An addictive game that's quick to play, easy to learn, delightfully detailed, and almost infinitely replayable. [Oct 2002, p.72]

The combination of fully adjustable flight parameters and complex 3D plane-editing tools turns X-Plane into the best "what-if" sim on the market. [May 2004, p.67]

As long as you approach it with an understanding that the process is much better than resolution, Missing is one of the most gratifying adventure games you can play. [Oct 2004, p.82]

One of those games that never realize their full potential because of design miscues. [Jan 2006, p.47]

The problems with Sam have nothing to do with the bad guys; there's a lot of them, and they're all weird. [Jan 2006, p.42]

Despite a name that sounds like a new blend at Starbucks, there's a lot to like about Shadowgrounds. [Oct. 2006, p.70]

it's ultimately just another tactical shooter to throw on the growing pile of games that make you truly appreciate your mouse and keyboard. [Dec p.92]

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]

The story and setting have some charm, and there's plenty of content along the way. [Dec p.90]

But as a hybrid of the two genres, SpellForce has a funky sort of synergy that elevates it above the sum of its ho-hum parts. [May 2004, p.58]

By the end, even if you've blasted your way through the entire game in under ten hours, you get a strange sense of years having elapsed not far removed from an absinthe hangover. [Aug 2004, p.54]

The perfect arcade classic package for hardcore retro gamers, parents looking for something simpler and less disturbing for kids and, of course, thirty-somethings looking to recapture a little of their past glory.

One of its most remarkable accomplishments is the way gunfights play out like gunfights rather than shooting galleries. [July 2003, p.88]

Second Manassas is not a surprise; it's testimony that these guys know what they are doing. [July 2006, p.67]

It's brilliant and obscure and like all the best satire, you probably don't even know that it's laughing at you. [Oct 2005, 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, more than any other adventure game, Evidence puts you in a darkly atmospheric world: part fiction, part history, part reality. [Feb. 2007, p.70]

Forgettable. [Sept 2003, p.82]

The writers spent so much time copying classic LucasArts adventures that they forgot to make the game enjoyable on its own. [Feb. 2007, p.74]

It appeals to a man's primal (well, juvenile, at any rate) need to blow stuff up, that part of the pre-adolescent male psyche that puts fireworks in model airplanes, melts GI Joes, and burns down popsicle stick cabins.

This add-on won't win over any new converts, but it will keep the old ones happy. That is what expansions are really all about.

It's a visually sumptuous treat, with incredibly graphic design and tons of interesting details tucked into every corner. [July 2003, p.73]

Kingdoms doesn't blow open the walls of the RTS genre, it just bends them outwards a bit.

Bright, colorful, and absurdly caroon-y, Worms 3D is great fun to watch. [Aug 2004, p.64]

Despite the amount of promise left unfulfilled in this second add-on, House Party will be a welcome addition if you are still actively nurturing your sims.

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

When the missions remain outdoors, Hidden & Dangerous stays fun. It's when you have to go into houses that it begins to fall apart.

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.