This short ride's definitely a lemon. [June 2011, p.72]

As much as I love impaling skeleton warriors with the Stake Gun, if I'm paying for this experience I want something new. [June 2011, p.72]

A hybrid sim/arcade racer that challenges and entertains, despite controls that must be tweaked into submissions. [June 2011, p.68]

A challenging, hilarious, and mind-expanding puzzle experience for one or two-treasure your first time through.

Free-to-play limits player choice and hurts the game's longevity, but Champions remains a pretty, if passable MMO.

An exhilarating adventure teeming with unique things to see and do- and most importantly, people to stab.

An impressive accomplishment whose size and depth is a testament to wargaming's ability to bring history to life. [April 2011, p.76]

Tactics adds layers of depth, but the cost of booster packs quickly makes a mockery of the "free-to-play" label. [April 2011, p.77]

This version is fine for a single-player quiz, but it's no party. [April 2011, p.75]

The short campaign isn't as replayable as it should be, but Retribution's three bloody modes each offer great combat options. [April 2011, p.68]

Visually near-perfect, but the ample action is bottlenecked by narrower level design and a weaker Nanosuit.

Absolutely colossal, Rift aims high and hits its mark, proving that there's room to grow within the traditional MMO format.

Two new guns make it a bit too easy to fumigate entire rooms with a few quick blasts, and any hope for an exciting new challenge quickly melts away as I hobble towards the ambiguous, lackluster ending. [April 2011, p.79]

The promise of giving content to the battles never really comes together. [April 2011, p.79]

A handful of changes don't go far enough to differentiate East from West. [April 2011, p.77]

NightSky delivers a short but sweet physics puzzle experience. [April 2011, p.76]

Normally, I'd never suggest that a classic be tampered with, but in this case, it's a shame that Munch's Oddysee wasn't tweaked. [April 2011, p.73]

The lackluster porting job doesn't ruin this beloved game outright, just cripples it. [April 2011, p.73]

The best RPG combat ever. Not gaming's best story, but maybe its best storytelling. Darker, sexier, better. [Mar 2011, p.64]

Atari's latest open-world racer serves up hotter cars, warmer climates and more torrid racing action than its predecessor. [April 2011, p.70]

An attempt at delivering four imaginative Spider-Man games at once ends up delivering a single disappointing one. [April 2011, p.68]

An exciting new direction for MMOs that's plenty of fun already and should only get better with a few patches under its utility belt.

Brilliant design; a reward-happy, lighthearted multiplayer fray. One of the finest $15 shooters ever made.

"Quotation Forthcoming"

More yawn than yarr, sadly. [Feb 2011, p.80]

For over-the-top(literally) off-road racing action, Nail'd delivers on multiple fronts--just as long as you remember to keep your dirt racer in the air as much as possible. [Feb 2011, p.81]

Poker Night is weak on the fundamentals of card playing, but it's worthwhile for several hours of comedy dialog. [Feb 2011, p.78]

But it feels more like a fleeting dream than a game--it needs more complexity to grow beyond a diversion. [Feb 2011, p.77]

This crappy collection of minigames, in which you play as House and his team of diagnosticians, doesn't come close to the TV show's soap operatic magnificence. [Feb 2011, p.77]

A fine balance of polished gaming and addictive new modes. The world's most compulsive puzzle game just got even better. [Feb 2011, p.77]

A wearisome crime-solving adventure game with poor graphics, boring stories and buggy cases. [Feb 2011, p.76]

Blood Stone's short and uneven mission is no more than the sum of its parts. [Feb 2011, p.75]

It's slow at first and may get a little repetitive, but Bronze is one of the purest strategy games of the year. [Feb 2011, p.74]

HAWX 2 is a straight rehash of the first game, with pointless minigames that add more frustration than excitement. [Feb 2011, p.72]

A novel, homicidal romp acted out by charming, cliches. [Feb 2011, p.73]

A free-to-play MMO of a higher caliber, Vindictus' combo-driven combat and addictiveness make it hard to resist. [Feb 2011, p.70]

