While a glut of proudly unofficial single-company game rags clog the newsstands in Britain, PSM is the only magazine devoted to a console maker yet not completely beholden to it. This has always been surprising to me, as the American fanboy population seems wide enough to fill the subscription requirements for at least a few more Nintendo- and Microsoft-focused mags.

But I digress. For ten years now PSM has managed to keep its focus on Sony and keep that "independent" label right there on the cover. A recent editorial shakeup (we'll miss ya, Chris Slate) and a redesign haven't changed their somewhat obsessive take on the world of Sony systems. Let's see how the latest issue shaped up.

Cover

Wow, that's a real nice full-page picture of Clive Barker's Jericho there. It was a bold decision to not include any other text or even hints of other coverage on the front of the magazine. Wait a minute... that's not a cover, that's an advertisement. It's not even one of those easy to remove stick-on advertisements that have become annoyingly frequent on Ziff Davis' mag covers – no, this wraparound ad is well and permanently glued to the spine of the magazine. Way to maximize the annoyingness there, Future.

Anyway, the real cover features a nice hand-drawn action shot from Drake's Fortune that looks like it's jumping right off the page. The design manages to tease a lot of content from inside the magazine without feeling overly cluttered. Overall a fine cover -- too bad it's hidden under that ad.

Previews

Despite the busy holiday release season coming up, PSM surprises by only having previews for nine different games. Five of these previews are spread over two pages, which mercifully gives the text some room to breathe. Unfortunately, that text often gets mired in minutiae and overly enthusiastic clichés. Take this particularly gag-inducing example from the introduction to a Ratchet and Clank Future preview: "Part platformer, part Pixar, all action – the first of what we suspect will be several outings for Ratchet and Clank straddles the line between last-gen and next-gen, providing a totally pure action-platform experience with amazing looks." If I wanted badly organized, run-on ad copy I... would... well then I suppose I would like this, actually.

Features

Given the anemic previews section, the cover feature on Drake's Fortune surprises with a relatively thought-provoking look at the game. Most of the value comes from a conversation with director Amy Hennig, who drops gems about her inspiration, the nature of exploration in the modern world and the importance of risk-taking in game development. Even the bit about using the SIXAXIS controls to perform a variety of jungle crawling moves holds interest.

A quick piece on "11 PS2 Games You Need To Play (But Haven't)" wins no points for originality but lots of points for concise, exquisite descriptions of what makes these underappreciated games worth checking out.

News

Despite being pretty indistinguishable from the Features section, the "News" section has some good stuff this month. An interview with Everyday Shooter's Jonathan Mak is illuminating but way too short ... I expected another page when I reached the end. A page of PSP Slim impressions is just the right amount of space to devote to the minor upgrade and makes good use of ultra-close up photos to show the changes. Finally, a look at the "realism" of technology in Metal Gear Solid has some nice military-wonk trivia but also feels a little light at two picture-filled pages. Why isn't there more space for these quality articles?

Cell Play

Ah, that's why there's no space. Much like the previously-reviewed issue of Future's Official Xbox Magazine this issue of PSM also contains a small sub-magazine giving you "the 411 for gaming on your cell phone." While I couldn't care less about the content, I do care very much that the 16-page insert reduces the 96-page issue to a horribly thin 80 pages of real content. Add in 29 pages of standard advertisements and you get almost 47 percent of the magazine devoted to selling something. Wow.

Reviews

There are a few nice touches that make the reviews section really pop here. One is large headlines right below the game titles that accurately and quickly sum up the reviews much better than X-out-of-ten scores. My favorite is the header for Alien Syndrome: "A good game... 20 years ago." With that kind of summary, who even needs to read the rest of the review? Well, they're so short that there's really no reason not to. This issue manages to squeeze 19 reviews into four-and-a-half pages, compete with screenshots. Even more impressively, each review manages to give a good feel for the game and its strong and weak points, often in five sentences or less. Well done.

One odd, vestigial feature for some reviews: a small callout box separately rating the PS2 versions of PS3 games. Do you really have to tell readers over and over that the graphics will be worse on the older system?

Overall

Some good content and a nice style, but I wish there was a little more of it.

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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.