GameFan Issue 08 (June 2012)

For those of you that did the math last time, I said Issue 7 was assembled by only three people, and two of those left shortly after, which only left editor-in-chief Dave Halverson. Publisher Paper Planet made a press release in April 2012, highlighting the future of GameFan and Girls of Gaming. The company planned on increasing its online presence through app development for mobile devices as well as a new GameFan TV online channel. This never happened, but someone did make a YouTube channel. Former Destructoid editor Wesley Ruscher was named the magazine's new managing editor but resigned shortly after the release of issue 8, stating on Twitter that the job "lacked the necessities to keep food in my belly and a roof over my head." Issue 8 took six months to come out since the last issue. Jason Moore is the new art director, and Charlie Maib is the Japan Now editor. Issue 9 would take eight months to come out, Feb 2013, and was only worked on by two people, Dave Halverson and Greg Orlando. Issues 8 and 9 were only available in a digital format, so thanks to those that made this version for us. GameFan would then go on a two-year hiatus, returning in 2015 with a redesigned magazine and website. 

Highlights From this Issue: I still like the focus on indie games, that's what GameFan has been about for me through the years -- giving more coverage to the smaller developers. Skullgirls gets a 3-page review and a 3-page interview. We have some PS Vita launch window coverage, with a review on Gravity Rush. Blades of Time gets a review and an interview mixed together. We have more reviews for Kid Icarus Uprising, Starhawk, Tales of Graces, Lollipop Chainsaw, and an 8-page section for the review and interview on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Witcher 2 and Phantom Breaker have reviews, along with several shorter half-page reviews which I dont mind. There's a nice Japan Now section, and GameFan Retro returns again. We get a nice retrospective on Metal Slug, a look at Wild 9, and even the FM Towns Marty console, the first 32-bit system that was commercially available. I still love this retro section. 

What about the magazine itself? There defiantly are some things you will notice in quality. I will say the art direction is different. It still looks good and Jason Moore is doing a great job, but it's really hard to get familiar to one artist and then have a sudden change. Rob Duenas has a special place in my heart and I believe he really shaped the magazine for those first 7 issues. He will be missed. The angled text is used very sparingly, but the biggest negative for this issue is the hard-to-read text is back once again. This was a problem with GameFan in the past, and there were a few times it popped up in this relaunch, but this issue was digital-only, so there is no excuse for not being able to comfortably read the text in a modern magazine like this. The Skullgirls interview uses a thin red text for the interviewer, with a very light reddish pattern underneath. I needed to zoom in a ways to even make out the letters. The Gravity Rush interview has a section with orange and yellow lava in the background, but the text is white with no backdrop or shadow, with the interviewer text being a bold light orange -- which make some of the text disappear completely in certain spots, and hard to read in others. What does a magazine look like when made by two people? Find out in Issue 9. (hopefully:)