Ghoulish creature design and fun combat are weakened by long boring stretches, clueless AI, and snickering obscurity.

Sparta doesn't have much meat on its bones - we've all been there and done that, just maybe not as Spartans. [Sept 2007, p.62]

AO addicts should buy this add-on - solo-ers and MMO noobs, not so much. [Jan 2005, p.97]

Combining moody and gratifying ship-on-ship combat with shallow live service trappings, Skull and Bones is great within the claustrophobic parameters of what market forces allow it to be.

Definitely a solid strategy game, but lacking in depth and story. [June 2004, p.70]

The resource management is deep, but the city itself never quite feels like a city.

Fun hero designs and solid combat offer a promising start, but it needs to shed its grind and borderline game-breaking bugs.

A few well-designed systems struggle to overcome lifeless presentation. Capable, but ultimately hard to recommend.

A fun relic of the early PS2 days that I still like a lot, but slightly too dated for most players to enjoy.

Between the scares, your interactions with living characters are hampered by poor voice acting, an inability to skip conversations, and constant dialogue sync issues. [June 2008, p.71]

The biggest problem is that despite the increased focus on action, combat remains unchanged--a couple of new monsters, but few new tricks. [Sept 2012, p.71]

If you're already hooked, pick it up. Otherwise, the benefits aren't worth the investment. [Mar 2001, p.68]

There are some brilliant, original ideas in here, but Vampyr tries to do too much at once and suffers for it.

Steep costs and microtransactions taint an otherwise dreamy life sim.

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

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

A mostly fun, realistic football sim with wonky AI.

The immersiveness that made "Black & White" so appealing is distinctly absent. [Mar 2002, p.56]

Fascinating, fast, and friendly but far too forgiving. Wait for the patches and iron man/lady mods.

The game wields enough classic strategy and roleplaying elements to make up for its lack of visual flair. [July 2003, p.86]

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is a brief but fun foray into a well-worn genre. The mode-swapping and elemental attacks are enjoyable, but the game is over just when it starts to reach a proper crescendo, with 100 percent of the map revealed (and presumably all the gear and spells) in under six hours. Not quite a full symphony, but a fun little ensemble.

A JRPG for people who haven’t played one in a while, basically. Well-made, but disappointingly safe.

A disappointing campaign, and a sandbox rework that shows promise, but feels like it's still some major balance patches away from leaving the game in a good place.

A tightly written story with multiple endings and difficult choices would make this the best "Splinter Cell" game to date...if it had been released in a finished state. [Feb. 2007, p.62]

2020 marks the third year Madden has been back on PC since the franchise's prodigal return to the platform in 2018. The novelty hasn't worn off for me yet. There is still something inherently weird and exciting about playing such a console-targeted franchise on my desktop; to type in my player's name and college with a keyboard. But that won't sustain many players for long. Madden is desperate for some new ideas, so let's hope some of 21's more exotic ventures foreshadow a more substantial rebuild in the future.

An attractive medieval survival sandbox that unfortunately gets bogged down in too many demands for time.

An exciting concept begging for structural refinements and more meat on its robot bones.

Sledgehammer’s second swing at a DLC pack is a modest hit, but lapsed Advanced Warfare fans may return to find that few others have.