Congrats to GOG and to Marcin Iwinski to being in the April 2010 issue of Game Informer. Nice to see you guys getting some extra coverage from places besides PC specific magazines.

People read Game Informer?

Sadly I do...

Fiber One cereal got nothing on GameInformer.=)

I would use the word "read" lightly.

Hey, I happen to like GameInformer, However, their AvP and Halo ODST reviews PISSED ME OFF. "Still wondering whether or not to get Halo ODST because you don't think it's worth 60$? Well Were telling you it is because it has an amazing firefight mode that will last 30+ hours and a campaign that has 9 1/2 hours of game time with extra hours in the open world". WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT??As a reviewer, you should tell me the games ups and downs, not tell if you thought it was worth the money. It's an obvious pay off by Bungie, I mean, they even lied about the length. Firefight gets boring in an hour and the campaign took me 3 hours to beat, on legendary with only 1 friend. It was one of the shortest games I have ever played.

ODST took me a shitload longer than 3 hours, much closer to their 9
That said I'm still glad I got it free (well kinda, came with an xbox I bought a mate and he doesn't like FPS'). I do think its probably worth about $60 but thats AU$60...

It's possible they're stupid and you're awesome.

All this this time there was a perfect reply to arguments by Anjohl, and I only find out about it now. Sheesh.
I'll be saving this sentence for emergencies, if you don't mind.

too bad
ALLRIGHTS RESERVED - ME
jkjkjkjk

That's actually how I learned about gog, which is a really cool site.

cool. welcome to our little world!

More than any other printed magazine about gaming. (Though I look forward to the return of EGM soon).
One, because over the years they've become more reliable and far more professional (finally got rid of the idiotic call signs and used their names like adults).
Two, (and usually the reason they're panned by certain circles) they're attached to one of the biggest, sleaziest game chains in the world.
Still, it means they have a huge installed base and are way less likely to fail which lets them get legitimate and (as said before) fantastic information.
Frankly I can't see any reason to avoid extra information (some of it often broken there first), nor can I imagine panning it without reading it.
As for the stuff about reviews--first of all, reviews are nothing but bias. That's not a bad thing. We read the opinions of other people so that they can tell us which games they like. They have no obligation to become game processing computers using nothing but fact. I'd never have played Suikoden I or II if I'd gone with the math of what makes a good game.
Reviewers are people giving opinions and because of that I don't want the ups and downs, I want exactly what they thought was worth the money. Why? Because I start to use my own brain, remember which reviewers tend to enjoy the same stuff that I do, and weigh those opinions more strongly.
I know people that can't stand RPGs at all, so all of their reviews would trend downward--and for them it's not a lie or a violation of fact--if you think a game sucks there is no math to go, "but using an arbitrary truth I just made up, this is actually a 9 out of 10."
I've continued to assume, as Chautemoc and LordCinnamon have said, that if something like Halo 3 gets a great review and tons of sales and I can't get into it, that I'm just not awesome enough. In fact, one of the things we say in writing workshops all the time when a text confuses us is, "Maybe I'm just not doing service to the text." That's another way of saying, "I don't get it--maybe you're too awesome."

Honestly, I would have to disagree there. It is great to get a list of pros and cons, but at the end of the day, we read reviews to find out if a game is worth buying. If we just want to know about it, there are better places to search.
That being said, I still feel that the best approach is "Discuss the game, present the pros and cons, then pass a verdict".