Review Archives (All Reviews)

You are currently looking through all reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by Lewis and sorted according to date of submission, with the newest content displaying first. As many as 20 results will display per page. If you would like to try a search with different parameters, specify them below and submit a new search.

Available Reviews
	System Shock 2 review (PC) Reviewed on April 16, 2009 You could talk for hours about the way System Shock 2 plays - the way its controls feel so human, the way every action has a tangible weight, and the way its many optional approaches are so finely balanced from start to finish - and still not really approach why it's one of gaming's exemplary moments. The shiningly perfect mechanics keep things plodding along nicely, sure, but it's all rather incongruent to the meat and bones of this miraculous FPS/RPG. This is background materia...	5/5
	Crazy Machines: Complete review (PC) Reviewed on April 07, 2009 More than a year's passed since its sequel, meaning all that's really relevant now is the price. For £20, you get the original game, a training pack and an adequate yet uninspiring expansion. These days, you can get Crazy Machines 2 for a tenner in most places. Something does not compute.	2.5/5
	Geneforge 5: Overthrow review (PC) Reviewed on April 06, 2009 Overthrow is the final instalment in the Geneforge saga, which has delivered an average of almost a game a year since its inception in 2002. While the gaming world has radically changed during this time, Geneforge's internal climate has remained consistent. It's still isometric and visually primitive - though the presentation in Overthrow is vastly improved - but such matters lay outside Spiderweb's focus. This is about interactive, non-linear storytelling of the finest quality. And while its approach may be somewhat familiar to those who obsessed for weeks over the likes of Planescape: Torment, it's hugely refreshing to play something with a similar feel all these years on.	3.5/5
	Yume Nikki review (PC) Reviewed on April 02, 2009 Understanding Yume Nikki really involves knowing what happens at the end. It's almost impossible to talk about with any authority without this knowledge, and without making numerous references to the finale. Writing about it, then, is going to involve a pretty severe spoiler, and if you're completely ademant that you're going to see this incredibly strange adventure through to its conclusion, you should almost certainly do so before reading another sentence of this analysis. Not even t...	4.5/5
	Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason review (PC) Reviewed on April 01, 2009	2.5/5
	Mevo & The Grooveriders review (PC) Reviewed on March 31, 2009 Mevo & The Grooveriders is a gloriously silly, ridiculously charming little game, as accessible as it is beautiful, and for the ludicrously small admission fee of £5.99 (Steam still refuses to show international prices), it's hard to imagine anyone being disappointed. But the lack of precision is problematic, and does hold Mevo back from the highest accolades. With a bit more polish, and with the addition of a solid community hub, this promising debut from Red Rocket Games could deliver something very jazzy indeed.	3.5/5
	Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: Episode 1 - Fright of the Bumblebees review (PC) Reviewed on March 25, 2009 It never quite gets going, surely a symptom of its short duration over anything else. At just a few hours long, nothing really kicks off until the finale, but it's one that sets the scene for what could be a delightful little adventure. Fright of the Bumblebees is an impressively promising start to this four-part release, and if it carries on in the same direction, later instalments could be just the ticket. This one's a fine introduction, but I'm almost certain it'll be the least memorable.	3.5/5
	The Nameless Mod review (PC) Reviewed on March 24, 2009 The Nameless Mod truly is an incredible achievement. Nearly 200,000 lines of fully voiced dialogue. A story that branches drastically around an hour in, resulting in two radically different fifteen-hour campaigns. An abundance of clever videogame commentary, woven seamlessly into the daft but surprisingly affecting narrative. A player-centric, opportunity-filled playground of gritty adventuring. Seven years of hard, voluntary work with a notoriously fiddly engine have resoundingly paid off. It's often ludicrously good -- which makes it even more disheartening when an essential door wedges half-open, or an important message doesn't appear, or the game crashes to the desktop for the umpteenth time that day.	3.5/5
	Fenimore Fillmore's Revenge review (PC) Reviewed on March 16, 2009 Missing the mark in everything it tries to achieve, Fenimore Fillmore's Revenge is a catastrophe of an adventure game. Thoughtlessly designed and amateurishly crafted, it quickly descends into a pile of pointless gibberish and unfinished ideas. Fortunately, it's so insignificant that it's not worth getting upset about. If you're stupid enough to play it, make sure you disconnect your speakers first.	1/5
