So our two favorite video game news compilation sites, Joystiq and Kotaku have recently undergone redesigns. How do we feel about this? Glad you asked...

Love, love, love the new look of Joystiq. Actually, we had been thinking over the last few months that they were due for a new setup, and the pulled it off extremely well. The new site is very crisp, with the headlines and category headings standing out and being very easy to find. The colors work well, as there is no need to get too artsy when you are just presenting news posts. The stark white of the main background clearly delineates where they want your eyes to go (the news posts), as that is the meat of site, but it doesn't overpower the other sections that you might want to find. From the first time we opened their new page, we were happy. Fine job, Joystiq!

On the other hand, we have the new Kotaku. The best thing about the old Kotaku, for us at least, was that the post headers were very easy to pick out and scan over, allowing us to find what we were most interested in, or to allow our eye to be caught by something unexpected and interesting. That was really one of the bigger draws of the site, and somewhere they had an advantage over the old Joystiq. However, the new site has much smaller headlines, and they are in a lesser eye-friendly soft red color. This new look makes it a chore to scan over these headers, causing us to be less likely to read the various posts. And these new red headers are set alongside two of the poorest green choices that we have seen on a website. The "I'm trying but I'm not quite" neon green is distracting, while the 70's kitchen appliance avocado green should a) never be used, and b) never be used with a small white fonted (new word) text that thus becomes almost unreadable. Seriously, if you didn't know the word Nintendo by heart, trying to pull it off of their category graphic would be painful. I know their sister sites all use the same layout (but with different color schemes), but overall their new look is a big disappointment.

So there you have it, our praise and bashing of other members of our little video game site fraternity (not that they know that we exist). Regardless of what we say, you should visit both sites often, as they are quite informative and well written (unlike us).