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
	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.
	Syberia review (DS) Reviewed on February 16, 2009 Even for people like me, who never played the original, there was a sense that something was terribly wrong. The feeling was so strong that I did some research and discovered that not only had all of the voice overs been cut out, more than half of the dialogue had been removed from the port.
	Retro Game Challenge review (DS) Reviewed on February 15, 2009 Retro Game Challenge features eight games in all. That doesn't sound like much, and in some ways it isn't. After all, we've seen compilations of classic games that boasted three, four... even seven or eight times that number. Keep in mind, though, that these are original efforts. More importantly, they're original efforts that—for the most part—are fun to play today while still retaining that distinct retro flavor (including a score tally that mentions how many objects you shooted and an innkeeper that asks you if you feel asleep).
	BlackSite: Area 51 review (PS3) Reviewed on February 14, 2009 Blacksite: Area 51 is just another shooter. You’ve played this game before; you’ve played it better and you‘ve played it worse, but this doesn’t change the fact that, as a title, it simply exists.
	Castlequest review (NES) Reviewed on February 13, 2009 My hero began the game with a whopping 50 lives and there are TONS of vials scattered through the castle worth one bonus life each. However, each life is naught but a fleeting moment in Castlequest's.....uhhh...castle. I found that out in the very first room. I grabbed the blue key right next to me, used it to open the nearby blue door (keys only open doors of their color) and jumped to a ledge right above me. There was an enemy here, so I prepared to stab him with my really tiny sword. Before I could get close enough to complete this task, he fired an arrow at me and I died.
	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 on 3 NHL Arcade review (PS3) Reviewed on February 10, 2009 This game nails the Arcade portion of its title. Shedding all cumbersome rules – offsides, icing, penalties, faceoffs – 3 on 3 NHL Arcade delivers nonstop shots, hard hitting-checks, and silly powerups. The NHL half, though, is not so exciting. No teams, no logos, and no familiar arenas or cities. It's a shallow battle of generic jerseys.
	Evil Zone review (PSX) Reviewed on February 10, 2009 There is good anime and bad anime, good fighting games and bad fighting games. On the scale, Evil Zone falls somewhere below (way below) Dragon Ball Z in the first category and hovers somewhere to the north west of Smash Brothers in the second.
	Image Fight review (ARC) Reviewed on February 08, 2009 Used to be a time when shooters graced the arcades, and companies like Irem sat at the top of their craft, producing one solid space-faring saga after another. You don’t have to look beyond their beloved R-Type series to see what I mean. That was a franchise built out of love, yet conveyed with loathing. Methodical, precise, difficult – the series still conjures memories of challenging episodes and unmitigated ardor. But perhaps you’d be surprised to learn that Irem didn’t limit itself to just one grueling shooter franchise. Turns out that there was another. And people have always hated it.
	Image Fight review (NES) Reviewed on February 08, 2009 Image Fight on the NES is absolutely horrible. Or at least that’s what you’re going to believe. This review won’t convince you otherwise. It’s not that my writing won’t move you to think the opposite, but the screenshots will strive to keep you in the dark. The pictures tell the real story, not the words. Please don’t like this game.
	Image Fight review (TG16) Reviewed on February 08, 2009 More than two years after its initial release, Image Fight stood defiant on the PC Engine as one of the finest shooters the system had to offer. It had graced the arcades, sold its soul to the devil to appear on the NES, and even graced the likes of a couple of obscure Japanese computers. But now it was on the PC Engine where it deserved to be. A hardcore shooter on a system known for its hardcore shooters. This is how things should have been from the start.
	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.
	Rygar: The Battle of Argus review (WII) Reviewed on February 07, 2009 Rygar inhabits a three-dimensional world. However, you'll be forced to deal with fixed angles. As you roam down a hallway and the map indicates that there are doors on either side, you'll need to guess at their precise location. Even in the very first stage, this results in confusion. You'll have to constantly compare Rygar's position on-screen with the little mini map in the corner, since a ledge that you need to jump and grab is more likely to blend in with the background than not. Perhaps it'll even be completely out of sight.
	Low G Man review (NES) Reviewed on February 06, 2009 One minute, you'll be fighting robotic enemies; the next, it'll be little flying gargoyles coming at you. You'll find yourself diving to the depths of an ocean to set up a jaunt through an alien-infested submarine in the second level; meanwhile the fourth level begins with a jaunt up a tower leading to a fight with a teleporting boss in an oddly psychedelic room and ends with a short trip through an alien mothership.
	Hotel Giant 2 review (PC) Reviewed on February 06, 2009 If you can deal with the fact that every single one of your guests is going to be an utter ball-ache to deal with, Hotel Giant 2 becomes predictably addictive, and it's easy to lose hours on end fine-tuning all sorts of little details in order to watch your profit margin increase painfully slowly. But then, this is more praise of the genre as a whole than of this example of it. The length of time it takes to complete each of the campaign sections also totally destroys the sense of reward upon finishing one. You can skip weeks on end if you like, but it can still take hours upon hours of real time to make much progress - particularly early on, when the woefully inept tutorial fails to teach you even the basics of how the game actually works.
	Assassin's Creed review (PS3) Reviewed on February 04, 2009 The idiot guards conspire to make one point very clear: Assassin’s Creed is a game set amongst a flock of intolerable dumbness.
	Dragon Knight review (X68K) Reviewed on February 01, 2009 Dragon Knight's success propelled development house Elf to the heights of respect, insofar as a company that produces hentai video games could possibly be respected. Due in large part to the success of Dragon Knight, a significant portion of their catalog was ported to the PC Engine and Sega Saturn, able to be enjoyed by the impressionable children of unsuspecting parents.
	Eternal Poison review (PS2) Reviewed on January 31, 2009 Closed minds will find Eternal Poison to be a finely-crafted strategy RPG. Open minds will find a lot more, including fresh takes on familar themes: religion, altruisim, selfishness, and the double-edged nature of justice.
	Emerald Dragon review (SNES) Reviewed on January 30, 2009 Unfortunately for Atrushan, there is a bit of a curse on the land, making it very deadly for dragons to venture there (the reason they're confined to their own isolated realm). However, it doesn't take him long (a tiny tutorial dungeon) to gain a relic that transforms him into a human, allowing him to seek out Tamryn and teach the game's assorted bad guys that when a dragon's pledged to protect a girl, it doesn't pay to be attempting a hostile takeover of the land she's calling home.
	Gears of War 2 review (X360) Reviewed on January 30, 2009 The gunplay is brutal. But it's also masterfully paced, broken up every so often by a spectacular set-piece or a superb on-rails vehicular section. Combat is as effortlessly brilliant as before, with the landmark cover-system playing a predictably huge role. Particularly on higher difficulty levels, failure to fully utilise the conveniently-positioned walls and boxes that litter Gears 2's battlegrounds results in bloody death, so a more strategic approach is often necessary. Nothing too strategic, mind. You wouldn't want to tax your brain too much, after all.

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