The whole thing feels more like feature creep in a box than an expansion pack. [Mar 2006, p.84]

25 to life sets the gaming bar about as low as it can go. Then trips over it. [Mar 2006, p.82]

A total rush job, from start to all-too-sudden finish. [Feb 2006, p.73]

A few patches from fun. [Feb 2006, p.72]

System-wide bugs, which range from the entertaining (my character did a jumping jack each time he left his office) to the annoying (pathfinding issues) to the aggravating (frequent desktop crashes). [Jan 2005, p.106]

A by-the-numbers blast-a-thon. [Feb 2006, p.71]

X3 sometimes morphs into a derivative on-rails shooter during scripted story missions. [Feb 2006, p.74]

If the VC don't kill you, the pesky game-crashing bugs will. [Feb 2006, p.81]

Besides a game-killing lack of a chat function, Diplomacy's negotiation interface makes it impossible to propose long-term deals, except for the all-encompassing "permanent alliance."

Good lord! This game wasn't created, it was excreted... Basically, you'd have more fun putting starved ferrets in a feedbag and strapping it to your crotch. [Jan 2006, p.46]

Next time, use the million-dollar PVP cash prize to improve gameplay. [Oct 2005, p.78]

You will find mothing but carpal-tunnel-inducing mouse clicking, pointless chitchat, and a stat system that plays out like a shallow "Sims" rip-off. [Oct 2005, p.80]

It looks and plays like it was made by two guys in a basement - which, in fact, it was. [Oct 2005, p.78]

Dungeon Lords is a disaster.

A tedious, tasteless mess. [Aug 2005, p.76]

In the end, though, there's just not enough fruit underneath all the rind. If it's an all-in-one medieval strategy game you're after, just Alt-Tab really quickly between "Medieval: Total War" and "Castles II"--that'll come closer than Stronghold 2 does.

If this game is any indication, the SOG soldiers were blind and deaf, and had the tactical sense of lemmings. [Aug 2005, p.76]

A $20 game that plays like a $10 game. [Aug 2005, p.77]

Proof that not everything made in nine months is a bundle of joy. [Aug 2005, p.78]

Simply without depth. [Aug 2005, p.87]

Like David Hasselhoff's singing career, Settlers is popular in Germany and just sort of barely tolerated elsewhere. [June 2005, p.96]

The game plays a lot like "Sims 2" - just without the charm, animation, possibilities, freedom and, and ability to generate a desire to keep it installed. [Apr 2005, p.84]

WCT barely qualifies as a game, let alone "good." [Aug 2005, p.84]

Winning battles is more a result of mass and aggression than tactical coordination. [March 2005, p.76]

The only thing Legacy leaves you with is a feeling of relief when it's over. [Apr 2005, p.88]

A lot like "Freelancer," only boring and with a monthly fee. [May 2005, p.94]

It's the exact same game you've been playing for about the past four years. Except with ninjas. [Feb 2005, p.81]

Don't expect anything pretty, but with this kind of war game, you basically have to accept that the meat is in the mechanics... Solid, smart, and old. [Apr 2005, p.89]

The gameplay is not only less sophisticated but also far less soccer-like than either of the two serious alternatives on the market. [Feb 2005, p.89]

Add in a console-style save system that only lets you save progress at the start of a level, and you've got a guaranteed recipe for infuriation. [Jan 2005, p.96]

Long stretches of boredom punctuated by brief moments of implausibility. [Feb 2005, p.84]

In short, boobs will not make a man endure a bad videogame. [Holiday 2004, p.102]

This putatively naughty game should come with fetish clothing options, dungeon equipment, and the option to call up a friend or five to join our hero and heroine in their erotic adventures, but it doesn't. It's sterilie, soulless, and ultimately a tease that doesn't come close to delivering. What a gyp. [Sept 2004, p.73]

A bad third-person shooter is still bad even with '60s music and Vietnamese prostitutes. [Dec 2004, p.96]

Though it's not an entirely offensive game, in its attempt to be individualistic, Locomotion has learning nothing from other games in the genre and ends up feeling like a 10-year-old game with a 5-year-old coat of paint. [Holiday 2004, p.103]

