Best Games sites for reviews, lists, and finding games

What I mean is sort of like Gamespot's "you would also like" feature. While looking at the gamespot page for a game, let's say it's Fallout 3, down on the bottom left corner it recommends similar games to you like other Fallout games and Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion.

Games have been around long enough that it's increasingly harder to find good games. There's just so many.

I often find myself getting tired of seeing the same video games though. Whenever I want to find another game to play I go to the sites I know... gamespot, ign, etc. and look for games based on a genre search or by what those sites recommend to me when I'm viewing the page of a game I played before. I get SICK of seeing the Final Fantasy games on every single RPG game list there is when I'm looking for something that is more like Morrowind. I hate it when every single "top 15 games of XXXX" year or for XXXX console has the exact same games in a different order.

There are more games out there than there are types of candy, but there's no real way to find the "hidden gems" of gaming except completely by mistake fifteen years after the game is released in the bargain bin of a wal-mart.

I don't mean indie games, I mean commercial games that for some reason go completely ignored by everyone.



So what I'm asking is how you guys find games.

My main technique is to keep track of developers that I already know of. Otherwise I just find things randomly.

I do it simply by keeping up to date. As an old man (in my thirties, good God), I've seen things develop in real time. What I mean is, I don't need to go back and researh old games very often, because I remember when they were new. So I just keep up to date with everything that comes out for the systems I own. And that means looking at all releases, not just the big ones.

Sites like IGN and Gamespot are actually pretty comprehensive if you read all their info. However, they're obviously going to focus mostly on big releases because they mainly want to appeal to the peanus gallery. Sites like Rock Paper Shotgun ( www.rockpapershotgun.com ) a cool, a kind of middle ground. They're fairly commercial but they're happy enough to focus on tings they like rather that what's popular. The only downside to RPS is they only do PC games, no consoles. If you find a journalist or games writer you like, it's worth seeing if they have a seperate personal blog.

Then, of course, there's the incredibly accurate and well informed www.reviewwithextremeprejudice.com

Oh, and if you're looking for something specific like RPGs, for example, you can Google for specific review sites like www.rpgplanet.com or www.rpg.net or whatever.