News flash: GAMES Magazine worth buying for once

Time to mobilize the Cave Army: head on down to a local newsstand that stocks GAMES, and pick up the August 2003 issue. It has a Hall-and-Oates-looking guy on the cover whom you might recognize as the guy on the spine of the Puerto Rico box. That’s right, GAMES is actually doing a cover story about a game, a paper game even, instead of the usual asinine puzzle. It’s still a little disheartening how much of this already-thin magazine is consumable newsprint covered with word games, but let’s show the publishers that there’s a financial reward for serious coverage of non-genre games for grownups. The story’s good, too, covering not just the inscrutable subtleties of PR’s building strategies, but the dubious joys of convincing a bunch of teenage boys to hang out and play a board game with you instead of going to some girl’s party. Check it out.