As a person that has a considerable interest in video games you need to keep up on what is going on, what new game did Blizzard just announce? How did Duke Nukem Forever actually turn out? What is the latest crazy game with scantily clad women that has come out of Japan?
All this is of utmost importance to impress fellow bespectacled gaming oracles at the water cooler/coke vending machine.
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| New DLC for Minesweeper?! Stop the press! |
The information you need is out there (somewhere just to the right of the Truth. If you see David Duchovny you've gone too far and will need to make a u-turn).
Here is my personal top 5 of gaming sites that will both inform and entertain in your quest for ever more nuggets of video gaming enlightenment.
1. Blue's News: This site is a goldmine of gaming news. The site doesn't have much of a structure other than the main page with the news, but that is really all you need.
One thing to keep in mind though is that news will get posted and it's up to you to know what the really big stories are and what is inconsequential (The Old Republic release date versus announcement of new free to play in browser Farmville clone #2142).
Therefore I'd recommend this mostly to gaming fans that already have good understanding of the the world of video games.
I personally have this as my starting homepage.
2. Giant Bomb: Perhaps not the greatest news site, although they have started posting a lot more news stories lately.
This is a site that is just plain fun. The unique selling point is the video content, of which there is a lot and which is very off the cuff, with lots of humor.
In particular the site has something of a signature video segment called "quick looks", which are anywhere from 15 mins to over an hour long looks at games, with banter between a couple of the sites people.
They offer a lot of insight into games that you do not otherwise game just by reading previews or reviews.
3. Gamespot: Now we're hitting the big main gaming sites. Gamespot has been a constant go-to site since I first started surfing the web.
It's a fairly big and well established site and as such lacks some of the edge and vibrancy that a much smaller and younger site like Giant Bomb has.
However it provides good news updates, which are picked out a bit more than at Blue's News and therefore this is a great place to quickly see just the "big" gaming news.
4. IGN: IGN is probably the biggest gaming website out there. It has a lot of content and feels very polished (for better and worse). My biggest gripe with IGN is that it feels like the target demographic is 13-17 year old boys and there are a lot of articles featuring big breasted women with little relevance to the content.
Not that I don't like big breasted women...
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| A bit too many cosplay (people that dress up like videogame or cartoon characters) galleries on IGN and not quite enough interestingly written stuff. |
5. Gamasutra: This is a site that focuses on the gaming industry itself. There you will find discussions about stories such as the poor working conditions that the workers at Team Bondi were apparently suffering from.
You'll find stories of about the Activision vs Respawn Studios lawsuit.
Basically this is a site for those that not only care about the sausage, but also about how the sausage gets made (and most people do *not* want to know how sausage gets made..).
Surf's up!
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