Alpha Black Zero may not be the worst game ever made, but it may be the most tedious. [Dec 2004, p.93]

For those of you who crave endless realism in your war games, it's probably as realistic a military simulation as you'll get without risking being exposed to IEDs and insurgent attacks. For the rest of us, it simply fails as a game. [Apr 2005, p.87]

An epic disaster of a game derived from a movie that simply shouldn't exist in the first place. [Nov 2004, p.81]

No matter how interesting the real-life situation is, the game manages to make it more boring than missions in most budget shooters. [Sept 2004, p.76]

This game just feels like an insult. Or maybe a practical joke. [Nov 2004, p.80]

You never quite get past the feeling that there are a half-dozen better shooters you could be playing...There's just no reason to play a shooter with this many problems. [Oct 2004, p.80]

Great if you like beautifully rendered landscapes, not so great if you like good A.I. and usuable controls. [Sept 2004, p.72]

It looks like, well, a badly ported PS2 game with washed-out colors, graphical glitches, and only average textures and modeling. This, along with the appallingly bad driving sequences, horrible characters, plentiful cliches, and cringe-inducing dialogue, proves that unlike "Splinter Cell," not all console/PC marriages are made in heaven. [Sept 2004, p.77]

There isn't much variety in character appearance, which is disappointing, since other games are offering an incredible amount of customizability. [Aug 2004, p.74]

You'll frequently dodge the oafish enemies instead of fighting. [Mar 2004, p.84]

Considering their utter lack of intelligence, it'd be more accurate to name these guys "Inbreed." [July 2004, p.70]

With a poor presentation and poor gameplay, War Times feels like an overpriced piece of budgetware that's destined to languish in bargain bins until its desiccated corpse turns to powder and is blown from our memory. [Aug 2004, p.82]

The gamplay in this game about serial murders is even more horrific than its story line. [Feb 2004, p.87]

I used to really love adventure games, but after playing this one, I can't remember why. [Aug 2004, p.79]

A stunning example of why adventure games aren't as popular as they once were. [Aug 2004, p.82]

A long exercise in target practice, with lifeless enemies in dull levels. There's no saving during a mission, the graphics are weak, and there's no team-based action. What's worse, there's just no depth, artistry, or genuine thrills to be had. [Aug 2004, p.79]

A clumsy, series-ending combo of real-time and strategy...You must kind of hang out and gawk at numbers and icons. [July 2004, p.72]

Since only LAN play is supported, it's doubtful you'll ever experience multiplayer. [June 2004, p.86]

Yet another attempt at "Europa Universalis Lite" - one that tries to reduce the depth of EU into a mind-numbing series of repetitive tasks. [June 2004, p.86]

Even if you tolerate Ripper's lack of interactivity because of its swiftly paced, absorbing story, the game's anticlimactic, unsatisfying finale will leave you feeling as frustrated as those original London police were back in 1888. [May 2004, p.89]

If this game game came out four years ago, maybe. Today, no. [Apr 2004, p.86]

A pretty limited fighter, though its online features save it from beingi a complete loss. [Apr 2004, p.83]

I've birthed children in less time than it takes the game CDs to fire up. [Aug 2004, p.83]

A shrug-inducing "so what" game that - judging by the barren servers - seems to be keeping players away in droves. [May 2004, p.86]

Oh yeah, Terminator 3: War of the Machines also has vehicles! Too bad they suck. [Apr 2004, p.84]

Not nearly as amusing as the host of yesteryear, this one delivers a couple of groaners between the 300 questions. [May 2004, p.83]

The best game ever for gamers without the energy to move their thumbs from the A button to the B button on their gamepads. [May 2004, p.89]

If I want impossible, I'll call my mother. [Apr 2004, p.89]

Provides only a been-there-done-that setting and story line. [July 2004, p.75]

All enemies are deaf and have the attention span of a spider monkey on crack. [Apr 2004, p.82]

Boss battles are so routine as to be laughable, and that's about all the laughter you'll be doing, as NOLF's great comedic dialogue is noticeably absent. The entire game feels slapped together. [Feb 2004, p.79]

