Tracey John over at MTV Multiplayer takes a lengthy look at the history of Game Informer covers the past four and a half years, spanning fifty-five total issues. John discusses the perception of a game as presented by GI on their covers, and how the game actually panned out using Metacritic scores.

Many of GI’s predictions/hype hold up to some extent, but there are some glaring and occasionally amusing examples to the contrary, like for the following for Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay, where John contrasts the cover hype versus the end result:

The cover claimed that “Namco redefines vigilante justice.” It turned out that Namco didn’t redefine vigilante justice so much as kill it. GI’s later review had a subtitle that read, “how to kill a franchise — without really trying.” It criticized the game saying it was “a lesson in what happens when there is an unwillingness to evolve.”

Peep the full article here.

Source: MTV Multiplayer

>“I feel a little bad for those of you who cruise through this magazine and skip reading about this game because of the big ‘7′ slapped across the top; it’s a number that has very little to do with how much you will or won’t enjoy this particular title.”
-Miller, in his review of Odama in the latest issue of Game Informer (March 2006, #155)

Game Informer 150 (October 2005):

• 45 reviews
• 161 content pages
• 77 ad pages

Game Informer 151 (November 2005):

• 57 reviews (26.7% increase)
• 200 content pages (24.2% increase)
• 102.5 ad pages (33.1% increase)
• 4 hours of sleep per editor per night (33.3% decrease)*

Here’s wishing all the hard-working editors in video game land a relatively restful and stress free holiday crunch period.

* Totally made up statistic. Duh!