As ridiculous and entrenched as its name. [June 2005, p.87]

It's like any flat stretch of road in the country, nice and smooth with some decent scenery that gets you where you have to go. [Jan 2006, p.89]

Dear Tricky, we miss you. [Jan 2006, p.91]

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

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

Dear Tricky, we miss you. [Jan 2006, p.91]

It matches intense, fast-paced action with a squirrely camera and imprecise aiming. Needless to say, that isn't a particularly compelling combination. [Feb 2004, p.77]

The real missed opportunity in Ground Control II is that such great visuals are built into a game design that smothers you in too much busy work to enjoy them. [Sept 2004, p.64]

Dear Tricky, we miss you. [Jan 2006, p.91]

There's simply not a sound gameplay model at work here. [Feb 2004, p.70]

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]

Games like this are the reason micromanagement is a four-letter word. [July 2005, p.57]

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

They don't feel much different from regular guns and planes. [Dec 2003, p.86]

There just isn't enough new here to make FIFA 07 a worthwhile purchase. [Jan. 2007, p.63]

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

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

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

All told, it's big loss if you decided to give Tony Hawk a rest for a year. [Jan 2006, p.91]

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

The gameplay is just monotonous, which slams the nail in its coffin. [Dec p.57]

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]

Don't be fooled: Your score is not an accurate measurement of intelligence. But whether you buy this game is. [July 2006, p.91]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

The cow is missing a lot of the inscrutability - and therefore personality - had in the last game. [Jan 2006, p.49]

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

Although the anhancements are certainly welcome, spotty AI and blatant computer cheating make it impossible to appreciate the game as a whole. [Jan 2003, p.84]

Combined with the recent God of War, a pattern seems to be developing: the gifts Ares bestows come at the cost of a clad torso. [Dec p.88]

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]

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

In the end, the thing you remember most isn't the graphics engine, the nifty spell and item construction, or even the awful voice acting; it's the frustration of slogging through a poorly balanced game that substitutes saving and reloading for gameplay.

You can finish the entire single-player game in a single evening, with time left over to take a dinner break, watch an hour or two of television, and then turn in early. Some demos are longer. [Feb 2003, p.75]

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

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.

Combined with the recent God of War, a pattern seems to be developing: the gifts Ares bestows come at the cost of a clad torso. [Dec p.88]

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.

Combined with the recent God of War, a pattern seems to be developing: the gifts Ares bestows come at the cost of a clad torso. [Dec p.88]

Pure blah from the opening missions in snowy Stalingrad to the last hurrah on the beaches of Normandy. [Jan 2004, p.67]

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

Amped 3 aims to keep you distracted by constantly nickel-and-diming you with a hundred mini-challenges, each with its own pointless reward, spread across a dozen mountainsides. [Feb 2006, p.87]

Another second-rate port of a mediocre console shooter. [Feb 2004, p.66]

It features great graphics, a slightly modified version of "EverQuest's" gameplay model, and lots of frustrating problems. True to its theme, you should only consider playing it in the future.

Adds two new main areas for adventurers to explore. But the puzzles found in each are sadistically hard and way too obscure. [Oct 2004, p.84]

New year, same old arcade b-ball. [Jan 2006, p.61]

The most maddeningly convoluted gaming experience this side of Derek Smart. [Feb 2006, p.67]

Brutally hard. [July 2005, p.91]

A lame expansion... Towers, cars, and six worlds. These are the sort of additions that belong in a patch. [May 2003, p.79]

There is a significant difference between the two games—"Age of Empires" is a lot of fun. "Fate of the Dragon" is not.

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]

Rip-off. [Oct 2005, p.92]

Unless you're just here to admire teh decent-ish graphics, suck it up and play "Combat Mission" already. [Aug 2004, p.60]

It all comes down to you and a rock, floating together in space, with all the action and serene beauty of the docking sequence from "2001." Play some Strauss and go make another sandwich. [Sept 2003, p.78]

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

The racing is at best mediocre and at worst awful, so it's a good thing they included missions you can complete for cash. While they're a terrific idea (more variety is a very good thing), they're also completely brain dead.

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

The lack of difficulty is only surpassed by the lack of control. [Apr 2004, p.74]

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]

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

Do yourself a favor and forget this Keepsake. [Sept. 2006, p.76]

Too bad Star Fury fails so spectacularly at creating the sense of moving a ship through space. [Feb 2004, p.80]

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

Imagine a murky graphics engine that blurs as it moves, is way too dark and missing a gamma setting, and gets frequently swallowed up by flashy spell effects.

This design alley is a dead end. [Jan 2004, p.80]

If you got a Nintendo DS, there are just too many better way to, ahem, feel the magic. [May 2006, p.91]

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

As an urban sandbox, Tycoon City: New York is passable. As a strategy game, it's the dumbest deal since that urban legend about the Indians selling Manhattan to the Dutch. [July 2006, p.61]

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]

You've basically got a barely interactive "Splinter Cell for Dummies." [Sept 2005, p.91]

If golf was indeed dull, as many non-fans wrongly suspect, True Swing Golf would be the perfect golf game. [Apr 2006, p.90]

After two moderately interesting "Soul Reaver" sequels, the "Legacy of Kain" series ahs finally been stripped of any worthwhile gameplay, storyline, or atmosphere, leaving only a classic example of a dull, unimaginative, soulless game design... Please someone put a stake in the series, because it's done. [Sept 2002, p.80]

Just say no to half-assed porting, folks. [Mar 2007, p.69]

Majestic doesn't really need you. It's all about watching and waiting while other characters do stuff.

The AI improvements make it worth picking up if you don't have a console system, and if you like big dumb vaguely hockey-like fun, but just barely. [Jan 2005, p.65]

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]

A pretty bad role-playing game published here in the states by folks who should know better. [Feb 2006, p.92]

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]

It's pretty much more of the same. [Feb 2004, p.79]

A Johnny-come-lately budgetware version of "Majesty." [Dec 2004, p.88]

Unfortunately, the arcade game is neither unique nor exciting. It's probably best to save your spare change for better things.

You've basically got a barely interactive "Splinter Cell for Dummies." [Sept 2005, p.91]

The PSP version is similarly structured as a set of constrictive quests through three areas that are tied together by a contrived collecting game in which you gather coins, here called “secrets”. [Mar 2006, p.88]

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

One of those half-baked ports of a console game that someone figured might squeeze a few bucks out of PC owners. [Feb 2004, p.77]

Toss in s shoddy padlock system that provides dramatic views of your plane but tends to throw off your aim completely, and you end up with an arcade game that's more difficult to play than a full-blown simulation. [July 2006, p.63]

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]

To be fair, the humor is almost invisible when you're actually playing S.W.I.N.E., which is an entirely conventional real-time strategy game.

As you spend more time with the game, you realize that much of it is out of your control, thanks to the most annoying and unpredictable AI since HAL 9000. [May 2003, p.76]

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

The lack of polish is most obvious in the awful pacing and terrible controls. [Feb 2006, p.62]

The most egregious crime is the game's interface. It's a monstrosity of a design, one full of unnecessary busywork. [Oct. 2006, p.69]

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]

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]

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]

It's a short, vacuous game that's over quickly and even more quickly forgotten. [Feb 2006, p.93]