It also includes scores from people who don't know what they are talking about. Some games I play get quite a lot of 0 scores because people are too stupid / impatient to actually learn how to play the game.