Average Rating: 
Rating: - Great for the Price
PSM is good but not great. The reviews are fairly comprehesive but the amount of games reviewed isn't what it should be. They give you a list of what is coming out but with little or no information on 80% of the games. I think even though they are 100% independant they still need advertisers - which means they may not be owned by game companies but game companies are paying for the magazine....PROS - a list of games coming and comprehensive coverage on popular games being releaseed. A nice layout without too many teenie reference. CONS - No all games are covered and the hints section is primarily for gameshark. (but why would you need hints if you have the internet)
Rating: - Lightweight reviews, juvenile content
First the good news: PSM is cheap!... They are also a big-selling magazine and so tend to have information way in advance of other sources. You often see reviews for games months before they are available in the stores (actually this is also a neagtive point: by the time you get round to being able to buy a game, you've already read about it to death...)However, there's a big downside to PSM, and that is the quality of the reviews. Many games recieve high scores, but get tiny amounts of text devoted to them. Glancing at my latest copy, Sega Tennis scored 8/10 (a PSM "Must Buy"), yet gets a mere one SIXTH of a page devoted to it, including a tiny screenshot. Only the big-hype (but not necessarily high-scoring) games get any amount of space devoted to them, but even then you're lucky to get a full page. Finally, the actual review content leaves a lot to be desired - I often find I've read a bunch of text with vague opinions like "gameplay is good, graphics are reasonable", but with no real feeling as to what the game is really like. I appreciate that the magazine has a limited amount of space available for reviews, but unfortunately it doesn't use what space it has very efficiently. Oodles of space every month is devoted to previews of forthcoming games. These contain essentially no useful information since they are entirely based on the game publisher's prelaunch hype. When the final review comes out it often completely contradicts the over the top enthusiasm lavishly applied during the previews appearing over the previous months. My final gripe is that the magazine seems to be aimed at 12 year olds. For the older reader, there's a lot here that will make you cringe - I mean a video game swimsuit issue? Puh-leese...
Rating: - A Great Magazine without Corporate Backing.
I've been subscribing to this magazine for the past 4 years, and it is one of the best Playstation Magazines on the stands today. It gives you alot of excellent and very honest reviews on newly released games and information on upcoming games. The great thing about this magazine is that they have no corporate backing so they don't have companies saying what they can and cannot put in their articles, and that is what's most important with alot of games coming out today, HONESTY. If you love playstation (1 & 2) and all things playstation, then this is the magazine for you. The only reason I didn't give it 5 Stars is that they need to give release dates on upcoming dates, they only give what month they're coming out.
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