Slapstick dismemberment is fun for a while, but Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior has neither the depth nor the polish to stay in the fight for long.

An apocalyptic disappointment that never rises above mediocrity, but often sinks into tedium. [July 2013, p.72]

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]

Generic Shooter # 7,491, but with some cool weapon upgrades. [July 2005, p.70]

A seamless continuation of the series that makes up for its limitations with pure heart. It's like Ryo never left us.

More of the same solid adventure fare found in "Circle of Blood." [Feb 1998, p.142]

Even with the generous free-to-play model factored in, it's hard imagine why anyone would want to deal with the basic combat and utterly forgettable lore of this world. [Aug 2011, p.63]

Scarf is a nice if not particularly original idea, disappointingly executed on almost all fronts.

Clash’s brilliantly surreal world is hampered by uncompromising combat and level design.

With lovely graphics and great matchmaking stability, World of Warplanes remains entertaining even as its simplicity wears thin.

A fun and flexible swarm shooter that’s a little too reliant on being played alongside friends.

A charming watery theme park management game where fish are friends, not food. Until they eat each other or you forget to feed them.

A post apocalyptic road trip with more stops than starts.

A solid survival game vastly improved by putting the focus on people, not zombies.

Starts out funny, but quickly becomes frustrating. A wonderfully weird and original concept that falls flat like its jelly-limbed hero.

There's a lot to like in this expansion - but it's no replacement for "UO2." [July 2001, p.71]

The Matrix Online has done a rare thing: it's taken a movie license and made me feel like a contributor, not a spectator... Captures the feel of The Matrix and delivers a sharp massively multiplayer game. [June 2005]

A beautiful and difficult action-RPG that rewards risk-taking—the complex magic system makes up for the bits that just aren’t worth playing over and over.

Truly epic historical strategy. It's a good pick for RTS fans. [Aug 2005, p.60]

Multiplay is fun, but it's not THAT fun, especially since there are plenty of turn-based games with free multiplay. [June 2005, p.65]

Seems more like a cosmetic upgrade to a game we played to death two years ago rather than a truly new experience. [Holiday 2004, p.92]

Safecracker strips away all the narrative hoo-hah of traditional adventure games and tosses you into a labyrinth of mind-benders that range from simple sliding puzzles(requiring extreme patience)to code-breakers that throw you with unexpected twists. [Nov. 2006, p.120]

An ambitious game but one which exposes and compounds the weaknesses of solitaire.

Not the finest physics simulation ever, but good enough to convey a uniquely challenging discipline—plus, all the customisation items in the world.

Despite plenty of style and cheek, Keylocker can’t get past the repetitive grind of its battles.

Syndicate's confused story gives way to passable shooting with a pointless layer of hacking mechanics. [May 2012, p.68]

BFE is a worthwhile sim for those jonesing for military conflicts in the age before the bullet. [Oct. 2006, p.75]

An instantly likeable game hiding a brutal edge that demands mastery. Balance is concerning, but partially mitigated by an extensive roster.

Death to Spie's dry technical approach isn't for everybody, but its 10 challenging missions will still put sweat on your brow and a pounding pulse in your ears for under $30. [Jan 2008, p.90]

Gearbox has tried to match the pace and storytelling style of Telltale's Tales from the Borderlands but falls short with a rushed story and uninspiring characters.

Action hounds need not apply, but it you're into strategy, there's a lot to like here. [Oct 2000, p.132]

A frenetic, old fashioned monster blaster best played with friends. Creepy-crawlyphobes, look elsewhere.

A wonderfully detailed and terrifying sim. Expanded and slightly improved, but still an opaque and cruel game. [Apr 2012, p.78]

A well-made stealth game that becomes tedious before too long.

Spacebase Startopia is a missed opportunity to meaningfully build on a classic, but it's still an entertaining management sim.

Galactic Civilizations 4 is a vast and dependable grand space strategy. But there's little here that radical, and expect to meet it halfway.

Broad in shoulder, wide in scope, rough around the edges. Nevertheless, an enjoyably meaty survival game.

Shadowgate isn't just retro, it's retrograde, and the visual update really isn't as impressive as it first appears.

Though eclipsed by "Company of Heroes," JTF is a tough but attractive military RTS. [Holiday 2006, p.74]

An enjoyable brew of lush graphics, solid voice-acting, and fun gaming that once again reminds me why I'm still hacking and slashing 20 years down the road. [March 2005, p.66]

I don’t doubt that every gun, perk, and killstreak reward in Ghosts was implemented and tweaked with a fine brush, but painting in every individual eyelash of the Mona Lisa wouldn’t make it a better painting. That’s what’s been happening to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare since 2007—little bits have been scraped off and painted over again and again. With a broader brush, Activision and its studios might stop noodling around in the corners of Modern Warfare’s greatness and paint something actually modern.

ProSIM's wargames aren't for everybody - Falklands War has a 126-page manual, and it needs reading - but grognards will be in heaven. [Nov 2005, p.77]

Masochistic stat-chasers will find much to enjoy, but Blackguards’ varied combat is no substitute for a fully-formed RPG.

Haphazard gameplay and varying narrative quality put a damper on Night Call's strong mood and hints of brilliance.

An intriguing take on the genre that should have paid more attention to the RTS basics. [Oct 2000, p.130]

Blandoid RTS knock-off. [Feb 2003, p.81]

Its incredible depth certainly nets the game some major kudos, but there's a serious caveat in the near absence of any structured gameplay. [Dec 2001, p.100]

A frustrating action/strategy hybrid where you miss the action while flailing to control the strategy. [Mar 2004, p.67]

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

Strip away the framing and this is a throwaway JRPG that never finds its bite.

Serves up a generous range of play styles, but it’s hampered by repetitive levels and a few uninspired design choices.

