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
	BioShock review (X360) Reviewed on August 04, 2008 The setting of Rapture is unique, which in horror-themed FPS terms means the developers were free to pull off new environmental tricks – like having water leaking in through the windows, or making the walls creak from the pressure – in addition to the usual flickering lights and distant screams. Irrational also knew how to handle irony and awkward juxtaposition, too. Watching a little girl in a pink dress who’s stabbing corpses with a giant syringe get attacked by a bunch of lunatics wielding rusty pipes is unsettling. It’s even more unsettling when it all unfolds as “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?” plays on an old turntable in the background.
	Portal review (PC) Reviewed on August 04, 2008 For a game that toys with such an inventive idea, it gets it miraculously spot-on in one attempt. The whole thing is strikingly intuitive, meaning that within ten minutes you've grasped the fundamental concepts of the whole thing, and your progression is simply down to your thinking power. Solutions are often abstract or lateral, but never illogical, meaning there's a sense of reward for every one completed. The difficulty and complexity curves are handled brilliantly, with the introduction of the portals themselves coming a while before you get your hands on the fantastic portal device, and the puzzles themselves always a logical progression from the previous one. It's always fast-paced, always interesting, and always stupendously entertaining.
	Women’s Volleyball Championship review (PS2) Reviewed on August 04, 2008 It's so frustratingly unpredictable that you begin to feel like you're not even playing. Why do the players respond so poorly to your commands? Why do you have so little control over where the ball goes? How is it that your teammates are more likely to excel if you just press the button once or twice per round and then leave them to their own devices the rest of the time? I just don't know, and nothing in the tutorials answered such queries.
	SNK Arcade Classics: Vol. 1 review (WII) Reviewed on August 04, 2008 ... A compilation burdened by games that don’t showcase why players loved SNK so much in the days of the arcade. While there’s definitely some good content here, Vol. 1 feels like a missed opportunity...
	Pro Cycling Manager/Tour de France 2008 review (PC) Reviewed on August 04, 2008 The premise of being a cycling manager preparing for the Tour de France is a simple one: Find a team; Train them until they threaten to quit; Find a sponsor; Win.
	Jet Force Gemini review (N64) Reviewed on August 03, 2008 I’m generally okay with fetch quests – hell, half of my N64 career was positively made of fetch quests – but Rare bumps it up a notch. They obscure some of the Tribals from regular view. The others are thrown out into the open, where they’re more likely to get killed by stray gunfire. What’s worse is that worlds are divided into districts, and you’ve got to collect all of an area’s Tribals before you leave. If an area has ten Tribals and you save nine, you can’t come back later and rescue the one that you missed. You’ve got to get them all in one fell swoop. It’s not simply tiring – it’s exhausting.
	Racing Team Manager review (PC) Reviewed on August 02, 2008 Racing Team Manager is probably the most counter-intuitive and frustratingly illogical game I've ever played. There are no tutorials or help buttons, which is a bad idea anyway, but when all of the option screens seem to rely on bizarre icons or abbreviations for everything, it's simply absurd. It took me about fifteen minutes to work out why it wouldn't enter my car for the first race. It turned out it didn't have an engine in it. I only worked this out by clicking, then double-clicking, then clicking and pressing 'automatic' (which seems to sometimes set up a bit of your car by itself) in a desperate attempt for something to happen. Management games should involve careful, strategic planning and fine-tuning. This felt like playing Myst.
	The World Ends with You review (DS) Reviewed on August 02, 2008 The game kept going, for much longer than I had anticipated. Here, Neku finally met his arc and became a likeable character … and my adventure was far from over. It is here that you will actually start caring for Neku as a character, and it is here that The World Ends with You truly begins. How clever you are, Jupiter. You present us with an evolution in character most would save for the very end, and you just keep on going.
	Order Up! review (WII) Reviewed on August 01, 2008 Despite the solid selection of dishes on hand, cooking for the same motley assortment can get old after awhile and the game doesn't really offer much relief. About the only exceptions are a few mini-games. One has you flicking rats that run along the screen. Another has you quickly scrubbing plates under the eye of the watchful health inspector. Then there are the ones where you must move the Wii Remote to shake your workers awake when the going gets tough. These are nice diversions that fit the humorous cooking theme quite well, but there simply aren't enough of them to entirely dispel the monotony that is inherent to a title of this nature.
