| Product: |
Edge |
| Date: |
23/02/01 (163 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Superb features, excellent reviews.
Disadvantages: Too serious for some.
Take two cars, one is a Ferrari, one is a Fiat.
Both Italian, both with their own individual merits but which car is the real connoisseur going to choose?
Fiat!
No.Ferrari of course.
The same applies to virtually everything that surrounds us, even gaming magazines.
Enter Edge, the mighty monthly magazine from Future Publishing.
For those who demand that little bit more from their monthly games information, this has to be the only possible choice.
At £3.50 it’s not the cheapest you can buy, but it’s certainly not the most expensive either.
Sure, you won’t find any free Pokemon cards attached or a poster of Lara Croft, but it just isn’t that kind of magazine you see.
Don’t give up there though, this isn’t just a dull serious publication.
Facts are the important part, but the style of writing quite happily accompanies the occasional dull moments.
So what’s inside those 140 or so pages?
Come inside my friend...
You’ll notice that there are usually three or four main features with the biggest usually being related to what’s on the cover.
Interviews with games developers and hardware manufacturers are common but the writers also discuss topics of their own such as violence in videogames etc.
In the February issue of Edge there was a large feature about X-Box and if you bought the issue you’ll be well aware that they went to town on it.
The machine isn’t even released in the USA until the end of this year and still Edge had a large selection of very clear hardware pictures and several screen shots.
The information that accompanied the pictures was also very clear and factual on a detailed level.
From this alone you can quite clearly be sure that if they feature a game or piece of hardware – you’re going to get every scrap of information that they could find.
Grea
t stuff.
You will also find that the beginning of the magazine is littered with the latest information from the world of gaming and this means everything.
Edge is a multi-format magazine covering all of the big players (Sony, Sega, Nintendo, PC and now the X-box).
On to the juicy bits.
Prescreen is the Edge equivalent to the previews section in ‘other’ magazines.
All of the big up and coming games releases are here with plenty of information and screenshots.
After reading through one of these write-ups it’s quite likely that you’ll be able to make a decision about whether the game will be for you or not.
This is of course very handy for games which you can pre-order at lower prices.
If the preview isn’t what you’re after then you’ll be needing the real McCoy.
Testscreen.
Yes, you guessed it, this is the reviews section.
If you were impressed with Prescreen then this is going to leave you feeling very impressed indeed.
In their words:
‘The world’s most respected videogame reviews’.
That’s one heck of a claim, but they’re quite right to do so because the reviews are straight to the point.
If they don’t like it – they’ll tell you, if they do like it, they’ll tell you even more.
Most of the 15 or so reviews are spread over only two pages, but don’t think that this means the review is compromised in any way.
There are plenty of pictures to show you the graphics and the writing is absolutely spot on.
You won’t find any space wasted here – every single sentence has a point.
At the beginning of each review you are also given publisher, price and release date information.
Not all reviews are UK releases either so you get to read about those early Japanese and American releases long before the games reach our shores.
Unfortunat
ely, because this is the ‘serious’ magazine, you will notice that as you near the end, much of the content is to do with job vacancies (games related of course).
Although it can be quite interesting, I’m sure most of us would like to see a little less of this but that’s pretty much the only real downside.
That’s not all though, there are also some very useful contacts for purchasing those serious gamers (information on where to get import games etc).
So, that’s Edge for you.
If you’re serious about gaming then you really should consider trying it at least once – it’s quite possibly the best multi-format gaming magazine out there and there certainly doesn’t appear to be any bias towards any particular format.
If you like it enough you can even subscribe for only £7.25 every three months (that works out to be 13 issues for the price of 8!).
Buy with confidence, videogaming has never been so intellectual.
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SqueakyG - 31/03/01 Good op. I like Edge in some ways, and hate it in other ways. It's the intellectual "industry" mag, and it's unbiased. But sometimes it's minimalism is annoying. The front cover always has an arty illustration with no indication of what is inside, and if the issue is sealed in a bag, that means I won't pay for it. When you take away the job vacancy section, it is a very short magazine. It also assumes every reader has in-depth knowledge of technical and industry issues. A good magazine... but elitist and arty. |
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