Video Game Review Sites

Where do you go to get video game reviews? Clear favorites for when you want to look up a game are GameStop, IGN, and Metacritic. But what if you want a review of a game that you don't already know about that may interest you? My favorite game review sites for this are Games for Lunch and Zero Punctuation.


Games for Lunch
Games for Lunch is a blog by Kyle Orland where every weekday, he spends an hour playing a game. He writes about his minute-to-minute experience of the game and at the end explains whether he would want to play this game for more than an hour and why. He also includes a one sentence "In a nutshell" about the game. This is definitely an interesting way to learn about what it would actually be like to play through a specific game and to learn about new video games that you may not already be aware of. He has an RSS feed, so it's easy to get updates.

Zero Punctuation
Zero Punctuation is a video game review video blog on The Escapist using cartoons, updated every Wednesday. It is done by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, a British guy who talks very quickly. He is very funny, and seems to like to bash games that otherwise get glowing reviews from everyone, balancing the mix. But he also does give positive reviews as well. His latest post (one of the positive ones) jokes about how now that the hype over GTA4 is calming down and MGS4 isn't out yet, this is the lull after Christmas break and before the summer games come out. Therefore he and other game reviewers use this time to review games they find in the bargain bins. I found this particularly amusing since Games for Lunch had just reviewed Metal Gear Solid (GBC), a game that Kyle admitted to getting from the bargain bin at GameStop.


To compare the style of these two game review sites, here are their reviews of Grand Theft Auto 4:

• GTA4 review from Games for Lunch
• GTA4 review from Zero Punctuation