How much do you enjoy puzzles in your adventure games? Do you really, really love them? You had better if you're going to play Rhem 2, because your answer to that question is critical to your enjoyment of this game. Rhem 2 is a game geared toward a very specific audience: adventure gamers who love puzzles and don't need a story.

Spin aside, for those with a taste for the creepy/weird and a willingness to see through the grime of the world into the heart of the spirit, Bad Mojo is an extraordinary adventure.

SpellForce enlisted my involvement and playing dedication with the incredible opening cinematic, the brilliant tutorial and, ultimately, the absolutely captivating game adventure itself.

I don't know why we are subjected to an endless barrage of these kinds of games being fobbed off on us in some kind of misguided effort to turn back the hands of time, gaming-wise.

For those who've never played the original, Bad Mojo Redux is a must-have. Load it up and see what all the shouting was about. For those who've played the Win3.1 version, Bad Mojo Redux is what the game should have looked like and, when coupled with the companion DVD, is the deal of the year.

Its story made me want to find out more about Randolph's search, the puzzles kept me entertained and the hunt for Easter eggs had me clicking like a madwoman.

If you can get past the horrible voice acting and the tedious backtracking, you're in for a good scare. If you dare.

If you love the T.V. show and/or have any interest in this kind of detective game, Law & Order: Dead on the Money is a must-purchase.

I'm pleased to award East Side Story a solid Thumb Up, highly recommending it to any fan of a good story with interesting characters in an attractive and unusual locale.

Fritz 9 expands upon the excellent versions of the past two years with updated graphics, broader tutorials, helping tools and an expanded database. If you're going to buy one program, this is the one, especially since it includes a $35 value PlayChess.com membership.

AGON is a lovely game, beautifully constructed, refreshingly different from the usual adventure title. The makers have done everything right. Interface and other technical features are flawless and couldn't be better. Graphics are colorful and clear, if not outstanding. Voice acting and ambient sounds are exemplary. Most importantly, the essential idea of a journey of discovery rewarded episodically by a fascinating new board game leads this reviewer to an enthusiastic Gold Star.

Shadow Hearts is in turn tragic and comic, deeply philosophical and completely fluffy, and overall a great gaming experience that I was sorry to see come to an end.

The Sting! has bite! It's a hit. There may be some rough edges (blocky graphics, clunky camera, spastic movement), but the overall play and fun far outweigh such picky faultfinding.

For many, this general creepiness of visuals and sounds, coupled with fear of the unknown, will be sufficient. For this gamer, more is needed, leading to my mixed rating ("maybe yes, maybe no").

The attempt to put an emphasis on "adventure" in this "action/adventure" is most commendable; as is the use of a party with different skills.

Wild Earth picked up three prizes at the 2003 Independent Game Festival: Game of the Year, Innovation in Game Design, and Innovation in Visual Arts. All well-deserved. Even three years later, it remains a stunner.

Simply stated, TOS is a mediocre puzzle game at best. It really is a shame because the designers came so close to crafting a game that would forever reside on your shelf with the classics.

Arkane's previous offering, Arx Fatalis, shares many general similarities but lacks Dark Messiah's energetic, if somewhat ill-fated, attempts to bring physics, stealth and a variety of combat options into the mix of a game that may not live up to all of its potential but still delivers the goods where they count.

If you're in the mood for a shooter with style, action, and lasting value, you're better off with “Serious Sam” than with XIII.

If you like ancient Egypt, challenging puzzles with actual clues, and first-person exploration of fascinating environments, “Riddle of the Sphinx” is for you.

Gamers the world over would thrill to play a soup-to-nuts remake of X-COM, updated with modern tech but otherwise essentially the same. In trying to mimic X-COM but also leverage original ideas, Altar's UFO series has succeeded only in highlighting its shortcomings - shortcomings particularly egregious in this disappointing installment.

Overall, Heretic Kingdoms is fun, fun, fun and destined to be a sleeper hit. The few niggles never really affected my enjoyment of the game. With its engaging story and completely different skill system, it's definitely worth your while to pick it up and play.

Atmosphere. Jonathan Boakes is a master at creating atmosphere. With lovely yet creepy visual settings, a story with secrets and ghosts, spine-tingling ambient sounds, The Lost Crown presents a tale sure to attract and basically please most adventure game players. But is a spooky atmosphere enough?

I always appreciate it when a game treats its players as if they were intelligent adults, and Post Mortem does that in spades.

