Solving The Path of the Shell without a walkthrough will require endless patience and the ability to brainstorm in four dimensions. [Nov 2004, p.88]

The knockabout glee of classic Saints Row ultraviolence is here, but held back a little by new-found restraint.

FBC: Firebreak's madcap mission conceits are delightfully silly, but balancing issues and limited replay value hinder the fun.

The controls are sluggish, the video options are limited, and the aspect ratio decision is utterly stupid. All of the above drags The Evil Within from enjoyably challenging to needlessly frustrating.

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

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

Empire of the Ants features a lavish rendering of the world from a few millimeters high, but fails at the basics of interesting RTS play.

A compelling story with many outcomes, but the game itself is a little too rough around the edges.

While its new environments are a decent aside, Shattered Space seems largely content to tread water, leaving Starfield the same mixed bag it always was.

Biomutant's stunning world barely survives the painful narration, broken progression, and dearth of stuff to do.

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]

Wanted: Dead is an intentionally messy throwback, one that some people are going to adore while others lament. All the AA jank of a PlayStation 3 action game wrapped up in a janky 2023 modern gaming bow.

Seriously impressive physics, but not much of a game.

Some clever and grisly medical examination systems, but not enough base management and side activities to remain engaging for long.

Where this game falls short is the actual gameplay. Your apartment serves as a hub and you go back to it repeatedly, either to save your game or to retrieve adn drop off items from your limited inventory. I don't even need to tell you how tedious this backtracking gets. [Holiday 2004, p.99]

Strong first impressions make this ideal when showing off your new Rift headset, but there's little to keep you flying beyond those first few moments. [Tested with Oculus Rift]

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

Fans of Warhammer 40,000 will be delighted by the spectacle and authenticity—but ultimately disappointed by messy action and unengaging multiplayer.

Like visiting Disneyland during the off-season: crowds are few, there's not much pampering of customers, and many attractions are closed or under renovation. [Mar 2003, p.90]

New World's engaging crafting and faction rivalries are held back by abysmal PvE and a boring world.

Torchlight 3 does a great job with its class design, but the world feels barren and unfinished.

Boasts some beautiful, convincing countryside to hunt in, but the glacial pace will challenge the limits of most people’s patience.

A great artstyle and flashes of brilliance never truly make up for a meandering, risk-averse plot.

Northland is really a sim posing as an RTS game. I doubt it'll fully satisfy fans of either. [July 2004, p.69]

First up is the AI, which, for both the enemy and your squad, is simply dreadful. [Apr 2004, p.66]

Rogue Trader gets 40K's atmosphere right, but it's buggy and the rules are a mess.

A fun, if repetitive, kart racer whose charms are sullied by its predatory microtransactions targeted right at young children.

The Sonic Pulse Grenade that makes Zombie heads explode is a satisfying reward, but the new environments simply just aren't enough to justify the $10 price tag. [Mar 2012, p.81]

An accomplished and pretty strategy game, sadly hindered by a handful of questionable design choices.

There's simply too little to do. As a result, there's not much of a challenge to be had--at least any intentional challenge that is. [Holiday 2007, p.72]

Only the most commited turn-or card-based strategy gamers will enjoy <i.Star Chamber</i>, which is a real shame, because with better online help(there's no manual)and a more fleshed-out tutorial, this game could have appealed to a wider audience. [July 2006, p.97]

Be prepared to watch hours of repetitive combat animation. [Holiday 2001, p.92]

An exceptional RTS let down by a very disappointing remaster.

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]

A better game than XIII but with an intolerably bad story, this is a still-flawed sequel that clearly isn’t at its best on PC.

