Larian Studios Forums Beyond Divinity (English) General First Beyond Divinity review @ C&VG?

I totally agree with my mate Dhruin on this. In fact, for an RPG, playing through completely ONCE may not be enough. When Xen over at RPGDot wrote his review of Hordes of the Underdark, he played it through three times with different character types to see how differently it played. That is dedication to getting it right and he wrote what I thought was a first class review. No print media could ever consider doing that and yet for an RPG with all the different classes and races etc, it's almost essential.

Yes but the DOT is also soooooo much better then the print media <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

You're right...I went home and realised I got both the mag and the score wrong...the auld mind is slipping...too many games perhaps!!

Perhaps ‘good frame of reference’ is a better term than accurate then. Don’t get me wrong I’m not in any way suggesting that the way the print media goes about things is always the ‘best’ way for all games. Certainly RPGs in particular do require a greater commitment of time when reviewing, which is seldom taken into consideration when deadlines are set, because the magazines are multi-genre and everyone gets (more or less) the same amount of time. Being an RPG reviewer on a print mag is hard work! On the plus side you do get to dress up in rubber armour as I’ve just done for the next issue <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Without a dedicated RPG magazine - and I don’t really think there will ever be a commercial successful one, certainly in the UK since in my experience RPG games on the cover of ever multi-genre magazine don’t tend to sell very well (despite the games doing well) – I think that sites like RPGDot are the best place to go for comprehensive RPG reviews (perhaps this is why the mags don’t sell so well <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

BUT like I said before I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss games magazines out of hand. Like I mentioned before you’ve still got a team of people that are very dedicated to games, have a lot of knowledge on what has gone before and what is upcoming, and can articulate their thoughts well.

I don’t really want to comment specifically on the BD review in Zone because the person who reviewed it was partly responsible for giving me my first full time job! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The best thing that print mags have got going for them is the things that set them apart from many website (which let's face it can deliver the same news/preview/review format much quicker) which are in-depth features, opinion pieces, retro game pieces, super-tests and that ilk.

The pro point of print mags is that you can read them *anywhere* ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> Unless you use a Laptop ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

I actually like browsing through the newest mag sometimes, after a day of work, putting a cup of tea besides me ... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> While reading on the Pc my fingers are always wanting me to write something down, can't hold my hands still ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" />

But anyway I'm quite disappointed about the quality of Germn gaming mags ... well they need good selling topics, but I miss more and more depth in them. We have here in Germany 3-4 gaming mags, PC Games and Gamestar, both heavy competors, the ugly PC Action (was once quite good, don't know what happened to it) and the Computer Bild Spiele.

The Newspaper "Bild" ("Picture" or "Image") is what I've heard from the british Newspaper "Sun". They've lauched differen sister-newspapers, one for Automobiles, one for Computers in General, and one (the newest one although it's now already a few years old) about Computer Games. They all use a language that is not very sophisticated with the aim to explain even absolute newbies computers and games. This leads to them using some kind of "different" words / terms unknown in the "real"computer area. For example they don't use the term "patch", but istead constantly say "program enhancing / correction package" or something similar.

The PC Action was once quite a good mag, but now it's simply ugly. The niveau is even more "flat" than that of the Computer Bild, some like the PCA because they believe everything there is written in a sarcastic / cynism tone. To me, it simply sounds like some teenies being allowed to write a mag including allowance to express their dirty fantasies (sorry, this sounds quite harsh, but that's the way how I feel about it). Once I browsed in it, but the disggust was so strong that I had to take a catalogue about an exhibition of the Greek Classic as an Antidote - no, this is no joke, it really happened !

The gone PC Player was once very good, but suffered more and more, until it was closed.

At the beginning of the 90s turmoil in the german market of gaming magazines took place, created by the advent of the Gamestar. IDG (publishers of PC World and German sister PC Welt) seemingly tried to buy out all top editors from *all* german gaming mags- with success ! So they created the Gamestar, consisting of editors from PC Games, PC Player, ASM I think (long gone) and so on. Since then, the PC Player suffered more and more, until it was bought by Future Publishing, being turned into a more "trendy" (as we say here in Germany) gaming mag (meaning it was oriented more towards the younger audience), but that didn't succeed. It was later closed. Many believe even now that the original PC Player was the best German gaming mag ever.

That's how it looks (from my subjective point of view) nowadays in the German market.