A Poor Trait of Game Journalism Is Still Wildly Found Today

“Better than Grand Theft Auto? True”.

“Who Needs Grand Theft Auto? True Crime is bigger, badder and better”.

These were two outrageous claims from Official Xbox Magazine taken from an old preview of True Crime: Streets of L.A. Even worse about this subject is that Official Xbox Magazine in a later issue actually asked the readers of the magazine why they bought this awful game, saying that their readers actually have poor taste in games.

Granted, these occurred during 2003, but over hyping games is still a common practice seen throughout all types of game journalism today.
Now, I’m not one to get caught up into the hype, but there are countless gamers who will read a preview that claims that the player’s lives won’t be complete unless they buy the game and then they rush out to pre-order it, only to be let down a few months later because the game is a rushed piece of trash. Now, there have actually been some games that have been over hyped that actually turned out good (Fable comes to mind), but if game magazines or game news sources do not give over exaggerated claims at all during previews and just present us with the game features list or the games mechanics, then the average Joe Gamer (who takes the information said in game magazines very seriously) wont have to expect anything amazing from the game at all and he can see if the game is good or not when he actually tries it when its released. To me over hyping a game and praising it without any hands on experience and then printing it on paper (or writing about it on the web) is a prime example of poor journalism, and needs to end if gaming journalists want to be taken seriously.