Yep, something unique to GPU is definately in order, if it's to become popular and repeatedly visited. I wouldn't mind seeing user supported "mini-reviews" hell many users do their own hardware and game reviews right here on TPU on their own volition, if it's a bad review/post it will get reported and dealt with by proper staff and countermeasures.
Really what I would like to see is something along the lines of sections dedicated to genres, then subforums for titles, sure it would become huge and would have to be trimmed here and there, but really it could be a massive setup for cheats, tuning, updates, patches, reviews, guides, help, etc. We have something similar at our clansite, it works okay, but then again we only have about 15 games currently on tap. It's nothing amazing by any sorts, I forget what is the base of that forum, but the moderation isn't too bad to navigate for forum control and trimming.
No matter what we do, we must offer the user freedom to post their feelings on a game, whether they agree with our reviews or not, whether they feel there is a better way to get a task done, what mod is better, what mod is worth downloading, etc. There could be polls, we could have a GPU! Game of the Month, Game of the Year, something to get people to vote, talk, and decide which game(s) would deserve honors. It'd be nice to see the gaming section here on TPU eventually re-located to GPU!. Benchmarks I have no issue with as long as they're game based, leave the 3dmarks and such over this way of the divide.
There are many ways to go about it I suppose, and I don't want GPU! to be just any other gaming site out there, but I want the user/fan base to be a big part of what makes GPU! great, similar imo to what has helped make TPU! so strong, it's got the best community out there between staff and users, bar-none. Now the gaming community can get harsh, so can the hardware and oc community, they just go about it different ways. But we can find ways to get the community involved, maybe allow a competition for user reviews that could get posted as official gpu reviews, things like that.
On GPU! reviews, if you see what reviews are already there, my CoD4 review will be hitting a year old very soon here..I won't be updating it since I was playing it with the 1.3/1.4 patch at that time, the review will stand. But, one thing that gets me is that as the reviews are submitted, they are kind of boring, sure the format works good for the Tech stuff, but to me it does not justify a fresh face in the PowerUp! arena. Really I'd like to see the whole site take on a different scheme, something with a darker backgound, dark grey, gunmetal, black, etc, as-far-as design, my creativity sucks anymore, and I no longer have anything but the free paint programs out there anymore (paint.net primarily haha!). I get all sorts of ideas for the site, I just never write them down..I hope between suggestions here and to those that visit over there, we can all help meld GPU! into something very cool and worthy of keeping a tab on.
), we'll have to get more moderation and staff for helping to keep the forums clean.