There’s pleasure to be had by ripping open one of those bags that magazines come in nowadays. I think it’s from knowing that you’re the first one to flick though its pages. Have you ever taken a good look at the amount of exclamation marks the writers use on their bags in order to drum up excitement for their publication though?
Free poster! Countless new games reviewed! Two free staples!
I stood like a lemon in Tesco the other day counting them to bring you this rather nonsensical article.
The worst offender for going overboard with the exclamation marks was GamesMaster magazine with a total of 25. Xbox 360 World was just behind with 24. “Free DVD!” claims the bag. No it’s not: the magazine costs £4.99 because of the so-called free DVD.
Official Xbox Magazine came in third place with 19. There was plenty of exclamation marks used to hide the fact that the demo disk is only useful to those not connected to Xbox Live.
Then there was PSM3 with 15, a whole 11 more exclamation marks than Play. Clearly PSM3 thinks there’s more to get excited about this month then Play does.
Despite being aimed at the younger demographic both Official Nintendo Magazine and NGamer featured a surprisingly and significantly lower amounts of exclamation marks than their counterparts. Official Nintendo Magazine had 9; NGamer had 8.
This leaves us with EDGE magazine which comes in a bag this month thanks to having a free Ben 10-themed year planner. Or was it a Mario year planner? I forget. Their bag was totally sans all exclamation marks, so well done to EDGE for being so restrained.