Skip the tedious single-player campaign, jump into the great, fast-paced multiplayer fray--and hope it works on your PC. [Feb 2011, p.66]

"Quotation Forthcoming"

It rips my heart in a spray of gore to have to say it, since the weapons and animations are wonderful and the attack combos have their moments, but Shank's awkward controls really hold it back from being a more satisfying, edgier game. [Jan 2011, p.81]

Adrenaline-fueled crescendos and bosses toss in some welcome fun to the experience, but not nearly enough. [Jan 2011, p.77]

It's at its best when it simply flows, painting items into existence or hurling fireflies into the darkness. [Jan 2011, p.77]

DeathSpank is Diablo meets Monkey Island, but it fails to achieve the fun of the former or the humor of the latter. [Jan 2011, p.76]

Even without the focus on Michael Jordan, NBA 2K11 would still be the best PC basketball game ever made. [Jan 2011, p.74]

An imperfect port of an unambitious sequel, TFU2 joins a growing list of Star Wars games that don't live up to their potential. [Jan 2011, p.72]

Late Night turns The Sims 3 into a hoppin' urban party, but if you're in it for the build mode you'll find apartment life limiting. [Jan 2011, p.71]

Simplified physics and a few missing parts slow but don't stop this entertaining new Need For Speed excursion. [Jan 2011, p.68]

The new Medal of Honor is an unoriginal duck hunt laden with compromise. You've played this before---and better. [Jan 2011, p.64]

A joyous addictive action puzzler. [Holiday 2010, p.76]

Worth it for the two vibrant mini-campaigns, but only if you're dying for more KB. It doesn't sex up the formula at all.

More wasteland to wander. New Vegas is good, but the failure to move the series on makes it feel a tiny bit stale.

A gorgeous world dogged by some terrible quest design. [Jun 2010, p.82]

Good-looking but repetitive action makes Front Mission Evolved a tasty mech-flavored appetizer. [Nov 2010, p.84]

Wantonly enjoyable and inventive zombie slaughter, held back by some unnecessary saving and leveling hassles. [Nov 2010, p.68]

A shallow, slow, grind-heavy MMO crippled by a horrible interface and nonsensical player limitations.

Gorgeous graphics, deep combat and a user-friendly makeover makes the fifth Civilization a great place to start or renew your interest in global domination. [Nov 2010, p.52]

A shining indie gem, yours for a throat-cuttingly reasonable price.

Compelling, slick, handsome. The predictable campaign and so-so skirmish AI are mere flesh wounds.

It's been an excellent year for the Freelance Police; it would be a shame for the series to end here, but it gives a fitting send-off. [Nov 2010, p.79]

The only downside to this excellent new content is that you still have to play it using ArmA II's awkward command interface, which, sadly, this DLC does not attempt to improve. [Nov 2010, p.83]

The bare bones of a hugely exciting strategy RPG hybrid. The the AI just isn't good enough to make it special, yet.

A few too many minor annoyances gang up to keep Paradox's most polished release from reaching greatness. [Nov 2010, p.76]

It runs perfectly in a window while you're doing something else on your PC; attend to it in free moments to rack up loot, levels, new spells and satisfaction. [Nov 2010, p.86]

A gloriously well crafted campaign welded to a near Olympic competitive experience. StarCraft II is practically essential.

The mid-game settings--a warehouse and a cloning plant--are dull to explore, the script contains few memorable gags and the puzzles don't impress. [Nov 2010, p.79]

B:TD is a great online shooter when it gets going, but an awful lobby system makes that way harder than it should be. [Nov 2010, p.72]

Disciples III has a strong heritage, but wears out its welcome with too much repetition, stunted difficulty and weird pacing. [Oct 2010, p.78]

Confused and weightless, APB doesn't satisfy on any front: the shooting, driving, story and objectives are all average at best. [Sept 2010, p.65]

