I don’t like games magazines at all. The price is a major off-put, they are slow - often weeks late with the big news and they are no better written than most online publications. The additional numerous mistakes and typos are like the few specs of rodent droppings on an already out of date, undercooked, over expensive gourmet meal. With magazines, you’re paying for all the ancillary dressing like the feel of the paper or the interesting presentation, even though the substance is significantly less... substantial.

On the other, more comedic hand, presumably a hand that wears pink nail varnish and a sock puppet, this all actually gives them value. It becomes a like a glass-bottomed boat, looking back into the past when people said stupid things to sell subscriptions. The Internet has a notoriously short memory, something that developers and publishers and even retailers use to the best of the ability, but you can’t forget print. It’s always there; a track record of all the ridiculous bollocks that we once believed. Hence the reason why I’m starting this shit with Left 4 Dead.



Games TM is a nice mag. They did a Top 100 Video Games Special that I bought because it had an article about Beyond Good and Evil and no other reason, but then again, that’s the same reason I signed up to Desturctoid. Near the end, there is a “Games of the Future” section with an article about Left 4 Dead. But critically lacking information, the writers had to embellish a little. It reads like this:
“Essentially, Left 4 Dead is an MMO Horror game. All four protagonists are controlled by humans, of course, but the zombies can also be controlled by real people.”

As many of us know, Left 4 Dead was built on the foundations of Counter Strike: Source. So an MMO from this was a slight stretch of the imagination to say the least, and the game we have today is exclusively a co-op experience that holds only a rudimentary correlation with MMO gaming. A simple but stark portrayal of how print can fuck you over when you tell lies, sure, but shit be nowhere near reals yet. Boy, shit ain’t even simulated.