Review Archives (Staff Reviews)

You are currently looking through staff reviews for games that are available on every platform the site currently covers. Below, you will find reviews written by all eligible authors 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
	Armada 2526 review (PC) Reviewed on July 11, 2010 Armada 2526 is a hard game. It doesn’t have a plot, but it does have a big, wide open galaxy to explore and twelve distinct races to base your own story on.
	Doom review (SNES) Reviewed on July 08, 2010 After mere moments of playing through the first level of the first (of three) episodes, I was wondering if my killing machine of a space marine had been replaced by Stephen Hawking. You will move really slowly and choppily through levels AND the controls aren't responsive. There's a brief delay between you using the control pad and your character actually moving, which isn't a very desirable thing in an action game.
	Diddy Kong Racing review (N64) Reviewed on July 08, 2010 Diddy Kong Racing smartly mimics SMK’s well-founded principles while expanding in different directions. To call it just a go-cart racer gives too little credit. As if it were no big thing, DKR boldly introduces the physics of plane and hovercraft travel to the genre while replicating the slide-turn techniques that separated the wheat from the chaff in SNES carting, casually switching between all three vehicles throughout. You’ll be tearing around the rocky orange cliffs of prehistoric Fossil Canyon, skidding past waterfalls and between the stomping feet of a ponderous Brontosaurus, and in the very next race take to the skies, navigating around snow-capped firs and splitting icy gorges at the Snowfrost Peak circuit.
	System Shock review (PC) Reviewed on July 08, 2010 It's true that the interface is clumsy, with far too much dragging and dropping going on. But away from the peripherals, here remains a game of survival horror resource management, careful RPG stat-planning, and basic but tactical first-person action. It weaves these threads together into something so wholly representative of developer Looking Glass' style that, even above Ultima Underworld and Thief, you'd point to System Shock as the prime example of what this wonderful studio created.
	Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable review (PSP) Reviewed on July 08, 2010 Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES both arrived much too late in the PlayStation 2's life cycle. The current console generation was already well under way and new releases on that platform were regularly being overlooked in favor of the titles on newer systems. That’s definitely a shame. Persona 3 is one of the last generation’s greatest RPGs. Hopefully this latest version, Persona 3 Portable for the PSP, will get the attention it deserves.
	The Godfather II review (PS3) Reviewed on July 07, 2010 Battles are won before a single shot is fired, business taken without so much as a pride-obliterating pimp slap and the game completed without effort or, ultimately, interest.
	Naughty Bear review (X360) Reviewed on July 07, 2010 Each new weapon has a kill animation to go with it, but none of those animations are all that amusing after the first three or four times that you see them. I enjoy pouncing on an over-sized bear and hacking apart his face with an ax as much as the next guy, but the game's cover artwork looks substantially more depraved than the final product actually feels. Where's the crimson, or at least a cloud of puff? These are the blandest ax murders you'll ever see, hands down. Unless you're switching weapons constantly (and perhaps even then), you could easily tire of the animations before you even finish the first of the game's many repetitive stages.
	Sam & Max: They Stole Max's Brain! review (PC) Reviewed on July 03, 2010 Here, he needs to disturb an alliance between previous chapter’s villains using chicanery and random vandalism, while disembodied Max, his brain kept snug in a sealed jar, complete with electronic voice box and L.E.D mouth, antagonizes all around him out of sheer boredom.
	Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo review (WII) Reviewed on July 02, 2010 Dragonball: Revenge of King Piccolo has some potential as a side-scrolling adventure, but some unfortunate stumbles prevent it from serving as the enjoyable introduction to the game franchise that it so easily could have been.
	Gang Wars review (ARC) Reviewed on July 01, 2010 What's harder to explain are the numerous other problems. Gang Wars is characterized by slack issues that have grown increasingly noticeable since the Prisoners of War codebase it probably leveraged. Animation is stilted and choppy with not enough frames per attack, and the frames loop through at incongruent rates, one player throwing a punch and back to normal stance while the other still has his head careened back after a blow to the jaw. GW excels relative to its peers at providing a variety of different attackers, but negates that success by stacking them anyway – the same sprite may only be used once, but when it is you’ll fight three of the same guy at the same time anyway.
	TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Dai Maou review (NES) Reviewed on July 01, 2010 In Detana!! TwinBee (aka: Bells & Whistles), the entire game exhibited the same sort of imagination these bosses did. There were floating cities, waterfalls in outer space and other enchanting sights to fly over. Here...there's a quintet of generic-looking backgrounds ranging from the mundane beach-and-water combo of the second stage to the atrocious checkerboard design of the final level.
	RISK: Factions review (X360) Reviewed on June 29, 2010 The "Factions" mode adds a few wrinkles to that classic formula. The maps that you'll explore are different, with special new attractions that give particular territories new value. For example, it's possible to lay siege to an island temple. Doing so means that during each turn that you hold that fortified position, you can choose a single one of your opponent's territories to convert to your own (along with any troops who happen to be stationed there). Just imagine the possibilities. Whoever has that temple has tremendous power, but the temple grounds are obviously going to be under constant attack.
	8-bit Girlfriend review (X360) Reviewed on June 29, 2010 8-bit Girlfriend is a paper thin joke that doesn’t even stay around long enough to wear out its welcome.
	Resident Evil 5: Untold Stories review (X360) Reviewed on June 27, 2010 Untold Stories, as a whole, is a fantastic package that allows you to experience both sides of Resident Evil 5‘s extremes in their very best light.
	Sin & Punishment: Star Successor review (WII) Reviewed on June 27, 2010 It's hard to do justice to the intensity and creativity of Successor to the Skies. All I can hope to do is to convince you that the foundations are in place and give you a mere glimpse of the imagination that flows through this title. If you’re even a little bit convinced then I urge you to go out and experience the insanity for yourself. Sin and Punishment: Successor to the Skies is exactly the game that people have in mind when they think of Treasure.
	Starcraft review (MAC) Reviewed on June 27, 2010 This is Starcraft. This is a game that can still inspire excitement and interest more than a decade after its initial release. It does this despite having outdated graphics, without including branching paths or moral choices, and with nary a trophy achievement in sight. Starcraft can raise a lot of questions about what’s really important in a game.
	Disney/Pixar Toy Story 3 review (PS3) Reviewed on June 24, 2010 The experience resembles what it might feel like to walk into a room with a huge chest, dig through it and yank out a bunch of my favorite toys, then toss them together and relish the crazy results. Players are presented with a virtual sandbox—a desert town with just a few buildings and a handful of citizens—and then are let loose to have fun. Even just running around the world, trying out magic wands and ray guns is a blast.
	Alpha Protocol review (X360) Reviewed on June 21, 2010 Alpha Protocol isn’t excused of anything it does wrong. There’s the overwhelming sense here that Obsidian bypassed the game's flaws rather than fixing them. That’s almost as good, though, because it makes everything about Alpha Protocol no less than tolerable. Once the game works, once you find an approach to combat that suits you, it’s easy to ignore what the game does wrong and admire what it does right.
	Dead Space review (X360) Reviewed on June 20, 2010 Dead Space doesn’t want to be another forgettable survival horror wannabe. It desperately wants to be taken seriously and, as such, has poured tremendous efforts into establishing its credentials.
	I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1 review (X360) Reviewed on June 20, 2010 If you’re one of the few still left out in the dark, I can guarantee you’re all the poorer for it.

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