	Journey Escape review (A2600) Reviewed on July 31, 2008 Run into the Kool-Aid man (who supposedly represents your manager, but the dudes in the band were probably on so much blow they couldn't tell the difference) and you'll get money and be invulnerable to anything with that band member, making it child's play to run right to the vehicle.
	Keystone Kapers review (A2600) Reviewed on July 31, 2008 More distressing are the toy planes. Taking one of those upside the head is enough to send a Kop down for the count. And, as you might expect, Harry is 100 percent immune to all of these distractions as he merrily dashes for freedom.
	Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit review (X360) Reviewed on July 31, 2008 The previous games, while encyclopedia-like in scope, were pretty ho-hum as far as actual playability. They ran the gamut of problems from being hardcore button mashers to having an awkward camera. When your fighting game has an awkward camera, it's probably time to start over anyway. And in this case, they went right down to the basics...
	Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard review (DS) Reviewed on July 29, 2008 As you become proficient with the tools provided, the game and its challenges evolve. You'll rely on the bottom screen to let you know where you are in relation to horrific monsters called FOEs that have wandered down the tower from much later areas. There's only one term for any of these guys the first time you meet them: badass. Surviving one round of combat is often impossible. They'll mop the floor with you. However, they can—and generally should—be avoided.
	Avernum 5 review (PC) Reviewed on July 27, 2008 But maybe even more than that, the Avernum series sets itself apart from the legions of other fantasy CRPGs with its phenomenal milieu; an Empire soldier might not want to trudge through miles of winding underground caverns, with their unique ecosystems and civilizations and problems, but I sure do.
	The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess review (GCN) Reviewed on July 24, 2008 There comes a point when Link gains the ability to transform at will, which does wonders to rid Twilight of its biggest flaw. Not only does this keep the game from forcing players into lengthy non-human segments, but it allows you to more delicately appreciate the simple joys that the wolf provides, like following scent trails and digging holes through walls. It is at this point that the wolf mechanic works for the game, not against it, and that’s when Twilight becomes the full-blown masterpiece it was meant to be.
	Cyberdreams review (PC) Reviewed on July 24, 2008 It's a very challenging game that is probably the most cerebral Doom wad I've ever played. But, it also bored the crap out of me. While the levels are all designed differently and the Cybers are placed in many very tricky locations, I just couldn't shake the feeling I was doing the same thing over and over again. After only doing a handful of levels, the lack of variety had really sapped my enthusiasm.
	Deus Ex: Invisible War review (PC) Reviewed on July 24, 2008 I've waited years for a videogame to truly treat me as an adult, and finally one has arrived. Ignore the silver science-fiction: beneath that is a truly poignant look at society, terror and corruption. The non-linearity is so all encompassing that you can choose your side right from the beginning. Much of the game will play out very similarly either way, but your approach to it, and the tale you uncover, will be very much different.
	Virtua Fighter CG Portrait Series Vol. 1: Sarah Bryant review (SAT) Reviewed on July 20, 2008 The next shot is of her abandoned beech-towel and parasol. I start rooting for Sarah, hoping she can get away! She fails. We find her slinging a pair of flowers over her shoulder and snarling at the screen. Some people might mistake it for a light-hearted grin but, by now, we know better.
	Prism: Light the Way review (DS) Reviewed on July 20, 2008
	Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines review (PC) Reviewed on July 18, 2008 The Vampire RPG mythology is applied flawlessly here, the politically charged 'vampire subculture' backdrop providing for one of the most fabulously realised videogame narratives we've had the pleasure of experiencing in years. It starts with a murder, as many good stories do, and it leads on a spectacular voyage of mystery, dark secrets, an enormous and seductively gritty underworld and a struggle for supremacy between a group of equally corrupt and equally power-hungry fiends. This is the first, and perhaps most interesting, way in which Bloodlines stands out from the crowd of interactive fiction. On the surface, it's a game about vampires. But it doesn't take long to realise that, really, this is a game about life, about people, and about the ways in which we behave based on our beliefs, our morals, our experiences and our social standings.

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