Redesign the Redesign

I went over to visit GameSpot today to see how the new upgrades were coming and I was shocked and amazed at the changes made. No longer is there a sidebar on the left to navigate through the site. The header bar seems larger than before, and in general everything takes up more space. So far, I'm less than impressed with it and to be very honest, if it looks exactly like this when my the renewal for my subscription comes up... I'll be cancelling.

I liked GameSpot's previous design. It was easy to navigate for me, it looked nice, and lots of information was easily available without browsing through half the site trying to find it.

Now however, the site has more "multimedia" components, I guess for the kids who haven't quite mastered reading yet. All those pretty pictures sure makes it hard to find anything quickly. Hooray, I can watch more movies! To be honest, I really could care less about listening to some developer drone on about how his game is going to have even more polygon-filled characters than the closest competitor. I like going to GameSpot for the community, for the game patches, and for the reviews.

I don't go to GameSpot to watch tons of developer diaries or movies about E3 or the latest game conventions. I'm only interested in seeing the real games. For example, the last time I really pulled up any movies from GameSpot was when Burnout Revenge came out and I wanted to see what it was like. I went through and played all of those!

So far, I'm disappointed with the new design. The fact that it's squished in the middle of the browser is really annoying, especially for those of us who have monitors that support up to 1600x1200 resolution. I mean, PrezKennedy.org will fit in a 640x480 screen, but it will also expand to fill a 1600x1200 screen gracefully for those who want it to, and I'm no graphic designer. Someone getting paid thousands of dollars to design GameSpot should really be able to do better than they have.

I'll give GameSpot a chance to refine the look, but I have a feeling it won't really improve that much. Looks like I'll only be a member for a single year... :-(

Let's Get Serious

Serious Sam 2 that is. The demo is out, and let me tell you, it looks beautiful! It runs great on a mid-range computer like mine too, so if you have an expensive video card you should be able to crank up the settings to maximum and it'll look positively stunning!

I played through the single level three times just to get a good feel for the game. It even has a small vehicle section so you can try your hand at flying in the Serious 2 engine. Fun stuff! I highly recommend playing the demo twice, so you can pick up the weapons first time around, and then you'll be able to start with them when you do the level again.

I've been looking forward to Serious Sam 2 for quite some time. We've had several good LAN games in Serious Sam, and I'm hoping Cooperative mode returns. There isn't anything quite like taking on hordes of enemies and accidentally killing your friends a few times along the way. :-)

You can pick up the download through GamersHell.com. If you like first-person shooters, you have to try it out.