For the moment, Nosferatu is a terrific idea, beautifully realized, that is a just a patch or two away from greatness.

Trace Memory is a cracker-jack adventure game developed and beautifully suited for the DS system. It's not at the level and complexity of the best adventure titles for the PC, but it's not reasonable to expect that from a handheld title. What it does bring to the table is an engaging, wonderfully done and integrated story with facilitating puzzles.

Though it pains me to do it, the best rating I can give this, the 14th entry in the Nancy Drew series, is "average." It's a good-looking game with some enjoyable challenges, but the two stories it tells have nothing to do with each other, effectively denying players one of the basic satisfactions of mystery fiction.

One of the best adventure games of 2004 and likely the best ever to deal with a futuristic, Orwellian theme of corruption and conspiracy. Story, dialogue, character development, settings, artwork, acting, and music are all superb.

The simulation, viewed on its own, is quite compelling. Offered in a different context, its analytical depth would reward hours of study. Unfortunately, Traffic has framed it with all of the taste and restraint of a tatty traveling shooting gallery.

It is so much like Rhem 2 that it feels like the same game in a slightly different setting, which is exactly what it is. The faults I found grating but forgivable in Rhem 2 were magnified by their reappearance in Rhem 3. Some people won't see the lack of story and the ancient game engine as faults. Great news for them. But my time with Rhem 3 was split between interest and frustration.

I would recommend this game for the good story line and the beautiful graphics, but if you want a game that has more adventuring, look for another.

As breathtaking as Clock Tower 3 is to look at, the gameplay is somewhat ... blah. I think it was the sameness of it all—find an item, return said item to its owner, watch incredibly gorgeous cutscene, meet up with mentally unbalanced mini-boss, destroy him/her ... lather, rinse, repeat.

The measure of a puzzle game is not, of course, how pretty it looks or how convincing it sounds. The measure is how well it plays. I am happy to report that Safecracker 2006 plays beautifully. There are some familiar puzzles, some unfamiliar puzzles, and some very clever twists on the whole idea of what constitutes a puzzle.

Initially, the game impresses with attractive settings, decent voice acting and the promise of a thoughtful mystery to be solved. Unfortunately, this becomes bogged down by static scenes, poor character movement control, obscure pixel-hunting and the wearying need to redo conversations.

It's hard to envision a better first adventure game for a preteen person—girl or boy. The story is "safe," interesting, and in a wide-open western setting replete with legends, romance and novel characters.

Despite all my griping, Dark Fall really is an impressive first effort for the one-person design team and is actually better than some recent big-company releases. I'm not sorry I played it but neither am I gaga over it. How's that for decisiveness?

An exciting and diverse experience, easy on the beginner yet providing harder modes for the more experienced player.

So often during the game, I wished for direct control of Lea instead of being saddled with this novel but frequently frustrating secondary approach. Instead of cluttering the monitor with multiple screens, let Lea do it herself!

And Then There Were None is, as the developers hoped, a "loving tribute" to the classic Agatha Christie novel on which it is based. With a sterling script, fascinating characters, superb voice acting, beautifully detailed graphics, and sensibly practical puzzles, it ranks among the best adventure games of the last couple of years.

I will say this: those who love “X-Com” will like this game. Those who love strategy will like this game. But no one will ever love this game.

With an original concept and less cliché-mongering, we could be bearing witness to a rising star. For now, though, it flickers with dim promise on the horizon, catching our eye but not holding us long enough to do much more than raise a finger and point.

But the fact is "X-Com" is twelve years old, and memory has a way of polishing off the burrs and nits that flaw a game, leaving you with only the hard candy shell of perfection. UFO: Aftershock cannot measure up any more than "UFO: Aftermath" did, but it hits a lot closer to the mark.

Seriously scary and atmospheric without being horrifying, more of an elegant Vincent Price scare than an 80s slasher movie. Think Goth Disney, and you've got the right idea.

Still, as I indicated above, Riddle is a nice little game (much less than 10 hours long) but not at a first-tier level. It's too short, too easy, and too lifeless. Like Secrets of Da Vinci (a better game), it emphasizes puzzles over people contact.

A fine game for the adult adventurer who enjoys dark spy novels and also is willing to tolerate a bit of "consolitis" in her/his gaming experience.