A great place to learn the ways of Magic. The lack of deck customization is appalling, but it nails the card game experience. [Nov 2010, p.82]

While Toy Story 3 may not be all that it could've been, there's still a lot of enjoyment to be had while interacting with the Toy Story cast of characters in their natural environment. [Nov 2010, p.83]

But repetitious single-player, frustrating co-op and a laughable narrative reduce it to a mess that's fun only as long as it takes you to realize nothing interesting is ever going to happen. [Oct 2010, p.81]

Absolute Power is a collection of small, but welcome enhancements--a splash of new content that doesn't change what the game is, but enough that anyone still investing hours in the perfect republic will love. [Sept 2010, p.84]

The game is great fun, but there's simply not enough content here for $15.

MUD TV's detail is swamped in white noise, and no amount of fiddling with the antennae will help a game so poorly tuned. [Jun 2010, p.85]

Future Wars takes a well-worn template and executes it with little more than mediocrity. [Nov 2010, p.83]

With only a couple of minor decisions to be made and just a short shootout section there's no significant replay value to KSM, but you do get a marginally improved SMG, a stealthy, lethal companion and a snazzy new casual outfit to strut around the Normandy in. [July 2010, p.79]

Still, Plain Sight is certainly one of the best times you can have blowing yourself up. [July 2010, p.75]

Eventually it feels repetitive, but the quantity of character and dungeon permutations is sufficient to engage even jaded genre veterans for weeks. [July 2010, p.79]

For the 10 or so hours spent skulking behind bars, Prison Break fans will adore the atmosphere and ridiculously outlandish plot elements. [Sept 2010, p.79]

A vast and incredible playground for destructive experiments and improbable stunts. [Jun 2010, p.64]

Beautiful and challenging, but the relentless and over complicated micromanagement can be exhausting. [Jun 2010, p.76]

A nasty catch to playing C&C4 is having to log into EA’s servers before launching the game, even for single-player. Considering that EA recently shut down servers for the less than two-year-old Mercenaries 2, I’m not enthusiastic about buying a product that depends on active servers to play. The multiplayer battles are good enough fun once you’ve ranked up, but a potentially short-lived service is a dagger dangling over our heads.

Periodically veers toward mediocrity, but wrapped in a richly drawn world that transcends the game's flaws--just barely. [Jun 2010, p.70]

Not everything is perfect, but you'd earn incompetence points by missing a refined and reduced-price version of Dawn of War II. [May 2010, p.72]

Although likely to be modded to perfection, SH5's release version is an incomplete, buggy disappointment. [Jun 2010, p.68]

A quality baseballer that nails key fundamentals but doesn't know anything out of the park. [Jun 2010, p.80]

Simpler, with a more muddled story than SupCom, but still more complex and packing more huge mechs than any two other strategy games combined. [Apr 2010]

Flotilla is a charmingly crafted bite-size portion of tactical fun. [Jun 2010, p.81]

Poor execution and lack of content. [May 2010, p.82]

Similar and slightly improved mechanics make this a worthy sequel, despite a sadly less-memorable story. [Mar 2010, p.70]

It's all a lot to handle for new players. [May 2010, p.65]

Such a lackluster implementation. [May 2010, p.74]

Challenging fun. [May 2010, p.82]

An over-designed shooter that missed the joy in its central concept and instead locks you into purgatorial combat loops. [Mar 2010, p.80]

A first-person mode adds some intensity, but Vancouver 2010's not going to offer more than a few hours' fun. [July 2010, p.79

Finishing it off and watching the credits roll is a bittersweet moment, as Pandemic's final game is also one of its finest. [Jan 2010, p.68]

So, McRae-tagged it may be, but DiRT 2 isn't really a rally game. It has thrown off the stern shackles of the sport it theoretically represents, determined instead to turn racing into one giant party--and everyone's invited. [Jan 2010, p.82]

I hope we don't have to wait another 10 years for more. [Mar 2010, p.81]

It's short and simple, which is just as well. [Mar 2010, p.83]