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

The RTS layer is limited and repetitive, but the platforming levels are well-designed and challenging.

An endless font of bad jokes and cool guns in the series' most vapid story yet, Borderlands 3 skates by on watching numbers fly and goons explode.

Stodgy combat, two-dimensional characters, and technical hitches prevent this from living up to its lofty premise. [Feb 2014, p.58]

It's certainly impressive in its own over-the-top way, but if you're looking for depth and strategy in a basketball game, you'll be thoroughly disappointed. [Feb 2003, p.76]

The goings-on will keep you interested. Just don't expect anything too deep or innovative. [Nov 2002, p.129]

A muddled collection of good ideas, Impire has charm enough but its flaws are likely to frustrate most players.

Ultimately, there is fun to be had, but once the first burst of joy is done, you'll likely find it a little repetitive and unrewarding. [Aug 2012, p.77]

Little more than a two-year-old repackaging job that fixes little and adds even less. [Jan 2004, p.107]

A useful learning aid for beginners, but you can find better alternatives for free. [Nov 2004, p.90]

Sublime combat can only do so much to carry a flawed building system, too few monsters and terrible performance.

A glacial pace and abundance of busywork make My Time At Portia a tough recommendation.

The best fan experience for the series by far, but cut corners and poor design choices bog down an otherwise fun beat-em up.

With no career options to choose from - and only 30 unconnected missions up for grabs in the single-player menu - the entire Operation Iraqi Freedom experience is a remarkably fleeting and sterile exercise for experienced simmers. [Oct 2003, p.114]

Beautiful as you could ask for, especially in VR, but exhaustingly repetitive. [Partially tested with VR]

Sadly, in addition to the crap voice acting, the game’s phat/phunky Euro-trash techno beats will have you either tapping your toes or (like me) turning off the music altogether. [Feb 2002, p.80]

What saves the game is the hilarious commentary, peformed by a loudmouth parrot. [Aug 2003, p.70]

A lightweight distraction, but adding a competitive ladder or some more singleplayer content would've been welcome.

Hey may look a lot nicer, but this terrifying toad is still breaking balls in the same old way. [Nov 2009, p.82]

Fun, but too short and shallow to be a full-priced expansion pack. [Jan 2004, p.104]

A must-have for hardcore fans of the show (both of them). But for anyone else, it'll just be a very boring extra-long episode. [Nov 2002, p.122]

Although dripping with atmosphere and loaded with great gags, Sir, You Are Being Hunted’s survival elements feel unnecessary and its stealth bores.

Enjoyable writing cloaked in layers of problematic navigation, tonal inconsistency and pressing A and D not to die.

The new routes are familiar, and the new features are flimsy. Train Simulator 2104 feels like it’s freewheeling.

It took me lengthy experimentation before I learned how to even throw a grenade or use a med-kit - the game's manual offered little help. [Feb 2004, p.79]

The zones look fantastic - SOE's art department deserves serious kudos for what it's done with the aging engine - but with so many unusued zones in EverQuest as it is, do we really need more? [Holiday 2006, p.88]

EEIII aims high, but falls victime to over-ambition--there's a lot going on here, but not enough of it has been effectively refined into an entertaining gaming experience. [Jan 2008, p.84]

A spectacular, occasionally very fun tour of Star Wars battles that disappoints with a boring story, crappy progression system, and endless grenade spam.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams may provide a few hours of polished puzzle-platforming, but don't be surprised if you ultimately end up estranged.[March 2013, p.65]

Citizen Brown's story is predictable, its dialog lacks Telltale's usual subtlety, and it takes far too long to ramp up the action. [July 2011, p.77]

Buried by an unsatisfying combat loop and bad campaign, Outriders is a forgettable loot game that ends right as it's getting started.

Strikers walks and talks like Persona 5, but no social game and bland combat make it one strictly for gigafans.

