Two Tribes Pack

Call them snooty if you must, but I think Edge magazine has consistently been the most mature, well-written and well-respected video game magazine on the planet for nearly twenty years.

While competitors have come and gone either pandering to the lowest common denominator or selling their pages as glorified advertising space, Edge has always been about smart features, brutal reviews and, most important of all, treating their readers as intelligent adults.

So it's awesome to see the magazine's online presence post this feature hosting the cover to every issue ever made. Why? Because if you've ever read it, one of the other things about the mag that grabs you is its design, which has usually featured clean, bold covers, a pleasant change from the usual "death by 1000 headlines" most other magazines (the current Game Informer excepted) suffer from.

I still remember the day when, as a teenager, I walked into a newsagent and saw that first issue sitting there, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all the other horrid mid-90s magazines. I bought it as soon as I saw it. It was like something from the future, and while other outlets have since caught up in terms of tone and coverage, they still don't do it better.

You can check out the gallery below.

Every Edge magazine cover, ever [Edge]

People have a hard time talking on the internet about crying. Crying is a vulnerable enough act on its own that taking the time to write about it just seems over the top! When we talk about games like Journey, we usually talk about how "the room got dusty," or we "got something in our eye."

Edge Magazine editor Jason Killingsworth has a theory as to why Journey has kicked up so much dust in so many rooms over the last few weeks—it's the jumping.

The jumping is where Journey breaks your heart. The jumping is why many players cried, even if they couldn't pinpoint the cause. The jumping is the tiny, insignificant-looking wingnut holding Journey together, without which it would collapse into a heap of exquisitely airbrushed scrap metal. It's not Thatgamecompany's token nod to classic videogame interactions, settled on after staring blankly at an empty white board for two hours, unable to come up with anything more engaging to have players do. It's not just a tool for poking around its stunning vistas and drinking in the sights.

Killingsworth says that he initially didn't understand people's desire to play Journey for a third, fourth, or fifth time. But now that he's thought about the jumping, he gets it—it's about weightlessness, it's about the incredible, near-perfect feeling of jumping in the game. "Jumping affects the emotional tenor of gameplay in the same way a well-timed key change does a pop song."

Crucially, it's not about flying—it's about jumping. "We don't want to KO gravity; we simply enjoy head-butting it in the nose repeatedly," Killingsworth writes, citing other not-quite-flight abilities in Just Cause 2 (yes!) and Batman: Arkham City.

I like flight as much as the next guy, but I think Killingsworth is on to something here. Without the gravity, the jump means less. And my fondest memories of Journey involve sliding down the sand with the sun in my eyes, shooting up the edge of a ramp, and jumping, jumping, jumping.

Opinion: Designing Rapture [Edge Online]

EDGE, the critically acclaimed iOS game from 2009 (which also kicked off the eventual downfall of Tim Langdell's all-encompassing claim to "Edge" as a trademark), is now coming to PC and Mac via Steam. The game will be available Aug. 11.

A news release announcing the game's availability added that a soon-to-be-released iOS game, titled EDGE Extended, will also make all of its content available for PC/Mac as free post-launch DLC.

Other features for the PC version include 30 achievements, time-based Steam leaderboards, and original bonus levels made by Two Tribes, which is adapting and publishing the game.

"The game now feels right at home on modern PCs and Macs, with super high resolutions and new special effects, while still keeping the retro vibe completely intact," Two Tribes says in its release.