Official Dreamcast Magazine (UK)

I'm curious about the comment on Sega's endorsement affecting the magazine's criticism, especially given that independent review of UK Dreamcast magazines in CTW found it to give the lowest average score of the lot. Was this really Sega dictating editorial standards, or was the magazine just keen to stress balance? --NiktheGreek 10:42, 26 March 2012 (CDT)

I subscribed to ODM back in the day, but the balance thing was information I took from elsewhere so it's someone else's judgement. I don't really have any other DC mags to compare it to, so it could be completely wrong.

Average scores don't really work in this instance though - over the course of two years the magazine only awarded full marks (i.e. 10/10) to two games - SoulCalibur and Shenmue (I think), whereas other magazines were much more liberal about that sort of thing. But at the same time, I don't recall any 0/10s or 1/10s. 2s and 3s were rarer than 8s and 9s, and from what I can remember, scores gravitated towards the 7s and 8s in most cases, whereas you'd expect it to be closer to 5.

Regardless I don't think they were in the business of slagging games off without highlighting any positives, which stands as good journalism.

But it's difficult to judge because obviously most Dreamcast games missed PAL region and the magazine folded mid-2001 (and quite a bit of crap showed up after then), so you could possibly argue there were no truly bad PAL Dreamcast games -Black Squirrel 11:35, 26 March 2012 (CDT)