This is not the modern Transport Tycoon I hoped it would be, but it will fill a few hours before your attention inevitably derails. [Holiday 2014, p.66]

The word Maelstrom's Danish roots mean "to grind" or 'stream'--I'll let you guess which one of those definitions is most applicable to this ponderous RTS. [May 2007, p.69]

If you're dying for an excuse to play as a sniper, or you have $20 you're itching to spend, Marine Sharpshooter II certainly isn't the worse budget military game we've ever played. [Oct 2004, p.95]

The ambition of Signal Ops is admirable, but playing it is like trying to paint your hallway through the mailbox. [Aug 2013, p.73]

It's unfortunate, because this Groundhog Day game design significantly impairs what could have been a diverting and sentimental blast from the past. [Apr 2012, p.79]

Looks are pretty much the only appeal. The main culprit in sabotaging the attractive premise is the horrible AI. [May 2003, p.82]

A mediocre detective game with predictable stealth and a surreal story that runs out of steam near the end.

Unexplored 2 has potential, but right now the adventure's unreliable and storytelling's seriously flawed.

I&#146;m confident that young kids will get a kick out of HP:SC, but everyone else is better off doing their adventuring elsewhere. [Feb 2002, p.68]

So I just finished playing through &#147;Project Tedium&#148;&#133;wait, make that Project Eden. [Feb 2002, p.69]

Before its release, someone should've poured a big bottle of polish on D.I.R.T.--it needed the clean-up. [Jan. 2007, p.66]

A straightforward tactics game buried beneath an impassable mountain of roguelike metagame.

Lakeburg Legacies is an awkward, goalless mix of contradictions and impersonal systems.

Does a better job than most adaptations of reviving the energy and excitement of its source material. Just don't expect it to do so for very long. [Sept 2005, p.63]

Genesis Alpha One splices the DNA of some good ideas, but doesn’t execute any of them well enough.

After the frenzy of battle wears off, so does the appeal of SpaceForce. It's not a bad game; it just goes through the motions. [Sept 2007, p.62]

This pyrotechnic orgy probably offers up more explosions per minute than any other game of its type, but that's about all it offers. [Holiday 2002, p.105]

Despite its token connection to the recent CGI-enhanced MGM movie, Flyboys isn't a standalone aerial shooter so much as a repackaging of iENT's subscription-based Warbirds/Dawn of Aces online combat-flight-sim service. [Apr 2007, p.52]

SNS's powersliding physics, six-player GameSpy action, and assertive AI are as entertaining as ever, but a horribly unrealistic "Velcro Wall" effect (lightly grazing the outside barrier now slows your car to a virtual standstill) and some persistent graphics, audio, and controller glitches eventually thrown an unwelcome wrench into the proceedings. [June 2004, p.77]

But all that nice environment design is wasted by far too much wandering about, talking to people, and collecting trash to sell at vendors. Your character moves with a kind of halfhearted jog, too slow to cover ground, jerky, and unable to traverse any kind of obstacle. Meanwhile you can jump on your horse, which is much faster but handles like a stick of butter in narrow areas. It's all just kind of… slow and tedious to progress. Environments seem large simply for the sake of size. Much like the game's entire aesthetic, it's not really clear why things look the way they do.

Beautiful graphics and fantastic controls are wasted due to a lack of content and an abundance of bugs. [Dec 2011, p.72]

This much belated franchise-resurrection trips in execution due to unit pathfinding issues and the lack of multiplayer.

A bunch of fun new abilities and cool places but Dawnguard is far too glitchy to justify its steep price.

Daemonica is not the kind of RPG that will appeal to most hardcore gamers. [July 2006, p.77]

Has flickers of brilliance, but the painfully slow and gruelling survival simulation routinely snuffs them out.

Too much games-as-a-service cruft gets in the way of a potentially decent action-RPG.

Broken Worlds doesn't offer enough new gameplay to interest anyone other than the most dedicated "Dungeon Siege" fans, and its once-innovative engine now feels clunky and no longer looks impressive. [Nov. 2006, p.98]

The core principles are engaging and there's a lot of superficial entertainment--I still smile at the way my crew, the trusty Rigonauts, continue pummeling the remains of my defeated, white-flag-waving opponent while I review the "level complete" summary--but it's missing the mission variety that would coax out the engineering potential Rigonauts should have. [Dec 2012, p.67]

Homefront: The Revolution feels slapdash, and after the initial fun of learning its systems, drab repetition reveals obvious exploits.

