The GamePro readers that were in the third grade when the magazine started back in May 1989 are now in their late 20s. The magazine they once read has remained generally focused on the pre-teen reader with a short, simple writing style and a proclivity for featuring games based on cartoon licenses—not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Even though gamers as a group have gotten older, there's still room for a magazine that caters to younger gamers. Still, for old fans, it's hard not to feel that the magazine has failed to grow with the gaming audience. With the content and design overhaul in this issue, GamePro had a good chance to break out of its youth-oriented niche and find some cross-demographic appeal. Did it succeed? Let's find out.

Cover
The large "Wii WIN!" emblazoned right under the familiar GamePro banner is obviously supposed to be a pun, but who is the "We" supposed to represent? Nintendo? GamePro? Gamers in general? The Wii itself (in which case, shouldn't it be "Wii WINS!"? But that would ruin the pun...)? The whole concept feels a little forced and little more than an excuse to say, "Hey, we've got a lot of Wii games in this issue." The art design, though, is relatively clean and mercifully uncluttered, especially when compared to some past GamePro covers.

Already, though, the redesign feels like an afterthought. A small "All-new GamePro Inside" is the only hint of change on the cover, and even that isn't very clear. (Isn't every issue technically "all-new?") EGM went so far as to change its iconic logo. Compared to that, you'd be hard pressed to call this a redesign at all.

Introductory Matter
The new "Opening Shots" section steals the "big screenshots as content" idea from Game Informer's PhotoPhile and takes out most of those pesky words, leaving only some annoyingly not-so-clever captions to go with the 'purty' pictures. It's a relatively gentle way to ease into the content of the issue, but by the fifth page it begins to feel like filler.

Speaking of unoriginal filler, most of GamePro's new "Spawn Point" intro section comes off as a pale shadow of features from other magazines. The "Versus Mode" battle between Old Snake and Sam Fisher seems like a weaker version of EGM's superior "Grudge Match," "Sux or Rules" is a much less interesting version of Edge's "Continue/Quit," and the industry quotes and trivia are ripped straight from Game Informer.

The rest of the section is a mish-mash of old news, space-filling Wii-construction photo spreads and a pseudo-scientific console "health meter" that shows the PS3 beating the Xbox 360 by "5%" (5% of what? Who knows!) Vicious Sid's Static column is the lone standout, with punchy, opinionated thoughts on all corners of the industry. More please!

Previews
Over the years, I've come to expect game previews to be a little less hard-hitting than I would like. It's an irritating if understandable problem – editors don't want to risk losing early access by pissing off developers with overly negative impressions, and writers are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to developers that say problems will be fixed by the ship date. That being said, GamePro's previews uniformly read like freakin' advertisements.

Here are just a few of the choice quotes that seem more apt to come from the PR goons than from game journalists:

• "Virtua Tennis ... should give PS3 owners another reason to justify their expensive new toy."


• "It's clear that VF5 will keep players busy for a long, long time."


• "With tons of rides to choose from and awesome skins, to boot, there is more than enough variety in Motorstorm's wheels department."


• "The possibilities are indeed endless!" (Def Jam: Icon)


• "[Burnout] Dominator is an all-new, full-featured Burnout game and a return to the intense reckless, skill-based racing experience at the heart of the series."
  

That last quote wasn't actually written by a GamePro staffer – it came from EA UK Senior Producer Nick Channon, who was allowed to practically write the whole preview himself in the guise of a facile Q&A (The question he was responding to: "Is Dominator going to be a full Burnout experience?") The fact that it's hard to tell the words of a developer from the words of a previewer is a good sign that your previews are too soft.