Blade and Soul's excellent PvP is buried beneath a mountain of tired MMO tropes that are sometimes frustrating and rarely innovative.

SI’s gap year was well spent on a fantastic match engine update, but progress is still too slow between games.

Espire 1's VR stealth is brimming with neat ideas, but the end product is slightly less than the sum of its parts.

A graphically gorgeous descendant of Myst, paradoxically limited by its own ambitions.

The mystery is why you would insult yourself by playing it. [Feb 2005, p.61]

A brilliant stealth sandbox and unconventional RPG in one very ambitious but buggy package.

A lot of work remains to be done here, but for what amounts to a first-time effort, NASCAR Thunder 2003 shows a helluva lot of promise. [Jan 2003, p.92]

An achievement in cramming as many puzzles into a game as possible. [Apr 2001, p.81]

Those errors and omissions not withstanding, Snoopy vs. The Red Baron still does the Peanuts legacy proud with its engaging characters and compelling pick-up-and-play simplicity. [Jan. 2007, p.66]

A great looking game, but its beauty is only skin deep.

The latest in The Adventure Company's point-and-click offerings, <i>Keepsake</i> is billed as "part mystery, part <i>Harry Potter</i>." In reality, it's part boring and part really boring. [July 2006, p.99]

A bare-bones basic shooter that's good for some fun with friends, but there are other, better co-op adventures out there.

Neither a good Lego game nor tribute to the movie—at best, The Lego Movie Videogame is enough fun to be called a functioning promotional product.

Overwhelming monetization and exceptionally dull third-person hero shooting sour a game that could've been a mech fan's dream.

Sadly, I can't score the game based on what it might become. Right now, Vanguard requires that you turn a blind eye to too many nagging issues to fully enjoy it. [May 2007, p.68]

A fine remake of a game that deserves to be played as much as it gets fondly remembered.

Sucked me deep into its colorful, action-packed gestalt. I plan to keep this game on my hard drive for a long, long time to come. [Mar 2004, p.72]

With its rockin' techno beats, ARES takes me back to the days of the classic NES Mega Man games. [June 2011, p.77]

Play it for its novel ideas, not because you love Batman. Dwindling player numbers are a cause for concern.

Team Ninja serves up some solid Soulslike combat with a generous helping of cheese.

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

Even with the minor gameplay additions and the thrill of deadly creatures, this value-priced game is really just another slow-paced hunting sim. [May 2004, p.61]

While Sword of the Stars doesn't possess the battlefield variety of the "Homeworld" games that inspired it, it remains an ambitious and engrossing strategy triumph. [Nov. 2006, p.78]

An intricately detailed RTS, Men of War: Assault Squad 2 is packed with features and refuses to tell you how to use them.

Newcomers to Bone are better off putting their money toward the collection graphic novel. [Mar 2006, p.102]

Fun, cartoonish pirating, which makes you feel cheeky rather than evil.

A one-of-a-kind glimpse into the world of anthropomorphic-animal Japanese otome, Hatoful Boyfriend is surprisingly entertaining.

The robots blow up good, otherwise this ho-hum shooter fumbles its few ideas and is a shonky port to boot. [Aug 2012, p.58]

Crisp combat let down by boring enemies, repetitive missions and a disconnected story.

Adorable, amusing, colorful and well-animated, but the combat is too simplistic and repetitive to remain interesting throughout the game.

Shoot stuff, it explodes. Repeat as desired until you either blow up or get tired of it, whichever comes first. [Oct 2000, p.129]

Designing a coaster has never been easier, and the circuit-closing auto-finish feature is a stroke of genius. [Holiday 2001, p.76]

Hardcore adventurers will undoubtedly seek out Dark Fall, if only for the atmospheric journey. No surprise there - nor is there any in the game. [Nov 2003, p.119]

The excellently revised camera system and eerie villain makes Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 one of the better scare-fests out there.

Splitgate 2 is a fine F2P time-waster, but its portals don't add much to the genre and its shooting is nothing special.

The Cave isn't bad, but it is mystifyingly bland for what it sets out to be – and that ends up being worse than a glorious failure. We need more games like this, with this much love on display. With its actual adventure bits lacking the spark of its concept and artistry though, The Cave ends up sending you on an ill-fated trudge through platform purgatory in more ways than one.

The series leaves its garage looking even worse than when it went in. Decent handling doesnt save it.

Any Spidey freak will have a blast, and comics fans will delight in Spider-Man&#8217;s right-off-the-page super-powered antics. If you want the PC&#8217;s best superhero game, this is it.

A well-told campaign and story do their best to mask a rather scrawny service game beneath.

A beautiful remaster of a game that tries to recreate the magic of the original Resident Evil, but repeatedly fails to do so.

It just doesn't measure up to the imagination and potential of the setting, and you feel like little more than a jumped=up errand boy. [Holiday 2014, p.66]

Mowing down thousands of aliens in Vatican City is worth doing at least once.

Given UFO:ET's $39.99 price tag, it's hard to recommend over the $5 copy of "X-COM: Terror from the Deep" on Steam, unless you're really itching for a minor graphical upgrade. [Aug 2007, p.68]

It ain’t "Diablo II," but it’s in the ballpark, and frankly, that’s a pretty sweet deal.

For it's user-friendly interface alone, Galactic Assault is a noteworthy entry in the genre and serves as a good starting point for anyone looking to cautiously dip a toe into war gaming. [Dec 2007, p.66]

These concerns aside, Clockstone Software has crafted a magically entertaining spell-casting experience--and an unexpectedly decent game. [Apr 2008, p.67]

Gory and moody, The Callisto Protocol doesn't mess with the survival horror formula, instead embracing all its beats and clichés to tell a grim sci-fi tale that drips with menace.