Rapide £2.95 116pp (15 ads) + Gex tips book, plus mail-away Heart Of Darkness demo CD offer

It’s difficult to carve out an identity in a market as crowded and competitive as the Playstation magazine one, so it’s commendable to see Total Playstation managing to find itself a niche. Sadly, though, the magazine appears to have chosen basic illiteracy as that crucial defining characteristic. "Ambition will course through your veins and embellish itself in your mouth", is the tempting appraisal delivered on Premier Manager 98, a title about which we also hear "The way Gremlin have organised so much information into such an easily controllable format is a testament to the time the game has taken to complete." Writers using words they clearly haven’t the slightest grasp of the meaning or appropriate use of is a recurring theme on almost every page of Total Playstation, which is why I, for one, heartily kinescope them on their petrochemical microwave.

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "SCOOP OF THE YEAR! Lara’s back!"

VISUAL STYLE: Clean yet lurid.

LETTERS PAGE: "I am a great fan of your mag and have a Playstation and 17 games. Can you please answer my questions?"

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 0

REVIEW AVERAGE: 81% ("Excellent")

MOST EMBARRASSING YOOF-SPEAK: "After disking-up your ‘Station..." (Colin McRae Rally, Codemasters)

LEAST PLEASANT IMAGE: "This will fill you with a great measure of emotion and implant seeds of desire into your system." (Colin McRae Rally, Codemasters)

HANDIEST TIP: The key on the cheats page which illustrates for confused readers the precise meaning of "up", "down", "left" and "right" with little arrows pointing in those directions. (All four correct, too.)

OVERALL: Remedial.

PLAY

Paragon £2.95 100pp (22 ads) + A-Z tips book

At just 78 editorial pages, Play is a slim, low-budget sort of affair that reeks of bandwagon-jumping and cash-in. Which is a shame, as it’s one of the nicest-looking and most competently-written mags of the lot. The noticeable omission is features - there aren't any. The writers are obviously trying - there’s a lot of information squeezed into the reviews, preview and tips, but then it’s all over almost before it starts. Someone spend a bit of money on these people.

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "Lara’s back and mad for it!"

VISUAL STYLE: Colourful, restrained and friendly, with a hugely off-putting cover.

LETTERS PAGE: A whopping £150 prize makes for a fairly intelligent selection.

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 0 (but then, there’s hardly room)

REVIEW AVERAGE: 67% ("Another page for a review guide? Do you think we’re /made/ of money?")

VAGUEST CALL-OUT: "A true show stopper in every sense of the word" (Metal Gear Solid, Konami). But which word?

WORST SUGGESTION: "The game’s middle name should be originality" (Mr Domino, JVC). What, "Mr Originality Domino"? That just sounds stupid.

OVERALL: Anorexic.

PLAYSTATION PRO

IDG £2.99 132pp (17 ads) + football games tips book

At first, there’s very little remarkable about Playstation Pro. The mix of reviews (rather longer than usual), previews, features and tips is pretty bog-standard. There’s nothing even remotely unusual about the general tone (although it actually featured more gratuitous breasts in the issue seen than Playstation Plus, nearly all of them were concentrated on 4 pages, and nearly all were of hired stand-bimbos from E3, which is at least some token relevance). It’s only when you examine the "reviews" that any oddness becomes apparent - out of a total of 14 games reviewed in the main body of the August issue, no fewer than 11 receive the rating "Try B4 U Buy" or "Rent It" (or, in other words, "Is it any good or not? Er... we don’t know. Play it for yourself.") Which rather begs the question, "What exactly IS it we’re paying YOU for?"

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "We playtest all the essential software for the year ahead"

VISUAL STYLE: Dense, cluttered, wordy.

LETTERS PAGE: "Your mag is the best and you could shag any bird on the planet"

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 58 (52 of those on 4 pages)

REVIEW AVERAGE: 66% ("Check it out first before paying hard cash for it"). (Surprise!)

NUMBER OF GAMES IN DIRECTORY LISTINGS ("BULLSHIT FREE AREA!"): 399

NUMBER OF GAMES RATED AS "TRY B4 U BUY": 112

NUMBER OF GAMES RATED AS "TRY B4 U BUY" DESPITE SCORING 8/10 OR HIGHER: 52

NUMBER OF GAMES RATED AS "TRY B4 U BUY" DESPITE SCORING 9/10 OR HIGHER ("An essential purchase that’s recommended by all of us"): 6

LOWEST-SCORING GAMES ALSO RATED "TRY B4 U BUY": 4/10

NUMBER OF GAMES RATED AS "RENT IT": 123

DIFFERENCE IN CONCEPT BETWEEN "TRY B4 U BUY" AND "RENT IT": I don’t know.

TOTAL NUMBER OF PLAYSTATION GAMES READER IS INVITED TO PLAY FOR THEMSELVES AND MAKE THEIR OWN MINDS UP ABOUT AFTER THEIR BEING "REVIEWED" BY PLAYSTATION PRO: 246

PLAYSTATION PRO’S GRASP OF THE CONCEPT OF REVIEWING THINGS IN ORDER TO PROVIDE READERS WITH BUYING RECOMMENDATIONS: Weak to zero.

OVERALL: No idea. You better read it for yourself.

