There are intermittent slow-downs and brief stoppages during play, particularly during aerial acrobatics. The game seems to prefer Voodoo cards over the NVIDIA line, so you may have better luck if your machine is equipped with Voodoo magic.

It's a brilliant toy but also a jumbled mishmash of original ideas and mundane gameplay that fails to deliver a cohesive single- or multiplayer experience.

It's overcooked and to slick, through redeemed by the sheer quantity of stuff you can do. [Dec p.90]

It's overcooked and to slick, through redeemed by the sheer quantity of stuff you can do. [Dec p.90]

It’s this emphasis on 3D exploration, as well as older style of gameplay, that might recommend the game to PC RPG folk, assuming they can get past the heavy-duty anime aesthetic. [Mar 2006, p.86]

If they could have made it into the underpinnings of a stronger combat system, perhaps the other areas of the game where they played it safe wouldn't have seemed so grossly rehashed. [July 2005, p.88]

A driving game with no damage model and no good reason to stay on the track. [July 2005, p.85]

Nintendo sweetened the pot with what feel like dozens of mini-games, and you're liable to find two or three that can hold your attention. [Sept. 2006, p.81]

There's the requisite little Goth girl with long black hair to 'creep you out.' Thanks to its overuse, it's become the lens flare of horror. [Jan 2006, p.48]

The developers at Bizarre Creations have made a beautiful thing, but they've given you no reason to enjoy it. [Feb 2006, p.87]

An amazing technological showcase for the PSP, but makes the biggest series in gaming feel small. [Jan 2006, p.86]

This console-friendly redux has just enough polish to make a bog-standard virtual murderer simulator seem fresh. [July 2005, p.87]

And if it's only disappointing because it's exactly as expected, with no surprises, there's little question that it's expertly produced. [Nov 2004, p.78]

The second game in this box, the multiplayer Splinter Cell, is as bold as the single-player is mediocre. [July 2004, p.60]

When EA Sports decides to fix what's broken, specifically the dropped passes and deep passing game, it'll have another A-list football game on its hands. [Oct 2005, p.89]

It feels like exactly what it is: a small and perhaps insignificant part of something much larger and(hopefully)more interesting. [Sept. 2006, p.57]

When EA Sports decides to fix what's broken, specifically the dropped passes and deep passing game, it'll have another A-list football game on its hands. [Oct 2005, p.89]

While some features are better, the most important part—the AI—has received little attention. While it's still a fun game, it's not much of an improvement over last year's edition.

While it's rough around the edges, playing more like a prototype than a finished product, there's finally a reason to get excited about the future of the series. [Jan 2004, p.70]

It ups the ante on art and style while taking its attempts at being "cinematic" too seriously. This makes it nearly impossible to ignore the general level of mediocrity to the characterizations, writing, and storytelling despite its mostly solid action. [Jan 2004, p.62]

Hardcore combat sim fans with equally serious hardware and a cast-iron stomach for aspirin will find themselves engrossed in a simulation of incredible depth and subtlety.

The missions can be skin-crawly tense and the strategic planning is a joy. Nevertheless, poor AI, coupled with mundane and buggy graphics give the game a "late-beta" feel.

Just because it's the only big-budget PC football game on the market is now excuse for complacency. [Dec 2004, p.79]

Of drive-in movie reviewer Joe Bob Brigg's infamous three B's, Giants' developers in a politic move took out two (Blood and Breasts). The third, Beasts, is still enough to carry the game, though the addition of a fourth B—Bugs—is certainly regrettable.

Where the actual game experience falls short, the online community experience impresses. [Apr 2006, p.89]

While the AI is good on the field, it's terrible in the front office. [June 2005, p.57]

A solid if somewhat yeoman-like sci-fi strategy game. [Mar 2004, p.79]

When you take the game as a whole you realize that the stunning art direction writes checks the gameplay can't possibly cash. Playing Alice is a stunningly average experience.

Still brutally, brilliantly short. [Jan 2006, p.51]

The geography is often stunning and shows a flair for the otherworldly that puts the more expensive landscapes of "Star Wars Galaxies" to shame. [Jan 2004, p.68]

When you need a quality action scene, you call on the chicken; Is this a future star? [Jan 2006, p.55]

It's a virtual, and literal, bummer. SimGolf is a fantastic game, by far Meier's most playful project to date, marred by all-too typical PC game glitches.