This entry, however, is hardly legendary. [Jan. 2007, p.76]

Die-hard Potter fans will thrill throughout to checking Hogwarts' huge and detailed environs, but Order of the Phoenix's repetitive gameplay will make many wish someone would cast an Avada Kedavara spell in their direction and put them out of their misery already. [Oct 2007, p.66]

This franchise is as stale as a holiday fruitcake. The new engine is needed NOW. [Mar 2001, p.86]

A slide-show adventure, so it's required to have at least one confounding maze in it. Skip it unless you were a fan of the original. [July 2003, p.93]

An inventive puzzle game that’s too short and easy to recommend—worthwhile only for the novelty of its concept.

The background scenery is attractive, but the game's floaty vehicle physics significantly undermine the actual driving experience. [May 2003, p.70]

The laborious mechanics of control and observance make "gameplay" feel much too random. [Jan 2003, p.100]

Enemy Engaged 2 has potenttial, but remains a patch or two away from completion. [Nov 2007, p.77]

It's not a chore to conquer China in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14. It's just underwhelming. Especially when we've seen this era represented so much better by Creative Assembly so recently, I couldn't come up with a compelling reason why I'd play this instead. Only die-hard fans of the franchise who want to see Koei's specific takes on these characters will be likely to find much to get excited about here. And given that this is the fourteenth entry in the series, I expected a lot more.

HighFleet has appealing vision, but breaks down due to opaque systems and lack of difficulty options.

An increased focus on action and unsatisfying cases overshadow the decent bits in this detective adventure.

If you're dying for an RTS game set in China, here's one. So there. [June 2001, p.80]

Nothing's particularly well done. [Dec 2005, p.96]

There are beautiful and tragic scenes, songs, and passages to find in WTWTLW's journey, but they're spread far too thin.

The challenge isn't necessarily soliving puzzles, but making sure you've examined every single bit of every screen. [Dec 2004, p.89]

A smart top-down reimagining of the Halo experience, let down by mobile game monetization. [Nov 2013, p.66]

Don’t be a fool of a Took and rush into Moria. An authentic and authentically grueling game.

It not only brings nothing new to the RTS table - it takes stuff away, too. [Mar 2004, p.70]

A decent murder mystery game that suffers heavily from poor controls and menus.

An "Air Quake" for the masses with no noteworthy features to speak of. [Feb 2001, p.79]

Hard Reset isn't just a reference to what you're expected to do to the killer robots infesting the city, but what the developer tries to do to the shooter design itself. [Holiday 2011, p.80]

The final insult is the atrocious console save-system. The game saves automatically between each level and a couple of times during each level, but if you stop playing, you have to restart teh entire level. [Jan 2005, p.86]

Mediocre and repetitive, there are far better options for action RPGs out there.

A competent shooter, but lifeless. You could spend many hours mastering Desync, but it does nothing to earn your time.

Impressive ogre battles and challenging, hectic missions, but I just wish there was a bit more to Extinction.

This game simply isn't fun for very long. [July 2003, p.76]

VR can’t elevate Edge of Nowhere’s mediocre climbing, shallow combat, and contrived story. [Tested with Oculus Rift]

Confusingly good fun at first, Dragon Quest Heroes soon falls into a familiar, inane rhythm. Dynasty Warriors' audience will at least get something out of it.

You can probably find single-player games that are just as fun. [Jan 2005, p.84]

Held back by a difficulty that isn't satisfying to overcome, but annoying for its fiddly controls and cheating AI. [May 2012, p.77]

More game than you might expect, but still best played for an audience.

There's merit in Ravenbound's kinetic combat, but the game's ambition is undermined by technical issues and an empty world.

Suffers from a case of getsboringquick-itis. [July 2002, p.74]

Lifestyle simming is engaging for a little while, but its sluggish pacing and repetitive tasks do irreparable damage to the game's fun quotient. [Jan. 2007, p.78]