Tat

I bought NOM last week. It had a picture of Mario on the front cover zooming through a starry galaxy with “World Exclusive Review” in red and white lettering stamped in the left hand corner. I wanted to soak up as much Mario Galaxy goodness as I could so the lure of the magazine was at least as tempting as a worm would be to a rainbow trout. The addition of a free set of Nintendo stickers and a Legend of Zelda Phantom Hour Glass Hylian shield and sword pin badge meant the worm could attract a killer whale.

Normally I’d scoff at NOM and their freebies. If it’s not crappy stickers that you’re supposed to slap onto your Wii remote or DS it’s a crappy toy or a crappy plastic case for your beloved DS.

Many game developers including Nintendo, Capcom and Square Enix authorise use of their IP’s for use as toys, models, key rings etc and more often than not fans of the games absolutely lap these items up. More than that, Japanese gamers can go absolutely bananas to get hold of the latest Final Fantasy figure and even western game fans pour a healthy amount of cash into collecting videogame merchandise. There is tat galore! You can have key rings, sweatbands, CD cases, pens, y-fronts with your favourite game characters on.

While I’m talking about tat, why do gamers want a figure of Street Fighter 2’s Ryu, a plastic Pac-Man, or one of the buxom DOA girls on our PC monitor? Ok, I can understand the DOA girl but it doesn’t explain the rest! And why do they want to stick free stickers from NOM on their Wii Remotes anyway?

Magazines clearly think they can persuade us to buy the latest edition by including any old tat on the front cover. More often than not the free gift does nothing for me and I buy only if there are articles, previews or reviews I want to read. This time however they got the freebie right.

Does it put you off when magazines include freebies or does it sway you to buy? It's never put Gameov3r off. He has a prized collection of video game tat under his stairs. His favourite item is his Samus Aran figure. He often sneaks under the stairs, when he thinks we’re not looking, to polish her helmet. Come on over and give him a hand on his FORUM.

Reviews (or lack of)

I don't know about anybody else (and especially probably not the girls), but whilst I find the reviews and stuff informative on the internet, nothing beats that quiet moment in the day when a guy gets to sit down for a bit and enjoy a spot of reading. Most times during this interlude I am not really in the mood to get into something really in depth, so often find myself perusing the latest Edge or Mixmag, or perhaps one of the dedicated Nintendo mags.

Which brings me to my point. We basically have a choice of three mags for what is the biggest selling console in the UK at the moment, with lots of new owners and owners 'new' to games. And all three magazines are rubbish. It's not the quality of the writing or layout, or the articles in general, but the reviews.

Official Nintendo magazine may as well not review anything because they are basically a hands-on preview with a glowing review score at the bottom. But at least they manage to cover everything. They are catering for the young who are more forgiving and for the new casual crowd, and that is fine. Official mags are always like this. I just like reviews to be a bit more critical, which is why I have always enjoyed Edge, despite its pretensions.

The other two mags 'N-Gamer', and 'N-Revolution' both came from independent Gamecube mags and were previously aimed at hardcore Nintendo fans. Their reviews ae generally both objective and subjective, being attributed to specific writers so you get to know their tastes and whether you tend to like the same stuff as them.

However, my problem is that they SHOULD review every game released in the UK if they can, its not that many a month yet on Wii. Even if its a quick 2-page round up of 'Don't buy any of those games on the same budget label as Ninjabread Man, no matter HOW funny the title is'.

Its absolutely shocking that NEITHER of these mags has reviewed Tiger Woods 08 yet, for instance, nearly 2 months after its release and it sitting in the top 10 sellers for the system. If it wasn't FANTASTIC how many pissed off casual Wii owners would there be? There are several other games sitting there on the shelf in Game that I've never heard of, yeah licensed tat some of it, sure but sometimes a gem of a kids game turns up in that genre when someone takes a real chance with a license, and those are the sort of things casual gamers will pick up.

It annoys me that both these mags review import Jap and US games, when as yet there is no way to play them on your PAL console without illegally chipping it, something i am not prepared to do when they are still like gold dust in the shops. I am interested in these games as they are potentially coming over here, but they are NOT yet so they should be covered as previews only, thus freeing up space for reviews of games ACTUALLY RELEASED HERE. Anyone with a chipped or imported console is 'core' enough to use an internet to find out what imports to get and probably order them too.

Lastly, sometimes it is painfully obvious that someone hasn't really 'got' the controls in a Wii game. This is much worse online than in mags, but i have seen some really hateful reviews from people when it was clear to me when i played the game that their head just hadn't clicked with it. This is why Wii reviews are all over the place with many great wii games having at least one really negative review. Personally, despite it gaining glowing reviews, I just could not get into SSX Blur at all: looks great and all but controls were all over the place to me and counter intuitive. It felt like playing a flying game where I pushed up to climb and down to dive, my brain just knew it was wrong and it should be the other way around.

Anyway, to sum up, the people responsible for providing us with information about this hobby of ours are clearly unable to get their heads around just how to deal with Wii yet, I think. Sorry i kind of lost the thread of what i was trying to say about halfway through. Maybe there's an idea for something there.

Macchinmi