I finally READ the article while standing at Barnes and Noble last night.
First things first, I have to give big ups to Darran for publishing a great looking mag dedicated to retro gaming. I've never looked at this mag before, but it's nice to see something around for us old-tymers.
Skipping over to the Metal Slug section, I noticed a two page spread on Windjammers right before it. A great little article about an overlooked classic that describes all of the game's functions, going into its history, talks about gameplay, and provides some great opinionated thoughts. I could only hope to receive the same treatment from an 8-page article titled "The Definitive." I was wrong.
The art department did a great job on the backgrounds layout for the DMS (Definitive Metal Slug). In fact, they did such a good job that it made the article actually look professional and compensated for the poor writing. As such, I would credit them as having contributed at least 50%, if not more, to the entire article. As for the actual writing itself?
Sigh.
Yes, I am coming in with a bias after having seen this 41yo "journalist" mouth off like a rotten preteen. However, I was trying to concentrate on the actual content without Bobak's original post standing in the way. I immediately noticed that the entire article was an incredibly opinionated review that failed to fairly illustrate the pros and cons of each game prior to issuing a summary judgement that appeared to be poorly generated either due to poor research or, as Bobak mentioned, poor writing.
If you take a look at any mainstream gaming site (Gamespot, IGN, 1UP), you will quickly be able to distinguish good writing in a Top-20 list, gaming retrospective, or a simple review by the way the writer conducts themselves. They will list the pros and cons, they will reserve their judgement until they have provided enough material for the reader to make up their own mind, and they will concentrate on the specific issues at hand. Stew's article did that in only two instances: overzealously concentrating on the zombie/fat modes (which can be easily side-stepped with good gaming) and providing great detail on the extras present in ported versions (incredibly short-sighted considering these have NOTHING to do with the actual original games).
If you look at Stew's site, you will see there are people who have never even played Metal Slug. I'd wager there are numerous people who never got the chance to experience the originals first-hand and thus relish retrospectives to get caught up on old gaming. Of course, there are numerous others who have experienced the originals and gladly welcome a trip down the lane. In either case, this articles fails them. For the former, it fails to provide any definitive information that will introduce them to the games and illustrate what made them appealing and worthy of being played 10+ years after release. For the latter, it will be just another rambling opinion (and everyone's got one, right?) that overly concentrates on lame extras that bring nothing to the gaming table.
To think that it would have taken a week to "write" this article is mind-boggling. The opinions voiced on each individual game are far less intricate or insightful than many of the reviews on this site, Kazuya's, or other fan generated sites. More than half of each game description focuses on ports and their extra content, information that can easily be gleamed from Wikipedia or other reviews. Concentrating on this extra content rather than the game itself takes away from the whole point of the franchise as an arcade run-n-gun shooter.
We're not talking about a Bubsy retrospective (remember the classic 3-D for the PSX?) or a Broken Sword retrospective. We're talking about one of the greatest gaming franchises that was hidden in the early years due to the prohibitive price point of the home system. This article brings absolutely NOTHING new to the table other than an opinion from a writer whose skills are dwarfed by numerous other mainstream writers and even several reviewers on our own forums. Poorly researched and poorly written, the DMS is pale compared even to the Windjammers article right before it. The biggest shame of all is that a magazine can put out a good Neo Geo article themselves but ends up paying someone else to put our a crappy "definitive" article.
Sincerely,
Mikhail
P.S. A mummy is not a zombie. It's right there on the hut. My last words on this sad subject.