PLAYSTATION PLUS

EMAP £2.50 132pp (26 ads)

Well, you’ve got to admire their chutzpah, at least – it takes some kind of nerve to give this much of your personality away in public. Playstation Plus’s Art Editor is a woman, which might explain why the pages appear to have been laid out by someone who couldn’t bear to actually look at them. The magazine’s general tone, overflowing with gruesomely violent language, (although actual swearing is of course limited to limp schoolboy terms like "shit" and "bollocks") makes the nastiest bits of Loaded sound like The Independent, and the pages are liberally strewn with context-free topless shots of well-known Page 3 models (with the nipples crudely censored, of course) which the lack of any picture credits or copyrights would appear to suggest have simply been nicked off the Internet. This is vile, woman-hating trash. At least the Yorkshire Ripper had the decency to be mentally ill.

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "It’s sweaty helmet time in Formula 1 98"

VISUAL STYLE: A five-year-old’s scrapbook.

LETTERS PAGE: Terrifying, random chaos.

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 56

REVIEW AVERAGE: 59% ("Just toss")

MOST GRATUITOUS MISOGYNY: "These days kits change faster than a pro after she’s been paid" (International Superstar Soccer 98, Konami). My, don’t we sound experienced?

CLEVEREST WORDPLAY: "Greatest Hits? Greatest Shits, more like." (Atari Collection 2, GT)

OVERALL: There’s a market for this kind of thing. But you wouldn’t want to meet any of it.

PLAYSTATION POWER

Future £2.40 148pp (24.5 ads) + £5 voucher off Top 5 games at Electronics Boutique

Well-written, funny, informative, almost passionate. Entertaining features, innovative game challenges, superb directory section. Clearly in the wrong business. (Shame about the half-hearted attempt at lairy laddism, though.)

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "Lara bounces back and we’ve got the FIRST SHOTS!"

VISUAL STYLE: Loud and confusing.

LETTERS PAGE: "Don’t ever change the way you make your magazine smells."

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 18

REVIEW AVERAGE: 63% ("Average")

MOST RIDICULOUS ADVERTISEMENT: The Marquadian Console Tidy – a tin tea-tray you sit your Playstation on. £20.

BEST E3 SUMMARY: "Bored journalists, tired third parties and countless glib pricks from around the world."

OVERALL: Just some eye-searing over-design and slightly too much unnecessary cleavage away from greatness.

EXTREME PLAYSTATION

Quay £2.95 100pp (12 ads) + Heart Of Darkness poster

Kicking off with some more suspiciously stolen-looking top-shelf shots of Anna Nicole Smith is a bad start, and things don’t improve much over the course of just 88 desperately rudimentary pages littered (in every sense of the word) with writing that will doubtless improve when its authors reach secondary school/puberty. Nice clear screenshots, though.

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "EXCLUSIVE TOMB RAIDER III – first shots"

VISUAL STYLE: No.

LETTERS PAGE: "In the magazine, could you please put in some more PORN."

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 6

REVIEW AVERAGE: 77% ("Rabid fans of a particular style could still find something to shout about")

WORST GROVELLING: "Probe Entertainment Ltd aren’t in the habit of letting a game’s aesthetic packaging overshadow the gameplay message" (Batman & Robin preview)

MOST DISTURBING REVIEW GUIDE: "90% to 95% -  Without doubt an almost-classic title." 95% is ALMOST classic these days? Blimey. Times are tough.

OVERALL: "Extremely poor", presumably.

OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE

Future £4.99 164pp (37.5 ads) + 10-game demo CD + £5 discount voucher for Game stores

There isn’t a lot you can say about a magazine its own editor describes as "bland", but frankly, after reading some of the other publications in this round-up, this was like calamine lotion on a painful wasp sting. Still, OPSM’s monopoly of the coverdisc market ensures that there’s no real need for any engaging content to get people to buy it, so you generally don’t get any. In fairness, things have improved noticeably over recent months, with the long-overdue inclusion of review bylines (would YOU trust the opinions of a man who wouldn’t even tell you his name?) and a game stab at a lively, inventive front section, spoiled only by the most ludicrously limp-wristed "rant" column in publishing history. Lazy casual sexism rears its ugly head more often then you’d expect, but generally "inoffensive" is, in all things, the watchword at OPSM.

SAMPLE COVER LINE: "McRae against Makinen in the ultimate rally race-off!"

VISUAL STYLE: White, expensive.

LETTERS PAGE: "Please put me out of my misery and save my marriage."

GRATUITOUS BREAST COUNT: 12

REVIEW AVERAGE: 62% ("Fun, but with enough dodgy bits to seriously question its purpose")

MOST INCONGRUOUS REVIEW SCORE: "Truly unfair, madly maddening and deeply shoddy... there is no let-up from the banality... a blocky, boring, blast from the past... duff gameplay and woefully outdated graphics... Viper? Vapid would have been a more appropriate title... a waste of everyone’s time... 6/10" (Viper, Infogrames).

Meanest reviews: PLUS

Softest reviews: TOTAL

Most breasts: PRO

Best value: POWER

Worst value: PLAY

Poorest command of basic English: TOTAL

Biggest surprise: OPSM having the second-toughest review average

Special Prize for use of all-time most hackneyed reviewing cliche ("What’s hot and what’s not"): PRO

Number of mags claiming "exclusive first shots of Tomb Raider 3": THREE

"Review average" achieved by standard statistical methods, ie taking all the full-price reviews in the issue and averaging them on a percentage basis (mags marking out of 10 multiplied up accordingly), discounting the two highest and lowest scores. The phrase after the score is what the magazine’s own review guide suggests such a score means.