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
	SNK Arcade Classics: Vol. 1 review (PSP) Reviewed on June 20, 2008 Magician Lord is still gorgeous. Its backdrops are utterly otherworldly; its foregrounds brim with fantasy book life. Long-armed, bipedal beasts and gaggles of skeletons patrol the outer realms framed by unearthly mountain range and sky. Leap-deterring, hovering spheres; amorphous, wall-hugging gelatin; and spinning eyeballs actually seem alien -- not your garden variety projectile-spitters.
	Taboo: The Sixth Sense review (NES) Reviewed on June 19, 2008 Despite bearing Nintendo’s protective Seal of Quality, Taboo was clearly hewn from naught but the crimson hand of Satan himself – and believe me, I know a thing or two about Satan.
	Time Soldiers review (ARC) Reviewed on June 17, 2008 Unfortunately, every Time Soldiers triumph is canceled out by a flaw. If you don't know what you're doing, you'll find yourself repeating some areas more times than you'd care to count. That's because there are frequent warp points between the different time periods. So if you're trying to clear one zone and it's not the one you were instructed to explore, the game will let you go on your merry way... but no boss will ever appear and you'll just keep cycling through useless terrain until you catch onto your mistake and hop the next portal to a different setting.
	Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True review (AMIGA) Reviewed on June 16, 2008 This is no time for ridiculously cheesy monologues – there’s a body upstairs suffering from a serious case of lead poisoning and Chicago’s finest are already out for your head, assuming what’s left of your brain doesn’t do itself in first.
	P.O.W.: Prisoners of War review (ARC) Reviewed on June 16, 2008 I refuse to mince words. P.O.W. Prisoners of War is a game so fucking awful even the genre’s staunchest supporter cannot point to a redeeming snippet. Double Dragon 3 had some kitsch. Mug Smashers had some unintended humor. Even Street Smart – unsurprisingly, another SNK disaster – wasn’t this much of a miserable abomination; it at least had the courtesy to not drag out for this long.
	Splatterhouse review (ARC) Reviewed on June 14, 2008 I didn't think I'd be smacking rotting zombies to death with their own limbs or smashing corpses hung from nooses like macabre piñatas wide open with axes. When a disturbing individual with a cloth bag tied over its head assaulted me with twin chainsaws where its hands should have be, it gave me quite a start. This was an arcade cabinet set next door the The Simpson's brawler; kids were watching!
	Roogoo review (X360) Reviewed on June 14, 2008 It’s an extremely simple concept, but it has an addictive quality to it and is easily accessible for the hardcore and casuals. As you progress through the forty-five single-player levels, various obstacles are introduced to makes things a little more challenging.
	Road Avenger review (SCD) Reviewed on June 13, 2008 Road Avenger isn’t just Wolf Team’s finest laserdisc conversion, it’s clearly the greatest FMV game on Sega CD and the best damn thing Data East was ever responsible for in their long and largely mediocre history! Maybe those last two aren’t exactly what you’d call ringing endorsements, but rest assured that from the moment you boot up this bad boy you’re in for naught but burning hot AWESOME.
	Speed Racer: The Videogame review (DS) Reviewed on June 13, 2008 You won’t have much time to pay attention to your surroundings, however; in the vein of such series as Wipeout and F-Zero, Speed Racer: The Videogame is set in a futuristic society where races move fast! At the beginning of the race, you can expect to accelerate from zero to 300 miles/h within seconds; at top speed, your vehicle will approach Mach 1. Nevertheless, the experience isn’t completely about speed; it’s also about style...
	BioShock review (PC) Reviewed on June 12, 2008 BioShock is an expertly crafted and finely tuned videogame: every inch of the level design has its place and purpose, and most of that purpose involves creating an astonishingly believable world out of something so incredible. The series of giant hubs that comprise the city are exactly as you’d expect the different districts to look, and contain exactly the amenities you'd expect to find there. The architecture in particular is wonderful: a phenomenal fusion of elaborate 50s art deco with the metallic necessity of constructing such an underwater world. Even the true greats at creating a palpable, utterly plausible environment – Deus Ex, Half-Life, System Shock 2 – didn't come anywhere near this incredible accomplishment.
	George of the Jungle and the Search for the Secret review (WII) Reviewed on June 12, 2008 Despite being an initially promising platformer, its charm is spoiled by pointless motion control, absent collision detection and unforgiving enemy encounters.
