This is one game that might become a classic, but it isn't one now, despite a New York Times story on the front page of the business section. A game that requires a credit card and Internet access before the player can get even a glimpse of what's going on had better be incredibly engrossing or at least immediately accessible. Ultima Online is neither. The "undoubted future of interactive entertainment"? God forbid. At best, it might eventually grow into a solid, mature game that delivers the goods, but for now, caveat emptor.

It's too bad Midway is so caught up in the me-too game when it's just children like the Rush series who get hurt. [Dec p.93]

The only addition is Online Everywhere, which lets you check out the live ESPN ticker while still in the game, and it's hardly essential. [Apr 2006, p.93]

But, for various reasons, Paraworld doesn’t hold up next to the latest RTS games. It’s a bit like one of its own dinosaurs. [Dec. 2006, p.76]

There's probably an entertaining game to be made from the disaster that is dating; this isn't it. [Oct 2004, p.87]

But in the end, it doesn't serve gamers, not even the extremely forgiving cadre of adventure game fans. [Sept. 2006, p.63]

It shamelessly copies two Blizzard classics, "WarCraft II" and "Diablo." The problem is that it doesn't copy from either classic particularly well, and the result is a flat, lifeless experience that quickly becomes more of a chore than a pleasure.

Commandos: Strike force tries to shoehorn these series hallmarks into a first-person shooter but fails on nearly every level. [July 2006, p.57]

Black may not be terrible, but it's repetitive and mundane. [May 2006, p.89]

There's simply no way to get your fingers around it all. [Feb 2006, p.93]

Making a short game is less of a sin than padding one with endless combats of attrition. [Nov 2003, p.98]

Rival Interactive had their chance to fix its onerous product, and for all the tweaks, it's still just not enough. [Feb 2003, p.81]

Not even Hitler's plan to fight the war on two fronts was this painfully ill-advised. [July 2006, p.63]

The execution falls flat, and in the end Coliseum plays like a shell of a game. The biggest problem is that there isn't enough to do. [May 2004, p.69]

Suffers from crippling lack of polish, content, and forethought. [Nov 2003, p.93]

Takeda 2 is the sequel to a mostly obscure 2001 game that had the misfortune to be released in the wake of "Shogun: Total War." [May 2006, p.55]

All these great features are thrown out the window due to a suspect simulation engine that simply doesn't make a lot of sense. [June 2003, p.85]

No part of the game is distinctive enough to be particularly terrible either, and there's a blessed lack of extremely shiny surfaces. [Sept 2002, p.75]

The rules are poorly applied, the interface is clumsy, and the pacing is very, very slow.

While it has personality, it's often homely, and despite the welcome addition of a bit of sleaze, it focuses on the more mundane parts of running a casino. [Sept 2003, p.87]

A potentially good tactical strategy game marred by a lack of inspiration.

An excellent game. For your PC. [Oct 2005, p.90]

When getting yourself wet, your vehicle seems intent on steering itself, making what you are really trying to do more difficult than it should be. [Mar 2004, p.82]

A feeling of been there, done that, with some poor game design choices that limit the fun.

Seems like one of the better bland, forgettable shooters out there, if there is such a beast. [Aug 2005, p.72]

Outside of its swanky opening credit sequence and the appearance of the classic Bond theme throughout, it lacks any sense of style or sophistication. [Feb 2003, p.66]

All told, it's no big loss if you decided to give Tony Hawk a rest for a year. [Jan 2006, p.91]

Unfortunately, unless Crypto's race is looking to harvest tedium and repetition from our earthly minds, he's better off just harassing than destroying them. [Sept 2005, p.90]

Most of the guns are uninspired and even boring - even the shotgun seems dull. [Feb 2004, p.60]

Its interface is basic but does the job but the AI is non-existent, the puzzles are needlessly complex, and the awkward free-floating camera bogs down the 3D isometric perspective. [Jan 2004, p.85]

Despite non-existent AI and a lack of polish, the simple mechanics and decent missions provide some minor entertainment. [Oct 2004, p.87]

The result is four cool-looking monsters running through poorly rendered cities that blow up blandly, and arcade thrills nowhere near the level achieved by equally mindless arcade coin-ops 20 years ago. [May 2003, p.85]

With artificial intelligence as unintelligent as it is, the pure thrill of Diplomacy is untranslatable to the computer. [Jan 2006, p.46]

In Daxter, you get great graphics and not much else. [Jun 2006, p.91]

While it functions properly, Motor City Online simply doesn't have anything that makes it worthwhile as an online game... All of the things that make it "online" add up to fluff.