Runaway 2 improves on its predecessor in every way. It's bigger, more colorful, even more wacky. Locations and characters are outlandish, as is the storyline. Obscure puzzles and hot spots, as well as occasional repetitiveness, still plague this release. But I would still give The Dream of the Turtle a hearty recommendation, especially if you enjoyed "Runaway 1."

Culpa Innata is one of the finest adventure games of 2007. Although not without flaws (graphics, pathfinding, wordiness), it offers a solid police procedural within an engrossing futuristic setting.

There are some gameplay merits of The New Nightmare—including two distinct and interwoven styles of play, an eerie atmosphere, an interesting underlying narrative, and generally more cerebral than monster-bashing activities (except for the last quarter). These strengths are diluted, unfortunately, by the multiplatform limitations imposed on the PC version by the developer.

What it will do is make you use your brain in order to survive and escape from the wrecked and sinking city. For that, Disaster Report gets a thumbs up!

As I drifted from place to place looking at the pretty pictures and listening to the dark, I found myself asking, "Where's the game?" For the majority of Lights Out, I felt that I was simply wandering through a museum - lots of things to look at or read, but not much else.

With a compelling narrative, intriguing setting, stellar acting, gorgeous graphics and character animations, Evil Under the Sun is one of the two finest detective/adventure games I've ever played—the other being Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.. This isn't a game to be "beaten;" rather, it's a journey to be savored, reflected upon, remembered.

It is really the same old fable of greed and evil and hope and redemption wearing a fancy new dress and the latest shade of Revlon lipstick.

It's a fairly even mix of the good—high production quality, some fun puzzles, pretty solid story—the bad—too linear, too easy, too many timed puzzles—and the ugly—the aforementioned underwater maze.

Stupid Invaders is fun and funny, a masterful blend of high art and low humor. (I am glad that computer-generated odors are not yet a reality.) It is my new favorite game of all-time, displacing even “The Longest Journey” and “Grim Fandango.”

It's the realism that makes the supernatural elements seem so menacing, the beautifully designed, multi-layered puzzles with their much-appreciated clues, the dark atmosphere, lovely graphics, and the restrained, perfectly pitched sounds that make this game an experience.

An excellent sequel—with better graphics, twice the length, a greater degree of difficulty. It has a few bugs (get patch 1.01) but should run fine on even minimum-specification systems.

With very, very few adventure titles can I say: "If this was a book, I'd like to read it." Journey falls into that category.

A magnificent tribute to the 1983 coin-op Lair and a highly entertaining game for today's players. It offers a simple, almost relaxing format of fighting/jumping/adventuring set in a huge and vividly colorful castle. What more can one ask from a video game?

The PC game does little to replicate the depth of the rich, magical yarn that is woven throughout the Harry Potter series.

All in all, this is a sweet confection of a game that could have given more to chew on as regards some of the puzzles, but it was still humorous and fun, with some excitement thrown in besides.

Unlike its predecessor, playing this game is not an exercise in rage management—it is challenging but logical, difficult but fun.

As mentioned earlier, the first couple of hours are novel and motivating, but the next twenty, through four major missions, are much less involving.

Indeed, A Quiet Weekend exhibits not only two of the hallmarks of fine adventure titles—story accompanied by relevant puzzles—but also adds the unusual component of a real place that can even simply be toured, if you wish!

Nicely designed, having all the best elements of adventure gaming: detailed prerendered scenes, stunning and accurate looking cut scenes, a well-developed storyline, and puzzles that are thought through.

Understanding the limitations of weak story, consolitis, and mundane gameplay, you may still opt to try yet another survival/horror game with an impressive atmosphere and novel approach. Remember, I’ve given you fair warning!

This full-price game is not in the same league as “Mafia,” “Grand Theft Auto 3,” or even “Grand Theft Auto 2.” I suspect the developers tried to do too much, and they ended up with an often-confounding game

The Messenger is not a bad game, it's just that there are design elements that make sections of gameplay laborious rather than fun.

If you're a fan of the show, like me, this may be a "required purchase" for you. If you are more of an adventurer, looking for complexity and character-related puzzles, as well as decent length (more than seven hours), then CSI will likely disappoint.

All in all, Road to India spins a good yarn, it looks nice, and it's fun to play ... but it is most assuredly too short and too easy.

Despite being plunged once again into the dizzying swirl of an interface-whipping adventure game, I enjoyed my sometimes-perilous trip through Lord Montcalfe's mansion.