Adult gamers will find it too basic, children may find it too frustrating, and fans of lord of the Rings will prefer a more authentic Tolkien experience. [Feb 2004, p.73]

A no-frills port of an aged, derivative, repetitive shooter. [Apr 2004, p.85]

Although the vocally overdubbed actors try to give decent performances, Conspiracies' overall quality is so much like a B movie that you'll be surprised no killer tomatoes ever attack - and you just might be praying that they do. [May 2004, p.83]

Your troops waste their limited ammunition like they're in a John Woo movie. [Mar 2004, p.91]

A rare combination of frustration and boredom. [Feb 2004, p.85]

Although Warlords IV is by no means a horrible game, it's something far more damning: strangely joyless and conspicuously missing the spark of enthusiasm that often manages to find its way into even the worst of games.

It will always be clear what's expected of you - in fact, you'll likely identify the killer long before your character does. [Feb 2004, p.87]

What am I afraid of? Bad games, and Nosferatu seriously scares me. [Feb 2004, p.90]

A big step backward for the Commandos franchise. While the game would like to evoke "Saving Private Ryan" and other WWII films, sadly the movie that actually comes to mind while playing is "Groundhog Day," only with Nazis and a Quick Load button.

Save your money by just throwing beer cans at the television. [Feb 2004, p.77]

Fight boredom and micromanagement by avoiding this lame stand-alone expansion.

Ultimately, Starsky & Hutch simply comes off as a poor man's Vice City. A very poor man living off sub-grade, government cheese.

If you can get past the unresponsive controls and don't mind the overall tasteless but campless tone, Bloodrayne still offers only a few hours of moderately entertaining carnage. [July 2003, p.85]

Witless, repetitive, and utterly devoid of interesting strategy elements. [Dec 2003, p.142]

The bimbo of graphic adventure games: both pretty and stupid... When the puzzle solutions aren't illogical, they're horrifically repetitive. [Dec 2003, p.129]

After the novelty wears off, it becomes an exercise in tedium broken only by crashes to the desktop. [Jan 2004, p.122]

A lobotomized first-person shooter. Invisible walls and glass ceilings abound throughout the briny deep, ensnaring players in a boring series of follow-the-leader and circle-strafing style stages. [Dec 2003, p.144]

Fighting endless hoodlums, mercenaries, and thugs is not necessarily a bad thing -- monotonous fighting in repetitive missions is. [Dec 2003, p.136]

Unbalanced, tedious, buggy, and lacking in imagination - and those are its good points. [Nov 2003, p.134]

The concept wasn't bad, but N:D's uninspiring execution and lack of depth make for a forgettable gaming experience... Rock/paper/scissors is a more challenging strategy game. [Nov 2003, p.136]

The game's biggest annoyance - the finite nuber of saves allowed during each mission. [Nov 2003, p.140]

What stinks more than anything is SOE's treatment of the game's devoted fans, who find themselves spurned by the developer's hope that a dumbed-down gaming experience will appeal to a wider audience. [Feb 2006, p.76]

It has a few great moments, but it seems like an incomplete collection of half-finished ideas. [Nov 2003, p.126]

Let me put this as nicely as I possibly can: Strategy First could have put a rotting dead rat in a shoebox and charged $20, and it would still have been a better value than Mistmare. [Dec 2003, p.131]

And thus gaming's highest-profile franchise is run into the ground and kicked repeatedly in the head. [Oct 2003, p.118]

The dearth of vital economic information, lack of a true economy, and repetitiveness make this a tedious exercise at best. [Oct 2003, p.119]

This stunning mood is crushed by an interface that has all the charm and convenience of a TPS report. [Sept 2003, p.95]

Lame story, lame racing, lame A.I. - lame game. [July 2003, p.86]

The gameplay, already uninspired and annoying on the consoles, is an uncontrollable mess on PC and not even worth it for fanboys. [Sept 2003, p.100]

Until someone boxes up syphilis and tries to sell it at retail, Postal 2 is the worst product ever foisted upon consumers. [July 2003, p.90]

Further compounding the game into sheer mediocrity is the downward spiral of the A.I. [Sept 2003, p.102]

All tension drains away as the game turns into the equivalent of a deathmatch against sheep. [July 2003, p.74]