Thanks to your dumb teammates, you'll be on the new island forever. [Oct 2002, p.74]

It contains many individual elements that are quite good, but those elements don't pull together into a cohesive—or enjoyable—whole.

An ambitious mess, a noble mess, certainly a well-intentioned mess, but ultimately a mess nontheless. [Mar 2003, p.78]

On the easier levels, it's a silly exercise in mashing buttons to spew ammo throughout a world of bad physics, cheap animation, and tinny sound. [June 2005, p.90]

But an obtuse and under-documented strategic layer with a bad interface can only get you so far when it comes to recycling the same Dynasty Warrior game yet again. [July 2006, p.93]

There's almost no connection between your keypresses and Lara's movements on-screen. It feels like she's moving through molasses. [Sept 2003, p.74]

Quite possibly the most unpalatable role-playing game concocted in recent memory...A gooey mess of reflex-driven combat, muddled interface, cliched dungeon designs, and useless player decisions. [Nov 2003, p.95]

Curiously absent from your dollhouse accoutrements are law books. [Jan 2003, p.85]

The combat is too simple, the resource system is too complex, and the small flashes of brilliance get lost in the mediocrity of the rest of the design. [July 2005, p.67]

EA Sports apparently loved last year's game so much they they've repackaged it. [Jan 2006, p.59]

Unfortunately, getting there is a dull journey full of leaden exposition, mouse hovering and clicking, and inventory manipulation. [July 2006, p.67]

On the whole, Evil Dead isn't horrifically bad—just surprisingly limp-wristed.

Might be entertaining enough to play except its interface sucks too much enjoyment out of the game. [Mar 2004, p.76]

The lack of support for AI in dogfights, a bad padlock, and a half-assed view system make this a second-rate multiplayer flight sim. [Jan 2003, p.66]

You buy the potions and upgrade your skills and weapons in order to keep winning the chip wars, the Sisyphean point of which is to afford superior preparations for the next war, and so on. [Jun 2006, p.83]

A fair game that is almost completely undone by an interface as archaic as the warfare it presents. [Nov 2005, p.79]

The graphics, aside from being ever so shiny, are entirely unremarkable - they're decent, but nothing more, with rather coarse character design. [Dec 2003, p.95]

Boasts a good selection of showroom-shiny cars and famous tracks, but it lacks options, features controls that border on the unresponsive, and is missing a personality. [May 2003, p.81]

Better yet, find the cigarette burn-covered machine buried in the corner of your local arcade.

Even worse is the enemy AI, which either miraculously sees you or remains unaware of your presence even if you're standing right in front of an enemy soldier. [Nov 2003, p.100]

The entire experience is crippled by an obtuse interface and abysmal documentation. All in all, this is one of the most unstable and frustratingly erratic games to anchor in software stores in quite some time.

Whether you want--or need--to play all of these in the same game remains a question that Pacific Storm is unable to answer. [Jan. 2007, p.65]

All told, it's no big loss if you decided to give Tony Hawk a rest for a year. [Jan 2006, p.91]

Really just a glorified scenario collector. [Mar 2003, p.85]

Despite some appealing graphics, a few compelling moments, and a budget price tag, the reasons to buy Obscure remain...well, you know. [July 2005, p.55]

The developers have hand-placed absolutely everything, robbing the whole game of any sense of exploration or freedom. [June 2003, p.85]

You have to be jonesing for a decidedly old school arcade experience to appreciate Air Raid, and even then, it's fun for maybe 20-30 minutes at a time, if not in total. [Nov 2003, p.101]

It’s an overly straightforward and dull simulation with enough downtime for you to ponder the greater fun you’ll be having playing “Railroads!” in a couple of months. [Dec. 2006, p.78]

If you sometimes had the feeling that less is more while playing "San Andreas," you'll be convinced by this game at nearly every turn. [Feb 2006, p.92]

Anyone shelling out for Land of the Dead is in grave danger of buyer's remorse. [Feb 2006, p.64]

More control of your units is necessary for a strategy title, and more impressive graphics and more complex tasks are important for a city builder. As it stands, this game gets neither right and has little to offer aside from a great concept.