ER is not a terribly complicated game, with a setting and tasks that are limited in scope. Yet fans of the show, and those desiring a bit different sim experience, will undoubtedly find laughs and enjoyment in this light-hearted depiction of an intern's first days.

While I really like this sort of game, I do not like the fact that the game's difficulty is so unbalanced as to make playing the latter stages a study in frustration. If I want aggravation, I can attempt to cancel an online service.

Looking back at MOTOE, I had mixed reactions. On the one hand, the game is unusual in its setting, very well-produced, full of rich and enticing atmosphere. Yet, on the other hand, it's very linear, full of repetitive busy work, and really seems more like an interactive novel than a game where your actions can impact the game world and possible outcome.

If a rogue is one who doesn't fit, doesn't mesh, doesn't belong, than GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is aptly named. It's shallow, empty, tedious, rarely involving or interesting. The Bond license, gimmicky shooters, even hitmen are all shown to much better form in many other games.

A beautiful game to behold, with an excellent and efficient interface and control management scheme. The story is compelling, the puzzles are logical, and the characters are interesting.

Even though the graphics and sound are splendid, the almost across-the-boards flat acting and boring enemies along with the used and abused game play elements combine for one lame game touting more of the same.

For the inability to save at any point, for obtuse camera and fighting controls, for subpar level design, for irritating crash and sound bugs, and for the failure to make any effort to improve the technology behind this console port, “Matrix” enjoys the dubious distinction of a Rotten Egg award.

Did you enjoy “Sanitarium” and Agatha Christie's first mystery? If you can answer "yes" to these questions, then I highly recommend The Black Mirror as a "journey into darkness" well worth your time and effort.

An ode to "Myst" for all point-and-click lovers, a very worthwhile indie project. Let's hope some of those who enjoyed “Myst” sit up and take notice, as this is a complex and cleverly designed game.

And like a boring dinner party, as the game wrapped up I found myself relieved that it was finally ending. Except ... well, the game did indeed stop, but as for a satisfactory ending ... you can decide for yourself.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Pharaoh's Curse, it's just that it's all, and I do mean all, been done before and I was bored the whole time I was playing.

Behaving very much like an R-rated “Sims” expansion pack but independent of that series, The Partners is a silly and entertaining piece of gameplay fluff.

Some parts are done extremely right, and the wrong things, while wrong throughout, are relatively minor irritants. Besides, these days you just have to love a game with no mazes in it.

It breaks the mold with its setting and manages to stay traditional in gameplay.

The premise and the promise of Next Life led this reviewer to really look forward to spending some hours with these "reprobates." Unfortunately, I can only give a mixed rating to a flawed title.

And I did have fun playing Gods: Lands of Infinity - no question about that at all.

The Great Escape is an enjoyable, thrilling and suspenseful accompaniment to the classic film.

I haven't had a game eat away at me like this for a long time...For the amount of gameplay in the game, and the breadth of it, I would definitely say that it is worth every cent of the purchase price.

Overall, I can't totally endorse or condemn Blade & Sword. It's one of those titles that I couldn't help but have a love/hate relationship with.

A nice little middle-of-the-road change of pace—neither incredibly horrible nor the best invention since sliced bread. I can forgive the odd, sometimes creepy-looking, representation of humans and to a certain extent the bad voice-acting; but where it really fell apart for me was the finale.

There are a lot of gamers who will want to play this game and a lot who will enjoy it more than I did. Others will come away immensely frustrated.

Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. It was not so much a story as it was a string of portentous hints about dark things. Hints that never developed into a cohesive narrative.

Unfortunately, having to battle the interface made the game tedious, and I lost interest about a third of the way through.

Had the camera views been acceptable, I guess I could have recommended this title to those who care not about plot but love fabulous graphics, unusual monsters, and very basic, predictable, repetitive slash combat.

An initially engrossing horror mystery takes serious damage on the "reefs" of a confounding interface, frustrating linearity and mind-boggling puzzles.

Playing The Final Cut was a similar experience to eating my Aunt Thelma's meatloaf. It's palatable but nothing to rave over.

Magical Mirror is light and lively fare for those Gamecube owners tired of hacking and slashing through piles of demons but wanting to have a gaming good time while relaxing on their sofas in front of their TV sets.

As a game, I'm afraid, it simply doesn't succeed. Conversational trees are confounding, puzzles are often absurdly illogical, needed inventory items are sometime impossible to locate, and crashes become numbingly disheartening.