I'm gonna be putting my thoughts on a bunch of gaming websites to start a discussion. Come into this with a few things about me which might create bias: I play mostly on Ninty stuff, but do like a lot of the things Sony has as well and would like to try them out. Not much of an Xbox guy. I have no hate for PC or mobile and enjoy games on both. Having disqus is important to me because it makes comments easier to write and read.
IGN
The site is fine. At least at the Nintendo side. I actually visit it regularly for gaming news. At least I did. The fanbase is god awful though. And worse because they make the site shitty, then blame it on the site. Console Wars and fanboyism up the Wazoo, from all three company's fans. They dont post a LOT of Nintendo news though and a lot of the artciles have "click-baity", stirring the pot headlines. They do sometimes add fuel to the fire that way, making them not blameless. And while I dont think there's a big anti-nintendo pro sony bias there like people say, they do annoyingly present Ninty news in the worst possible way a lot. Or not report it. Plus, general down periods means there's sometimes no interesting articles for a couple days.
Still like the reviews though. At least mostly. They even shared a blog review of AC: Unity that was much harsher than thiers on thier official review, seemingly trying to warn the fans of the problems in the best way they could. And they have a lot of interesting articles and discussion topics even though they fans complain about everything. The Nintendo reporters there are really, really awesome. Sadly, I visit there much less often now because a site's community is a big deal for me and everyone is just posting unrelated GIF's for likes, saying that impossibly stupid "too much water" meme and insulting the reviewer and sending her threats over twitter because she had a different opinion about everyone's beloved Hoenn, and arguing a lot more about consoles. According to the fans, all good reviews are paid reviews and all bad reviews are written by morons. Plus anything below 9 is apparently a bad grade if it's a beloved franchise (like Pokemon ORAS' 7.8.)
Grade: B
Polygon and Gamespot
I dont go on Gamespot or Polygon because I enjoy reading feedback to articles and the lack of disqus makes reading and writing comments tedious. They're similar enough to IGN to make me just not visit them. Gamespot is a bit ridiculous though, doing stuff like giving Tropical Freeze a 6 for "boring levels that dont look pretty and are too hard compared to Returns" which might be an opinion, but just soo far off what makes sense I almost dont beleive it. Plus Polygon has thier now infamous "Mario Kart 8 will sell like shit" article. Then again, if I judged a site by one bad article I'd never go to IGN after thier even more infamous "PS Vita is set to succeed" article by Colin.
Grade: C-
Silliconera
I really love this site. It pretty much posts things most other sites ignore due to being semi-focused on games made by Japanese companies and really niche games. Which means a lot of Sony and Nintendo news you wouldnt normaly see. A lot of other sites ignore gaming news from Japan until it becomes relevant in the US (or UK/etc,) which sort of makes sense, but still leaves me not knowing about a lot. Plus, it's a niche site so there's a much smaller community, so the comments are pretty much rarely toxic. outlawauron has told me the head of the site is a douche though so I may have to look out for that. Still, it's pretty great.
Grade: A+
Nintendo Life
This site is pretty much perfect. I started coming here once I realised IGN wasnt posting all the Nintendo news that was out there. They post a tonne of good stuff and it's very thourough. No disqus for comments is a huge downer though. What's really cool is that they regularly have a feature highliting progress on various kickstarters games coming to Nintendo platforms to help them out. That's really nice, plus it alerts me to games i"d never hear otherwise. Plus they review almost EVERYTHING, incluing most indie games coming to Ninty consoles and even DSI Ware games.
There being only Ninty news may make it pointless for non-Ninty fans, but that's obvious. They post rumours occasionally but not every random, but only the ones that arent baseless and could lead to good discussion. Plus, they do have limits, but I'll get to that when talking about another site.
Grade: A-
VG Chartz
I'm here because the comments are less toxic than on other sites. I think I came here to escape IGN's community at a point it was particularly bad. The forums being a primary part of here means there's constant discussion, other sites where slow periods means no articles that are interesting for a while. Good mod community so the craziest people are always gone quickly. I can always look at a particularly bad comment and correctly guess that it got the person banned. There's a lot of really conceited people here who toss out words like delusional and salty too much though, calling thier opinions facts and yet pointing out your opinions are definitely just opinions. Politics descussion is ridiculous though. Seriously guys, actually know something about the topic before joining it please like damn.
(i'm gonna get killed for this but) I do feel there's a slight Sony bias here, they seem to get away with more than the other consoles here, etc. And people here are pretty hard on Ninty and Microsoft, often unfairly. And I hate the "Xbone and Wii U failed because they arent in first" mentality. Which gets annoying sometimes, but not to the point where it's unbarable. I do also agree that there's a very vocal Nintendo community here as well bringing in thier own bias (stop calling all shooters brown COD ripoffs that's ridiculous guys) and while the site seems the most pro-Sony, the Ninty people seem to be the most passionate (in both the good and bad way.) Sucks to be an Xbox fan here sometimes. But there's fanboys of everybody here, really. On the numbers side, I dont really come for hardware sales, especially after they were super incorrect for a while, but I do enjoy looking at the software numbers, and Japan numbers.
Grade: B+
My Nintendo News
The site is very thorough, posting pretty much everything even passively related to Nintendo, meaning it's a great way to catch up with almost everything the company is doing or people are doing with it. That's great, but (relating back to the Nintendo Life part) it's also to the site's detriment. There's a lot of "not newsworthy" stuff, baseless rumours and "clickbait based on content" stuff there. Like the article of Eminem buying a Wii U to play Smash because he got bored of Destiny. Which is hilarious, but not really that important to share. Plus, unlike Nintendo Life, the community is TERRIBLE. SO much whining about other consoles, arguing, and people who actually joined the site just to talk up Sony and insult Nintendo on every article. Plus, also no disqus. Holy shit no thanks.
Grade: C+
Gameological Society (on AV Club)
This place is great. More or less has the best community out of all the sites, and the articles are always very interesting. Thier game reviews dont have grades so there's a focus on the content of the articles, and they regularly feature good comments from readers. They often have a different take on these games and due to not having grades, thus being watched by developers, they can be as truthful as they want. They feature free or cheap indie games from time to time, often flash based, which is always good.
On the downside, they often have the same problem as they rest of AV Club, which is the reviewers and commenters occasionally having a hipster-y mentality or looking for deeper meaning when it isnt there. And after the redesign, navigating the site is impossible. Disqus is a plus though.
Grade: A
Kotaku
I dont have that massive anti fe-meme-ism hate boner for Kotaku like everyone else, though I do agree that many of the articles are really stupid. A tonne of thier articles are REALLY pointless to, like the article saying you can take the sticker off your Xbox One and how keeping it "breaks immersion(?)"
But, they also post the wierdest stuff (in a good way) and thus have very interesting stuff and trivia. Plus, they often have really great journalism articles (like the survey they did for Miyamoto) which is good.
Grade: C+
NG4
This site isnt that great. There's way too much arguing in the comments and due to how the site is, there's a tonne of terrible clicbait articles there that manage to survive. Does have a lot of more obscure stuff nobody would see otherwise. Dont have much to say besides that.
Grade: D+
Your thoughts on these sites or my opinions are welcome.