It's a big dumb completely over-the-top cartoon, the game equivalent of "Red Dawn." Shut off your brain and enjoy the explosive ride. [May 2003, p.70]

There's an odd balance of atypical race cars and super accessible gameplay in GT Legends, but it's a successful one. [Jun 2006, p.67]

Once you've seen the new tricks, Tetris is still just Tetris. [Jun 2006, p.92]

Red Alert 2 can be both fascinating and bewildering, neither of which amounts to much when you are launching a tank rush in multiplayer games.

Because the game adheres so much to real-world city-building, it's harder and harder to build the city of your dreams. [Apr 2003, p.76]

Although there's a lot of new content, it's concentrated almost solely in the Atlanteans. [Dec 2003, p.90]

Marches behind its predecessor as one of the most polished tactical shooters ever released. [Jan 2006, p.44]

There is so much to do in this game that if you like space opera strategy, you’ll have to have it... One of the better strategy games of 1996, but one with significant flaws. Good, yes; a classic, no.

An enjoyable game for its 10-12 hours. It's still better played on a console, but if your siblings have the PS2 cornered, the PC version will do just fine. [Mar 2004, p.80]

For all its clumsy new baggage and rushed feel, Homeworld 2 takes itself seriously, designed from the ground up as a reward to the faithful rather than an olive branch to the casual newcomer. [Dec 2003, p.84]

With solid netcode, short sharp snappy rounds, and game modes that focus the action without limiting it, this is punishing lethal gunplay at its best. [June 2003, p.75]

If you don't have DOOM II and you've got a Win95 P90Mhz or above, this is the best version to buy! For beginners, it makes loading those .WAD files as simple as pointing and clicking, and setting up a multiplayer game is just as easy.

Quotation forthcoming. [Nov 2005]

Crimson Skies comes with a few features that aren't mentioned in the manual, such as hardware compatibility problems that can cause lockups or even make the game impossible to launch on some machines.

Quotation forthcoming. [Nov 2005]

One of the most difficult, frustrating, and maddening space sims you'll ever play. In that sense it's brilliant, because you will play it, even while you bang your head against your monitor glass.

Quotation forthcoming. [Nov 2005]

May have been the first game to blaze the "stealthy action" trail, but the irony is that more recent PC offerings (such as "Thief") have since done it better, which leaves this port showing its age.

Gives you a lot of things to do, but it's unlikely to light the old sim fire the way you might remember it. [July 2005, p.64]

A technically excellent, but ultimately shallow and mechanical, experience. [Mar 2003, p.77]

All that appeal is present in Legend, but it's attached to only half of a brilliant game. And in the end, half of a new Lara Croft game adventure turns out to be better than none at all. [July 2006, p.55]

Neverwinter Nights 2 has enough pluses and a solid enough core design to make it compulsively playable. [Jan. 2007, p.46]

The expansion levels are uniformly superb in both single and multiplayer. But make no mistake, Desert Siege is for expert players only. [Sept 2002, p.85]

The PC controls are so awkward that even when you know what to do and where to go, you find that you really need 360-degree character rotation to avoid staggering drunkenly into certain death. [Mar 2004, p.81]

The sense of speed is superb, particularly with the visual assistance. [Feb 2004, p.73]

This latest effort seems mired in a war between greatness and mediocrity—and mediocrity has the upper hand.

There's plenty of depth, just not enough twists and turns not involving the streets you're tarring. [March 2005, p.82]

Outstanding 3D graphics and unit animations combine with excellent music and sharp interfaces to create a compelling medieval Japanese setting filled with magic and mysticism.

It will take at least a full game or two (or three) before you have any idea what you are doing, but even before you learn the ropes, Europa 1400: The Guild is strangely addictive. [Apr 2003, p.85]

Patches are in the works (one was available shortly after the game shipped), and fans are already modding the game to make the Dynasty mode actually work. [July 2004, p.63]

The whole thing is so over the top that it ends up being like a B-movie gore-fest – more silly than scary. Still, plenty of folk are going to be offended. Once past the blood-hook, though, the game is a mixed bag.

The best pure simulation of pool currently available for the PC, but it lacks much in the way of frills and simple user-friendliness and warmth.

In the end, The Sims does mimic real life: if you aren't happy, new stuff is only a fleeting solution.

