At this price it's a decent mag. (VideoGamer)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	VideoGamer
Date:	25/01/01 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Standard reviews, lots of news and articles, very reasonable price.

Disadvantages: Obviously price does limit it a bit.

I had nearly an hour to kill the other night before my bus was due, so decided to go for a pint. Having read my usual papers already during the day and being the proud owner of a brand new PS1, I thought I’d get a games magazine to read during my wait. I flicked through one or two of the thick mags at anything from £2.50 to £5.00 but I only really wanted a cheap read, then I spotted Video Gamer. I say spotted, but to be honest this months issue has got a picture of a buxom lady in a white bikini top and so sort of jumped out at me. Priced at 99 pence, and with just over 100 pages, it was an ideal buy.

I settled down with my pint of Guinness Extra Cold and opened the mag. My first stop was the contents page which listed the various games reviews inside in console format, rather than page1 to page 115 as is usually the case. I thought this was quite a good idea because it means if you’re looking for a review of a particular game and want to check if it’s in Video Gamer’s current issue, you only have to flick to this page and you can easily tell. Around the sides of this menu were various other headlines with page numbers alongside. January’s issue, for example, had a couple of features on the Playstation 2, as you might expect, a few more reviews of new games and some other news about various consoles.

With my newly purchased PS1 in mind I turned to a review of a game for it, Woody Woodpecker Racing. It had a full page review which consisted of about a half page of writing, with the rest of the page showing four or five screenshots, a diagram showing which buttons on the controller were used and a Video Gamer rating. The control guide and ratings are a standard feature on all the reviews so you could easily compare each game which is a good idea. The ratings gave a brief list of uppers and downers and then marks out of ten in the four categories of gameplay, presentation, value and overall verdict. Woody Woodpecker Raci
ng got an overall verdict of 2, with a recommendation of “This game should be avoided at all costs” and the text was also quite cutting, though all critical comments were backed up with reasons. None of the PS1 games reviewed fared particularly well, with 102 Dalmations, given an overall 5, being about the best rated so I moved on to the rest of the magazine.

To be honest I was quite impressed with the rest of the contents. The first few pages were news items, typical of every games mag, and this was followed by a list of the UK top 40 games. After this came tips for bargain accessories for all the main formats and then a couple of pages of answers to readers questions. The rest of the magazine had the game reviews, a page of DVD’s, a fairly extensive cheats and tips section, a few classified ads, letters page and details of next months issue.

To sum up I’d say for 99 pence this is a pretty good buy. With all the reviews being in the same style, comparisons between games are easy and each review has a symbol on it to tell you which console format it is on to avoid any confusion. It is certainly not top heavy with adverts, as some mags tend to be, and there are plenty of news and articles to read. I’ve certainly bought magazines costing three or four times the price with less real content.

Not bad at all and at this price you're not risking much anyway.

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