But if you aren't a "Heroes" diehard, you probably don't need Hammers of Fate. [Feb. 2007, p.64]

There's no knocking the stellar visuals, solid storyline, and unrelenting blood-spilling. But the overall design is weak, and you'll have to slog through a lot of frustration to get to the good stuff. [Apr 2004, p.82]

Never has the vast expanse of outer space felt quite so limited. [Jan 2010, p.76]

Beautifully detailed and atmospheric environments. [Holiday 2006, p.114]

You never really feel engaged in this run-of-the-mill shooter. [Nov 2004, p.86]

As a parody of Lovecraft, The Stars Are Left is a deeply under-baked adventure, and only the most hardcore need apply to take on this single-player campaign. [Mar 2012, p.77]

Fract OSC’s puzzles are often too few and far between the open-world wandering, and the music integration does little to stir the soul.

A pretty good RTS that knows its limitations and succeeds within them. [Holiday 2005, p.79]

This is a very generic, very buggy shooter. One other plus: translations and voice acting so bad, they're often entertaining. [July 2006, p.55]

I'm confident that Strike Fighters will eventually grow to become one of the genre's all-time classics. [Jan 2003, p.108]

The second problem is that your squad will heal each other and you: you "die" only when your entire squad has been felled. [Apr 2005, p.76]

Flat writing and a confused plot fail to deliver on some promising ideas.

Somewhat dodgy AI can mar certain missions and the game practically screams for a co-op mode, but unfortunately, it's strictly single-player. [Apr 2007, p.55]

The pirate decor is barely a skin-deep covering on a sim that could just as easily have been made about the ACME Widget Factory. [July 2003, p.68]

Rime is a middling puzzle platformer with some genuine narrative depth, but the latter doesn't quite justify the former.

Masochists and suicidally confident RTS veterans might embrace the challenge, but for the rest of us, Frontline: Fields of Thunder delivers an entirely one-sided ass kicking. [June 2007, p.59]

It’s not just cashing in on a fad—there’s a genuine love for everything '80s that seeps into every fuzz-filtered sound and every crunchy pixel. But there are so many games like this around right now. They’re doing fantastic things with the genre, to boot. Unless you’re screaming for a synth-tracked adventure, it’s hard to recommend Rad over its more contemporary counterparts.

If you're the slightest bit impatient, you'll be bored within five minutes. [Feb 2005, p.59]

A vibrant presentation doesn’t save Sentris from a lack of depth or direction.

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

There's fun to be had here so long as you aren't expecting a serious World War II sim. [Feb 2001, p.64]

This game should really be called "The Rather Mediocre Escape." [Nov 2003, p.116]

Bland and unambitious save for its combat, Lost Sphear draws so heavily from the traditions of past JPRGs that it fails to build a personality of its own.

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die--there is no middle ground. [Holiday 2011, p.74]

Merge the complexity of a real-time navel strategy game with the hand-on-joystick appeal of an arcade flight simulator and you get Pacific Storm, an ambitious but buggy new RTS title from Russian developer Lesta Studio. [Jan. 2007, p.74]

With less loot to grab, simplified platforming and easy puzzles, Darksiders 3 leans harder on its combat than previous games. And while Fury packs a punch, the wonky camera makes fights more frustrating that they should be. It doesn’t condemn Darksiders to oblivion, but it’s the lowlight of the series so far.

There are better games, but not too many better B-grade scripts. [Dec 2005, p.88]

A lot of thought put into new chess pieces; not enough put toward PC gaming. Also, kinda pricey.

Intuitive and accessible but also repetitive, SSZ is a flight combat game that trades on tradition rather than imagination.

On the whole, this game feels like a retreat of older ones - only with +10 wackiness. It's decent, but hardly heroic. [Apr 2004, p.70]

Honestly, I have never seen a hunting game this beautiful... Truly hardcore hunters will probably find Cabela's 2004 a deep, authentic game, but more casual gamers will be happier with the easier and more enjoyable "Hunting Unlimited 2." [Holiday 2003, p.105]

To be clear MLB 2K12 is hardly a terrible game. It simply lives the worst fate imaginable for gamers: It's never fantastic, but it also perennially avoids being too terrible to merit blowing up and rebuilding from scratch. [June 2012, p.81]

I grappled with Victoria for a solid 10 hours before I actually started having fun, and most folks will deem this figure unacceptable. Even then, the game's glaring bugs had a tendency to disrupt the deep and absorbing machinations that eventually develop. [Mar 2004, p.65]

A post apocalyptic road trip with more stops than starts.