The framework is there for a solid game with a compelling, if not entirely original, story. [Jan 2003, p.74]

It does the hard stuff that most game neglect so well, but it either phones in or omits entirely the easy stuff. [Sept 2004, p.72]

You'll get your dozen hours of fun out of Bookworm Adventures, but you'll want to go back to "Bookworm" for more serious wordplay. [Mar 2007, p.70]

May not be the reinvention of the wheel, but it's certainly the best "Tolkien game" to date. [March 2005, p.70]

Were it not for performance issues, Hitman: Blood Money would be a worthwhile play for annyone into the franchise's nihilistic humor. {sept. 2006, p.75]

While Most Wanted occasionally shows signs of screwing up the balance and flying off the road, it generally rights itself before it spins out of control. [Mar 2006, p.64]

For both better and worse, Quake IV parties like it's still 1999. [Jan 2006, p.40]

The combination of slow pacing and boring, nondescript environments makes for too many dull stretches. [Feb 2006, p.86]

Quotation forthcoming. [Jan 2005]

A first-rate baseball title, assuming you can ignore the shocking number of bugs that ruin the single-player. [June 2005, p.91]

It's just not particularly inspired. It's also amazing how much licensed cars are missed. [Oct 2003, p.85]

The kind of design innovation that could make this game great, yet ends up demonstrating the game's schizophrenia. [Jan 2006, p.56]

Empires isn't flashy or exotic enough to be crowned the new event horizon of the now officially clogged "historical" real-time strategy wheelhouse, but it's likable and shinier than most. [Feb 2004, p.64]

NASCAR Heat's glaring shortcomings rip the believability out of the game after its graphics and driving suck you right in.

It's almost more fun to watch than it is to play.

It tries almost nothing new. It's like a K-Tel greatest hits album. Yeah, sure, you've heard these songs a million times, but they're all good and it's nice to have them in one place.

The only thing separating it from, say, another dystopian gadget-heavy sci-fi shooter like "Project: Snowblind" is the marketing budget. [Feb 2006, p.85]

The new dual-saber and double-bladed staff make for one hell of a lightshow, but they don't have the strategy and finesse of Jedi Outcast's simpler sabers. [Nov 2003, p.94]

While it's incredibly playable and entertaining for 10 hours or so, it's also limiting and linear. [Nov 2003, p.99]

It doesn't take much to turn a potentially brilliant text-based sports simulation into an average one. [May 2006, p.55]

The missions, while varied, are wildly uneven in difficulty, and many are totally unsuited for the sort of unit that you're ostensibly commanding...It is, however, extremely good-looking, great sounding, and very entertaining.

It's a respectable johnny-come-lately, rough edges tempered by its newness and straight-arrow Leave It To Beaver charm. It's beach reading, basically.

As the culmination of an epic, multi-part story, the finale mostly leaves you asking, "That's it?" It's a shame, because Syberia II is otherwise one of the most enchanting adventure games of the past few years. [June 2004, p.76]

If you are looking for believable characters, good acting and dialogue, lots of bloody, horror-style vampire action, and a nice looking smooth 3D engine, you'll want to look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you are a history buff entertained by a more thoughtful experience, have the desire to play master sleuth, or really have a thing for Tim Curry and the Gabriel Knight series, give this a try.

Don't be surprised if, when you're done - and maybe even well before - you end up feeling like you've gorged yourself on a big old gaming Twinkie. Tasty and sweet, for sure, but ultimately somewhat unfulfilling. [Nov 2005, p.66]

When matched up against the complexity and challenge of similar PC titles like "TRON 2.0," the compromises made in the name of console game design are painfully evident. [Mar 2004, p.67]

There's no real AI; soldiers have some behaviors, but everything is as scripted as a presidential debate. [Feb 2005, p.58]

Still, it's hard to escape the mild letdown of discovering, yet again, that this year's Madden is a lot like last year's Madden. [Nov. 2006, p.79]

It never really takes off, seeming perpetually stuck in neutral rather than shifting to the higher gear it feels like it should achieve. [Jan 2005, p.64]

The game plays as if it's on a cocaine buzz... It's packed with non stop dunks, supersonic fast breaks, and point guards that block three-pointers with relative ease. [Feb 2003, p.84]

Overall, my two main complaints with Rifles are that it feels too generic and that, despite the delayed development, there's a feeling it was rushed out the door before it was completely polished.

With the Stetchkov Syndicate, the bar continues to plummet in terms of how much we can expect in our expansion packs. [May 2006, p.46]

Taking the speed of a play down a couple of notches may give the game more authenticity, but everything else feels unfinished. [Feb 2004, p.62]