	Belief & Betrayal review (PC) Reviewed on June 11, 2008 Belief & Betrayal is the latest adventure title from Italian developer Artematica Interactive, the company behind such horrors as the horrible Druuna game from 2001. Seven years later, and things haven't moved on all that much. The back-story and introduction are essentially made up of badly paced, unconvincing and uninteresting drivel. The blokes at Artematica seem to have tried reeling in the 'Da Vinci Code' crowd with an entirely unimaginative narrative centred around conspiracies within the Catholic Church, but the plot lacks so much conviction that it was always going to be impossible to pull off.
	Revolution X review (ARC) Reviewed on June 11, 2008 Maybe I feel sorry because it gives me less of a chance to rip on the idea of a heavy-duty assault rifle's secondary weapon hurling CD's so destructive they effortlessly destroy APCs. And helicopters Maybe I feel robbed of the opportunity to tell you how Revolution X is set in a world that revolves around Areosmith, while, at the same time, hates Aerosmith so much that a dedicated group hell-bent on their silence grew large enough to effortlessly capture the planet.
	Medal of Honor: Vanguard review (PS2) Reviewed on June 11, 2008 Now, instead of using canteens and first aid kits to restore health, all you have to do is duck out of the fray for a bit. Keegan can completely regenerate his health in a matter of seconds if he is able to avoid getting shot. To make this easier than you might expect, a good number of Nazis seem content to stay in one place and wait for you to enter their shooting range, as opposed to pursuing you in order to deal that killing blow.
	Dracula: Origin review (PC) Reviewed on June 10, 2008 Torchlight flickers ominously, shifting the shadows cast by ghostly slivers of light invading the darkness through a network of cracks in the ancient ceiling. A silver tomb sits surrounded by a slew of human remains; bared ribcages, chewed femurs, a shattered skull. An unholy groan emits from the coffin and, from an exposed hole in the corner snakes a rotting arm, longingly reaching for you. If a hungry immortal was not enough, behind the undead monster floats a malevolent green fog, one completely impassable without knowing the rite of passage. These events may not have come from Stoker’s pen, but may as well have.
	Emergency Heroes review (WII) Reviewed on June 09, 2008 Well, the way this works is that you have one of three districts—later all combined into one—where you drive through crowded traffic to find glowing columns of light that represent missions. The time spent between said missions is mostly devoid of anything worthwhile, since you can only occasionally find diversions and they can pull you away from wherever you're supposed to be headed. Worse, the traffic you must navigate is downright annoying.
	Half-Life: Blue Shift review (PC) Reviewed on June 09, 2008 If Blue Shift were merely a simple rehash of everything we saw in Half-Life, I’d be cool with it, since I adored that game and would have loved to see more. But this expansion lacks many of the masterful touches that made Valve’s first-person shooter stand out so much. Level design is straightforward, mechanical, and lacks imagination; way too much of the game’s first act is spent wandering through some nondescript sewer system, turning wheels and pushing buttons and swimming down canals and all that. The game does eventually pick up a bit, during a semi-cool run through a train yard sporting a number of mildly exciting skirmishes with your old military opponents, but even here, the game lacks the energy and knack for big, “epic” moments that the original (and even, occasionally, Opposing Force) did so well.
	Great War Nations: The Spartans review (PC) Reviewed on June 09, 2008 I thought this was supposed to be a historical RTS. You know, based on actual history. That's what it sells itself as, anyway...But I'm reasonably certain none of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean had the power to throw magical fireballs.
	The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons review (GBC) Reviewed on June 09, 2008 Take Dodongo, for example. To defeat this chap, you first have to use the tried and true strategy of feeding him bombs. Then, after he's stunned by the explosion, using the power bracelet, you must pick him up and toss him onto a bed of spikes before he regains his equilibrium.
	Half-Life: Opposing Force review (PC) Reviewed on June 08, 2008 My least-favorite segment of Half-Life was the journey through the border world Xen at the end, only because the human factor had been taken out of the equation, and battling the far less intelligent alien grunts got old after a while. Much of Opposing Force more or less feels like that entire sequence, only set in the Black Mesa facility itself. The good news is that the action is kept fairly interesting throughout thanks to some new (tougher) alien baddies to fight (whom I later learned are not from Xen, but from… uh, somewhere else). The game is simply never as exciting or action-packed as the original often was.

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