Flying back home yesterday, I decided I might want some light reading and so I bought the latest issue of GamePro, the one game magazine that I don't receive in the mail. It's the "Fall Preview" issue and I figured it might be worth it to make sure I'm on top of every game coming out this fall. Not to mention I was a little surprised to see the cover boast that inside were "The 107 best games of 2008." I found it hard to believe there were 107 games of any significance left to come out in 2008, not to mention enough to cull out the best.

Then I read the issue and figured out how they did it: 47 of the "best games of 2008" are coming out in 2009 (or later). I don't want to be a stickler for detail, but isn't it a tad bit dishonest to print a cover boasting that the issue previews the "107 best games of 2008" and a feature with the words "fall preview: 2008" on every other page and then fill it with games that don't come out in 2008?

Now let's be fair. Some of those 47 were pushed back out of 2009 between June and this month. We can't really blame the GamePro editors for including "Wheelman," "Ghostbusters," or "Project Origin." That's just a very unfortunate but inevitable occurrence for long lead journalism. I count 11 games that were delayed since June, so we can put those aside.

However, that leaves 36 games. How to explain those? Well, three are mistakes by GamePro, as far as I can tell. "Borderlands" was delayed to 2009 all the way back in March. "Final Fantasy Vs. XIII" and the new "Twisted Metal" game for PS3 have never had a release date.

The other 33? Very simple. GamePro's "Fall Preview Guide: 2008" includes 28 games that are dated for 2009 and five with no release date. If you look carefully at the small print below the titles, you see that games like "Bayonetta," Bioshock 2," and "Guitar Hero: Metallica" are scheduled for 2009. How can that possibly be justified as anything other than flat out dishonest padding? Especially since in the case of some of those games, like "Bioshock 2" and Peter Jackson's "Halo" project (which should really be "TBA," not 2009, but whatever), we know virtually nothing about the game and the "preview" text is total guesswork accompanied by old art.

And what about the five games like "Duke Nukem Forever" and "Starcraft II" that don't have any release date? They might not even land in 2009. What the hell are they doing in a Fall 2008 preview issue?

We're all used to really fluffy features in video game magazines. And we're sadly used to videogame journalists trading editorial coverage to get exclusives. But lying on the cover is a new level of lame. Is it too much to ask that videogame magazines not try to sell issues with a dishonest premise?