horse $hit! I think this IGN Insider crap is a joke. Why should I have to pay to read your crap? I mean this is the internet, it should be free!

Seriously, though, I understand that the .com economy is trash right now, but I don't like the idea of having to pay to read reviews. I think I'm gonna have to start looking elsewhere for them.

I was thinking the same thing when I went to see some more Smackdown! I haven't really been bothering with them any more.

Are every one of IGN's reviews like that now? The GC reviews I tried checking out were... I assumed that the rest of them were free, though. www.gamespot.com is totally free, and IMHO, just as good as IGN. IGN making people pay to read their reviews might just backfire on them... if I can't read their reviews, but I know I can read Gamespot's for free, I'll just not go back to IGN ever again.

Fire bad!

I'm with Static Cling. I switched to Gamespot a few weeks ago. No complaints so far...

ign is lame now


how does gamespot manage to run a site w/o a subscriber service and stupid ign cant

worthless

The way they *seem* to be doing it is that the reviews in question are for Insiders only for a few days, and then free. Look at MGS2 as an example. Usually the reviews are only available at the earliest the day before the game is released, ergo all this means is that Insiders get the review a little earlier and everyone else gets it when they normally would. Waaah.

Eh, I read IGN almost every day, for every system. I figured I could shell out 19.95 for a YEAR's worth of content, plus I downloaded some kickass 640x480 quicktimes of "Rogue Squadron."

The MGS2 review is now free for all.

Here's another vote for Gamespot. They've always been my main source for online reviews. If I'm not mistaken, they belong to the same family (Ziff-Davis) as my favorite gaming magazine, EGM (which, btw, is the best mag, IMO).

I always used to check:
www.happypuppy.com
www.hotgames.com
www.gamesdomain.com

IGN is suck!

I am with you guys. IGN sucks.

Maybe they're good in some respects, but at least regarding PC games, gamespot is a first class whore, 10x worse than IGN. Especially after this summer with their Anarchy Online and WWIIOnline reviews. They've always done it before, but with all the crap going on this summer, it really showed.

Tuan Jim

IGN sucks if you cannot afford 6 cents a day for Insider.

IGN sucks if you enjoyed leeching off them and can't do that anymore.

Want to hear something funny? Gamespot has institiuted a pay ftp to download gaming movies from at a high speed. 10 bucks a month which is $120 a year. It is just a matter of time before they insitiute a program similar to Insider.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one PO'ed at this...I've been an "insider" since day one, signed up for all their crap junk email and stuff, and now **POOF** they just expect people to pay for it? I dunno...IGN has been lacking lately too...it seems all their good writers have jumped ship or whatever (or just not writing as much).

However, nothing will suck as much as when Gamefan.com bit the dust for the final time...man I miss those guys...

Well Gamespot is ran by Zdnet owned by that Allen guy that got rich by Microsoft. So I dont think they willl charge. As they dont really need the cash that bad -- hopefully

I was none too pleased at this. IGN must really be hurting to convert to a paid model so completely.

Stuff like this makes me wish we could really do videogametalk.com

I don't go into the PC section since I am not a PC gamer, but I'm wondering, what is it that you dislike about Gamespot's PC games section?

Hmmm..... and why couldn't "we"?

I was just asking the same thing my self...

It's pretty dumb, but really, a lot of reviewers -- online and magazines just sell themselves out for the advertising dollars. There was a really good article about it a few months ago somewhere comparing the amount of advertising in each major games magazine (didn't really count the sites, but they got mention), and the average review per amount of ads per company. It was pretty sad really, especially with CGW and PC Gamer.

For gamespot however, the main issues were their delayed reviews with both Anarchy Online and WWII Online. Granted they gave WWII Online a pretty worthwhile score, but in both cases, they gave in to developer pressure to delay reviewing until some patches had been released (fixes that should have been implemented before the game even went gold).

Granted I hung around lumthemad.net (RIP) quite a bit, but poke around enough and you can find out a lot of crap about most of the major game sites and magazines. Although I get po'd about IGN's insider stuff, especially since I've been following it on a more regular basis with xbox, I have yet to see a single insider feature on RPGVault at all, or on any of their more independent game sites -- acvault, etc.

just my .02.

Tuan Jim

I just gotta plug the cloudchaser network. I've been visiting their site now that IGN turned into a (mostly) pay site. They have tons more news than IGN. It's like CNN only for Video games.

I had never been to Gamespot before IGN instigated their pay service. Since I couldn't read the content I wanted at IGN, I just tried Gamespot instead. I was surprised to find that Gamespot was a better organized site with better written reviews...including reader reviews which are often more helpful than the "official" reviews.

Thanks IGN! If it wasn't for you I never would've found Gamespot!

I totally agree with the main consensus that I see here.

I use to be very pro IGN back in the day . . .
Now that I think about it, wasn't there a time before they were IGN ??? Anyhow, I use to hit that site religiously for game news and reviews. Since they started that Insider thing though, I have found the site mostly useless.

There are still tons of good sites out there to hit, maybe we should all share out our favs, then we can all get some good reading in.

Anyhow, Gamespot is a good site. Mostly though, I tend to keep up on the news, and only read reviews of games that interest me.

I tend to check out the following sites (outside of those already mentioned) when I have time these days:
www.avault.com
www.fgnonline.com (still sorta ign)
www.bluesnews.com
And that is mostly it.

Avault does really great reviews, though they do not post up the reviews anywhere near as quick as some of the other sites do.

Hrts