Woody Woodpecker Racing brings little to the genre; even if you don't expect more than a few cheap thrills from a game like this, you're still better off playing... well, you're better off buying a console and playing one of the innumerable superior kart-racing games on your platform of choice.

No other game before or since has so gracefully integrated maintaining apple orchards with setting hundreds of screaming knights on fire. [Aug 2005, p.68]

For a game with such amazing art direction, innovative game ideas, and a dedicated developer, it's a shame that it pimps you down unfairly and destroys your entertainment with double-digit deaths. [Feb 2005, p.69]

If it sounds a little like that other everyday-life game, "The Sims", that's because it is. But only a little. Both games are about your character's struggle to get ahead in the world, but The Guild 2 makes it a struggle for you as well. [Jan. 2007, p.70]

Requires too much of an investment in time to get to the interesting parts, and by then it's too late - the thrill is gone. [Sept 2003, p.80]

As a game designed for entertainment purposes, Restricted Area leaves a great deal to be desired. [Sept 2005, p.57]

Put aside the dated mechanics and grossly clumsy interface, and you're still left with a fairly half-assed port of a Playstation 2 game, barely gussied up for the big show. [Mar 2007, p.66]

The worst thing any game can be is predictable, and FIFA Soccer 2004 is one of the most predictable sports game in recent memory. [Feb 2004, p.72]

There's nothing at all wrong with arcade-style gameplay, but there's something wrong if the action is alternately dull and frustrating, as it is this game. If you're a Ducati devotee or fan of motorcycle racing, prepare for disappointment with this game.

Brutally hard. [July 2005, p.91]

Styled to appeal to the shooter crowd. Unfortunately, it feels as if the developer lavished too much attention on making the violence stylized and realistic, and then just threw a game around it. Great concept, extremely sloppy execution.

There's a few clever puzzles scattered throughout the levels; unfortunately, there's also a few incredibly painful flying and driving sequences as well. [Jan 2003, p.77]

The inevitable galaxy of patches to come will surely help, but for now, the vacuum abides. [Nov. 2006, p.82]

It's designed for people to whom the prospect of merely taking off from LaGuardia and landing at O'Hare is exciting. [Jan. 2007, p.66]

Playing with toy cars should be a lot more entertaining than this. [Oct. 2006, p.77]

It's good for about twenty minutes before it becomes a dull grind and you realize you're basically playing a tech demo ffor a game yet to be created. [Oct. 2006, p.81]

If you have been wondering why so many South Koreans are so excited about this game...well, you'll still be wondering after you play it.

Clever ideas don't make up for shoddy craftsmanship. [Jan 2003, p.75]

It's a hard lesson that designs are not always interchangeable, and is overall one of the most disappointing games of the year. [March 2005, p.72]

If you're looking for the thrill of a pirate's life, frankly, you're better off with the Disney ride that inspired it all. [Oct 2003, p.88]

Until things change, this series is treading water, and it's a tough sell at $40. [Jan. 2007, p.53]

The graphics engine just isn't up to the task. Clipping errors abound, the animation quality is generally poor, and you'll see weird things like floating dogs or soldiers firing their machine gun from two feet away.

More average than appalling. [Feb 2006, p.70]

It's incredibly hard and repetitive, and the stealth gaming is incredibly simple. [Aug 2004, p.59]

A ham-fisted and passionless retreat of "Halo." [Aug 2004, p.70]

A perfect example of how cheap ports don't help anymore. First and foremost, the port has no multiplayer at all. None, nada, zippo. [July 2003, p.78]

Individual combats are fast-paced but extremely repetitive, resulting in a truly brutal leveling grind. [Sept 2005, p.70]

Unfortunately, in the few sad stabs it takes at being its own thing, Field Commander misses the point. [Sept. 2006, p.81]

But there's just too little substance to recommend this to anyone but the "gotta catch 'em all" motorcycle nut. [July 2006, p.87]

Attention to detail doesn't go far when core gameplay is this scattered. You could make a good rugby game for the PC, but Rugby 2004 isn't it. [Mar 2004, p.83]

Farscape the series has been cancelled. The game was not. Nobody wins. [Jan 2003, p.75]

Lacking a concrete sense of direction and any evidence that tender loving care was exercised during its development cycle, the journey unfortunately resembles purgatory more than outright damnation.