The Best Sites for Game Previews and Reviews

What is the role that internet plays in our lives? What is the internet, really? Ok, nearly 90 percent of the internet is filled with various forms of adult entertainement, but what about the other 10 percent?

The internet forms, besides various other things, a nearly unlimited source of information. How many of you remember the time when we had to go to the library, or grab an enyclopedia? I’m pretty young, but even I remember the times when we didn’t have access to ‘the tubes’. I remember the time when I had to browse through ‘Encarta’ for my school assignments.

Now, it gets easier by the day to access information. With a few clicks, you can be browsing over hundreds of different sources, and you can reach nearly any piece of ‘knowledge’ within seconds or minutes.

Of course, everyone of you is familiar with the big daddy’s of information, like Google, Yahoo or Wikipedia. But sometimes information is even easier to locate if you know where to look.

We’re going to peek at gaming-related sites. Places where you can go to find game previews, reviews, walkthroughs, numeral data, and so on. Today, we’re going to take a look at the best sites for the self-informing gamer.

Game Previews and Reviews

One of the first things I do before I go out to buy a game, is look for reviews. Games aren’t exactly what I’d call ‘cheap’, and we wouldn’t want to spend that all hard-earned money on crappy games, right?

Besides reviews of the sporadical free games, which you’ll find here at MakeUseOf, there are tons of great places for game pre- and reviews.

Game Rankings is a great site for those of you who prefer to look at the ‘game scores’ above all else.

This site indexes all ratings, from nearly all sites that are worth to mention, and then calculates the average score ratio for the game.

Links to additional reviews can also be added through the site.

Visit Game Rankings @ gamerankings.com

Gamespot is my personal favourite for game pre- and reviews, it is also part of the same network as GameRankings.

The site makes sure to deliver extended reviews in a very professional manner, but using the overview, it’s also very easy to get a proper idea of the game after a mere glance.

Visit GameSpot @ gamespot.com

Zero Punctuation is a video review series of The Escapist. In these weekly episodes, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw gives his ever so harsh and cynical opinion. These hilarious reviews will allow you a different look on the current day’s games.

“See why gamers love it and developers fear it”

Visit zero punctuation @ escapistmagazine.com

Other great game review sites include…

• 1UP.com is the online version of (you might’ve guessed it) 1UP magazine. Just like the magazine, 1UP.com has made itself a name on the gaming grounds.
• IGN.com, property of Fox Interactive Media, is part of a much bigger network, with sites that most of us will know. Being the ‘brother’ of sites like Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy and FilePlanet, it’s no surprise that we can expect a certain level of quality. This site delivers professional, and most of the time very extended reviews, in a pretty average format.