From the creators of Stuff magazine, with which I was not previously acquainted, came the inaugural issue of Stuff Gamer into my mailbox. The cover's scantily-clad woman – doubtless not a gamer, as gamers don't dress (or don't not dress) like that – suggested a cross between a gaming magazine and Maxim. As a gamer myself, I don't have time for that other gender, except as playmates (for games… er, video games).
After flipping through the pages for too many minutes, I've deduced that Stuff Gamer is the most puerile, infantile, and every other -ile publication I've ever come across. Right in the middle of one of their brief and less-than-incisive "reviews" comes an off-the-wall joke about body parts, sex, or food. It reminds me of when I was playing TRON a few weeks ago, and a little kid didn't understand that I was in the middle of a game and tried getting his hands on the controls. I want to shove these comments out of the article, harranguing them for intruding on what's supposed to be a gaming piece.
And sure, a bit of inanity is welcome – but do we really need to know "Great Moments in Crowbar History," or the best monkey-themed games ever? Some articles are interesting, such as the five worst movies based on video games, or the 50 most controversial video games (Kid Icarus?!), but rare are the pieces that would appeal to anything more than the stereotypical redneck.
Did I mention that this publication is brought to you courtesy Nokia? Their N-Gage is advertised up the yin-yang, with eleven pages between the cover and table of contents. Apparently they even ran out of ads, since some appear multiple times throughout the magazine's 136 pages. Hey, we all know what short attention spans gamers have, right?
Thanks for killing trees, Stuff.