The downside is that Dark Motives regurgitates the static, "Myst"-style point-and-click gameplay and fuzzy backgrounds of last year's CSI game. [June 2004, p.77]

You get what you pay for, though, and for a $20 title, WWII TC delivers a modicum of modest, albeit fleeting, big-gun thrills. [May 2006, p.54]

Innovative features lift this game above mediocrity - but not by much. [Oct 2003, p.108]

Despite some memorable imagery, Monochroma plays like a budget-price Limbo. [Sept. 2014, p.69]

Though not the game "Freelancer" fans have been waiting for, space-adventurers will still find plenty of targets to blow up here. And we'll take what we can get. [Oct. 2006, p.105]

It starts promising and gets better in the final act, but the bulk of Betrayer's journey is let down by inconsistent quality, repeat enemies, and investigative drudgery.

There are some good ideas in Rue Valley's depressioncore time loop, but the execution makes it feel more like a chore than a charm.

The contrived plot gets spiced up with convincing voice acting and smooth cinematic animations, but slick style doesn't hold up against bland levels and repetitive missions, making this just another GTA clone, but with even more f-bombs and bloodshed. [July 2006, p.55]

A fine combat system soured by poorly explained complexity, and a lovely looking game let down by a lack of graphics options.

An over-ambitious and technically flawed tactics game that can't live up to its more accomplished influences.

This is yesterday’s MMO by the merits of its own content, but compensates by potentially ushering in a DIY revolution.

A significant upgrade, supported by a clever eye for tactical diversity. An eye that is sadly poked by uneven execution. [Oct 2013, p.74]

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]

The combo of roguelikes and gambling should probably be more addictive than this.

Unfortunately, there's so much frantic micromanagement involved in keeping your biz going that you scarcely have any time to do anything that feels like play. [May 2006, p.102]

Atomfall can be a fun diversion, but it really needs to take a gap year so it can find itself.

A promising setting and clever systems are let down by simple enemies, simpler characters, and strange balancing.

The Bureau: XCOM Declassified feels confused and half-finished, a hollow but beautiful slog through XCOM’s early years.

Do be advised that the game is shockingly short: If you were to pay it and watch the movie side-by-side, it'd be a toss-up as to which you'd finish first. [Holiday 2004, p.93]

A competent MMO shooter marred by a lack of polish, whose TV tie-in ambitions only seem set to cause problems.

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

It's strong on setup but extraordinarily weak on payoff. [Jan 2003, p.101]

Little more than a rudimentary console port replete with dated graphics and sub-par vehicle physics. [Nov 2002, p.134]

Between muddled gameplay and conflicted writing, Mineko’s Night Market can’t decide on an identity to fully embrace.

If you approach Ship Simulator as educational software(albeit flawed)rather than a game, then there's definite value on tap. Those too cool for school, however, will likely want to give it a wide berth. [Dec. 2006, p.128]

Ubisoft's true crime is in trotting out lame production values... again, for the third time. [March 2005, p.74]

True multiplayer support could've nudged this expansion over the top, but as it is, it's mostly a tinker tool and not for those seeking substantial new content. [March 2005, p.71]

Soviet Assault doesn't expand on World in Conflict enough to make it an automatic purchase. New players will get the best experience here. [Apr 2009, p.84]

It'll occasionally crash to the desktop, and has an extremely annoying bug that sometimes kills you when you start lobbing grenades. [July 2002, p.75]

If converted to a turn-based game, many of D-Day's concepts, graphics, and missions would work well. In their current form, however, they don't. [Apr 2005, p.73]

A game about breaking free from monotony that gets, perhaps inevitably, a little monotonous.

Weighed down by a terrible campaign, this is still a superb multiplayer WW2 tactical RTS.