Top 5 Video-Game Websites For The Thinking Gamer

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3. Magical Wasteland (magicalwasteland.com)

The beauty of games is that they’re interactive, which also happens to be the beauty of online journalism. Conversation begins the moment a given piece ends. In late October, sole author of the blog Magical Wasteland wrote a thoughtful entry that was exceedingly critical of Tom Bissell’s recent New Yorker story (“The Grammar of Fun”) about blockbuster title Gears of War 2 and its creator CliffyB. Bissell subsequently responded in the comment thread and a full-blown dialogue ensued that grappled with subjects ranging from the tension between low-brow vs. high-brow game concepts to the wow-ness of putting a chainsaw on the end of a combat rifle. Magical Wasteland invites these sorts of conversations because it traffics in compelling ideas and is respectful even when it cracks the bullwhip on game-journalism bullshit. (The site's utterly stark design and monochrome color palette is also a blessed antidote to the visual bombast exploding off 98% of gaming homepages.)