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Revision as of 19:42, 27 May 2005
PC Zone (founded in 1993) was the first magazine dedicated to IBM compatible computer games to be published in the United Kingdom. It was published by Dennis Publishing until 2004, when it was acquired by Future Publishing along with Computer and Video Games magazine for £2.5m.
The magazine prides itself on its reviews scoring system: it is based on the seemingly outdated idea that 50 per cent is an average score. As a result, many games publishers accuse the scoring system of being too harsh. Games that score 80 per cent or over are awarded an "Essential Award"; games that score 90 per cent or over are awarded a "Classic Award". Very few games, perhaps only ten a year, receive this distinction. Games scoring under 20 per cent used to be awarded the "PC Zone Pants" award; however, this is no longer awarded.
As a combined result of its honest scoring system and its age, PC Zone manages to acquire many world exclusives and UK exclusives — in terms of news, previews and reviews. PC Zone contained world exclusive previews for both Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, the former achieving an almost-unprecedented record score of 97 percent, a score it shares with three other games — Quake II, Alone in the Dark 2 and a relatively unknown flight sim called EF2000. There is a handful of games that received the lowest score of 0 percent — one of which was a multimedia package called Newsweek 3 Globocop, which was given the biting summary, "The most expensive beer mat in the world."
Regular features include Supertest, where the reviewers discuss which game is best in its genre; Reality Check, in which Steve Hill determines the difference between a real-life activity and its virtual counterpart; Steve Hill's NeverQuest, which follows the humorous and often unsuccessful attempts of Hill's venture into an MMORPG; and a back page dedicated to a satire of some kind. It also maintains an "A-List", in which the top 80 games are listed, divided into 10 genres. At present (issue #155) the leaders in each genre are:
- Shooters: Half-Life 2
- Strategy: Rome: Total War
- RPG: Knights of the Old Republic
- Action/Adventure: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
- God games: Black and White
- MMORPGs: EverQuest II
- Online Shooters: Unreal Tournament 2004
- Space Combat: X2: The Threat
- Sport: Football Manager 2005
- 3D Action/Strategy: Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30
The oldest game in the A-List is Grim Fandango, reviewed issue #71 (Dec 1999).
The current editor for PC Zone is Dave Woods, the current associate editor is Jamie Sefton, and the current news editor is Will Porter. Current reviewers include Steve Hill, Anthony Holden, Will Porter, Paul Presley and Suzy Wallace; persistent freelance reviewers include Martin Korda and Rhianna Pratchett. Phil Wand heads the hardware section.