Unless you're feeling nostalgic, you're better off stickin' with EA's "NBA Street" series for over-the-top roundball fun. [Dec 2003, p.84]

The slower pacing and repetitive gameplay wear thin after a few hours if you're all by your lonesome. [Nov 2003, p.78]

This RPG is full of lush graphics and beautiful effects but completely devoid of a decent story, character development, and anything resembling depth.

Unless you've got serious Atari nostalgia, most of these won't keep you occupied for more than five minutes. [Feb 2005, p.103]

Different and innovative doesn't always mean good. [Oct 2003, p.69]

While PSO began as a genuine phenomenon, it ends with something more like a fizzled experiment.

Average but suitable shooter with weird characters. [May 2004, p.95]

Why waste money on Superstars when you can buy any number of hallucination-inducing substances to get your friends swatting at the air for a fraction of the price? [Feb 2005, p.94]

Exaggeraged violence is all Pride has; matches often conclude in less time than the game takes to load the match. [Mar 2003, p.66]

It's this constant barrage of humor, both cliched and well written, that saves Larry from flunking out. [Dec 2004, p.122]

A good concept with fun trappings, but it doesn't quite have enough going on under teh surface. [Nov 2004, p.108]

Wearing a no-holds-barred sense of literalism on its sleeve, this mostly mediocre affair fails to bring anything new to the genre or even match its many peers. [Feb 2005, p.104]

While the action portion of Commander is a leaky dinghy, the strategy elements are the Titanic, pre-iceberg. [May 2004, p.82]

The game's frequent puzzles also range from simplistic to mildly frustrating. Fortunately, you'll be finished with the game in a weekend.

In most ways an improvement upon its predecessor, but it's still a far cry from the awesome arcade game that came out in the late '80s...A highly mediocre experience. [Nov 2004, p.121]

A highly mediocre experience.

An otherwise pedestrian city-building game, only Tropico 2's setting salvages it from being a complete shipwreck. [July 2003, p.79]

Most of the game plays out like "Pokemon" with bad wiring. [Mar 2003, p.65]

Diehard EQ addicts and RTS junkies will get some fun out of this game (especially with its monstrous 12-player LAN/Internet support); everyone else should probably just stick to "Warcraft III."

What little real challenge there is exists solely because of the horrendous camera controls. [Oct 2004, p.98]

Brings style aplenty, but it rarely stoops to substance and is easily surpassed by its videogame brethren. [Jan 2005, p.85]

The controls are just dandy, and there's plenty of shooting to be done, but no single aspect of this Invasion makes the game particularly notable - it looks plain, sounds plain, and pretty much plays plain, too. [Nov 2004, p.112]

Gamers who are interested in a horror title without needing to scrounge for ammunition and health packs should give Echo Night: Beyond a go, but players who are used to fighting for their survival will find the game dull and repetitive. [Sept 2004, p.94]

This MMORPG is so difficult, long, and slow that playing it feels more like work than a game. [Sept 2004, p.85]

The whole game becomes rather monotonous, despite attempts at adding replay value. [Nov 2004, p.124]

Kuon has considerably limited replay value, and the game is neither ambitious nor unique enough to warrant an especially enthusiastic recommendation. [Dec 2004, p.122]

Even the most uninspired games in this class (read: "Brute Force") have, at the very least, a solid technical foundation. But Omega Strain is janky, and uninspired on top of it. The series was better off left buried rather than marred with a subpar effort like this. [June 2004, p.80]

The bottom line is that if you're going to have an easy-to-play game that doesn't even attempt to push the genre in any meaningful manner, at least feature characters that 8-year-olds won't be too embarrassed to be caught playing as. [Dec 2004, p.126]