	The Path review (PC) Reviewed on March 12, 2009 As a concept, The Path is a brave attempt at something more poignant within the medium. As a game, it's a collection of excellent yet slightly incomplete ideas. As a talking point, it provides more ground for intelligent game-related discussion than anything else is likely to encourage this year. So let's talk about it. And let's keep making more games like this.	4/5
	Penumbra: Requiem review (PC) Reviewed on March 11, 2009 After Black Plague so masterfully refined the Penumbra format, it seems like such a waste to throw it all away in favour of a poorly contextualised and badly designed puzzle game. Requiem resolutely fails in every aspect that made its predecessors so remarkable. The game that was never meant to be made should have stayed that way.	1.5/5
	Penumbra: Black Plague review (PC) Reviewed on March 11, 2009 Everything's received an overhaul. Black Plague looks better, sounds better, plays better and reads better than its predecessor. It's still slightly rough around the edges, as is inevitible for a game built on such a tight budget by such a small team of developers. But it's less clumsy, more restrained, and more effective than before.	4/5
	Ceville review (PC) Reviewed on March 05, 2009 Despite its good intentions, Ceville is so mediocre that I'm struggling to know what to say about it. It's easy to enthuse about brilliance in games, or relentlessly rant about awful bits. Ceville has no significant examples of either. Despite its good intentions, it's unremarkable; despite its problems, it's rather playable. It sits firmly in the middle of the gaming spectrum, a title that's likely to annoy few but resonate with fewer.	2.5/5
	F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin review (X360) Reviewed on March 05, 2009 Refined, often impressive, yet ultimately empty, there's simply none of Monolith's renowned creativity on display here. Producing a more polished version of your four-year-old near-masterpiece doesn't quite cut it, in a world where the genre is rapidly maturing and evolving into a new beast altogether.	3/5
	Spelunky [Freeware] review (PC) Reviewed on February 22, 2009 Challenging, addictive, thoughtful and beautiful, Spelunky is a stream of constant delight. The icing on the cake is that it's free, and a mere 8mb download. There are no excuses not to play this. You have been warned.	4.5/5
	Penumbra: Overture review (PC) Reviewed on February 20, 2009 Overture is a slightly uncomfortable amalgamation of half-finished ideas, but, when it's at its best, it's surprisingly brilliant. If it were a little more inventive beyond its physics engine, and a little less clunky in its mechanics, we could be dealing with an indie classic. As it stands, it's merely an engaging and impressively frightening way to pass an uneventful afternoon.	3/5
	Red Faction review (PC) Reviewed on February 18, 2009 So here's the thing.	3/5
	ShellShock 2: Blood Trails review (X360) Reviewed on February 17, 2009 Here's the set-up. You're an American soldier in Vietnam. You ain't never been so scared in your life, the title screen informs you. And then, suddenly, you're in a building filled with smoke, and some dispicable army veteran starts being racist about the Vietnamese, mumbles something about a chemical called Whiteknight turning everyone into zombies, and then your infected friend grabs you and pleads for his life. And then you flash back to another point in time, in a near-identical building filled with smoke, an arbitrary objective appears on-screen, and I wish it had stopped there because I might have looked upon ShellShock 2 more favourably if it had done.	0.5/5
	Penumbra Collection review (PC) Reviewed on February 11, 2009 In many ways, Penumbra is exactly what horror games should be like. In many others, the inexperience of the developer cuts through the mix a little too clearly for comfort. This flitting between terrifying and tiring leaves a little to be desired, but Penumbra Collection has enough interesting ideas to sail on, if only for the first two segments of its sinister life.	3/5
	Dear Esther review (PC) Reviewed on February 08, 2009 Dear Esther doesn't function like most of its peers, so applying the relatively rigid structure of traditional games criticism doesn't quite work. Attempting to do so would only lead to futile conclusions like 'too easy', 'too short' and 'too ugly', none of which are remotely relevant to the quality of this whimsical creation. Dear Esther feels more like an art-house film, or the mental picture conjured up by a good poem. And I want you to understand that this is something I'd love for everyone to try out.	3.5/5

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