lol I'm not going to lie. I wasn't expecting to like your site layout as I'm normally a bit wary of people who pimp their site in all the forum posts :P

But that layout is great. It's a nice simple, attractive look. Well done!

Thanks. We had a couple of very talented people put the look together and I was quite pleased. I got more than my money's worth. I was worried that it was being designed with too much of a static "poster" look, but it worked out fine.

Next Level looks pretty snazzy actually. I think the look of a site is quite high on my "do I wanna write for them" list. If it looks cheap or lame it's less likely I'm going to want to frequent that site.

The site I currently write for Gamer Limit recently got a nice makeover and it looks damn good if I do say so myself. There's a few aspects I'm not particularly fond of, and we're in need of a new header image. But apart from that I love the look.

Our own site, http://www.undercover-gaming.nl , is quite fresh and the stuff isn't hard to find (in my opinion). But sites like IGN are a complete hell! Way too many stuff, flashy things and whatsoever, what I especially hate about sites if they have way too many advertising. True, it's most times the gold source of the site, but it's so damn butt ugly!

Sites like IGN require lots of page views, lots of clickthrough, and lots of space for ads. As such, all of their major hubs short of a few vault pages here and there are totally devoid of content. I like my websites to be simple and pure content. If it's video, give me quick access to videos, if it's text, give me more than a picture and headline. I don't want to have to click through to decide whether or not I want to read something. Honestly, I don't think a good gaming site exists that relies on shitloads of ad money coming in, a good format needs to be free from advertiser control - which is to say, they need to be able to do whatever they want with the site.

I'd link to my site as an example of the sterile design I'm talking about but that's a little self-serving. Instead, here's a few others that did a great job:
http://www.gamengai.com/main.php
http://www.fun-motion.com/
http://www.invertedcastle.com/ (admittedly plain-jane wordpress, but that shit works!)
http://namakoteam.com/

Okay, okay, I won't feel guilty doing this, since everyone else did it.

My site, Game Central, I feel has a good design. Some parts still need tweaking (searching/archiving, for instance). But still, I think we got something going for us.

Without being biased, I can honestly say that one of the best-looking gaming sites I've had the pleasure of viewing is still PSU.com, which recently went into v3 around February this year.

It's usually harder for me to consider what I like and don't, particularly because so many gaming sites are busy.

I actually dislike The Escapist's new look due to how busy it is. There's so much content that they are trying to squeeze into a confined space, it feels like they really need to figure out just what to do with all of those features and videos.

GameTrailers has a great layout for their main page, but one of the things that really irritates me is their heavy use of Flash ads. Often enough I'll be trying to watch a video, but due to just how busy and detailed a flash ad is on the side it'll be running choppy and lagged. It gets frustrating and really is just too much. Especially considering you often have to sit through an ad before even getting to the video, let alone having one chug down the actual site feature that you went there to see to begin with.

Ugh, this site looks horrible in my opinion! Maybe it was just the weight loss adverts I was hit with on the front page.

PSU has a really nice design, and I'd say it's one of my favorites, and the new GameInformer redesign is cool too. It's clean, simple and straight to the point.