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.
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Quarrel review (X360)Reviewed on February 04, 2012I know what you're thinking: "Just what we needed, another Xbox Live word game..." Well, cheer up, because Quarrel isn't your average Scrabble clone. It's a charming combination of word unscrambling and turn-based strategy warfare. Wait, wha-? No, you didn’t read that wrong; in Quarrel your goal is to control all of the territories on the game board using the unstoppable force of your Word IQ. |
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Star Ocean: The Last Hope review (X360)Reviewed on February 03, 2012The Bonus Board isn't permanent, though, as if an enemy whacks the character you're controlling with a critical hit, you'll watch a number of your bonuses dissipate. I had a knack for killing stuff with critical hits, so at times, I'd be getting at least an additional 100 percent experience. One of those hard hits against me and it was down to 50 percent and I'd have to build my board back to its former glory (or take another couple critical hits and have to start from scratch). |
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Pushmo review (3DS)Reviewed on January 31, 2012Like Mario in Donkey Kong the hero can leap only a short distance, so a lot of pulling is necessary if he’s going to scale some of the larger puzzles. It starts to feel almost like you’re building your own platformer as you go, which could easily become frustrating except that you can undo the last 15 seconds or so of play by holding the L button to rewind your actions, as in a Prince of Persia title. |
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Medal of Honor: Airborne review (X360)Reviewed on January 31, 2012There’s plenty to complain about with Medal of Honor: Airborne. There’s simply even more still to appreciate. |
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Scarygirl review (X360)Reviewed on January 28, 2012Unfortunately, that joy was often marred by frustration. The controls seem a bit loose, which can make precise leaping more trouble that it's worth. Your character is pretty versatile, using her tentacle arm to whack enemies, briefly hover through the air and swing from objects, but it got tricky to consistently pull off some of those moves, especially since the girl struggles with fundamentals like stopping on a dime. |
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Unstoppable Gorg review (PC)Reviewed on January 19, 2012Unstoppable Gorg is a tower defense game with a twist. That’s a claim that any PR person might make about any new offering within the genre. In this case, though, it’s an especially apt description because the twist is this: you twist things. |
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AMY review (X360)Reviewed on January 18, 2012Tragically, though the poor presentation is the first thing you’ll notice, it’s not the worst. Not by a long shot. In fact, an argument could be made that the presentation is the best thing the game has going for it. |
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Star Wars: The Old Republic review (PC)Reviewed on January 17, 2012The Old Republic is fun, tells some interesting stories, and offers players a vast amount of things to do. But the game still suffers from the same things that hold back all MMOs despite the class storylines and voice acting. |
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Faery: Legends of Avalon review (X360)Reviewed on January 17, 2012The average enemy in this game seemed to come from generic lists of animals and undead. I found it somewhat annoying that the mythical Norse Yggdrasil's dungeons were loaded with hornets and termites instead of, you know, something suited for the game's theme. |
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Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure review (X360)Reviewed on January 08, 2012Levels feature lots of loot and they all contain special areas that are locked behind gates. To enter gates, you must have a character with the matching affinity. As long as you have such a character and he hasn’t been disabled for that stage, you can simply pull the current character off the pedestal and replace it with a new one. The whole process takes mere seconds and it lets you feel like you’re actively involved in the adventure. |
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Infinite Undiscovery review (X360)Reviewed on January 05, 2012You collect well over a dozen party members, many of whom have little relevance beyond, "Hey, uh, you're out to save the world, so let me help!". Many villains pop up, deliver a couple lines of dialogue, fight you and are killed. It kind of reminded me of the RPGs I played on the NES and SNES where characters would pop up and randomly join or fight you for no reason other than "I'm good; I like you!" or "I'm evil; I hate you!". |
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Trine 2 review (X360)Reviewed on January 04, 2012This multi-specialty adventure is surprisingly deep and challenging for its bargain price, and if you've got the friends and the time, it's well worth the admission. If you're looking for more twists on familiar tropes, Trine 2 is your the best candidate. Pick it up and save the princess. Just don't get too caught up in sightseeing on your way to the finish line. |
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Defense Grid: The Awakening review (PC)Reviewed on January 04, 2012Missions include special objectives that switch things up. Your options change depending on the scenario. In one case, you might be able to try a familiar stage with 99 waves instead of the usual 25 or 30. Elsewhere, you might be able to start with 20,000 resources but defeated enemies won’t drop any additional resources. |
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Sonic CD review (PS3)Reviewed on December 31, 2011Gameplay is another way in which Sonic CD doesn't meet the standard set by its more vanilla Genesis counterparts, though it doesn't fall nearly as short as it could have. Levels always have enough unique gimmicks to prevent them from blurring together in your memory. Each level effectively has four versions. By running past special posts, Sonic can travel through time and his actions in the past can change the future. This means that every level has a present version, past version, good future version, and bad future version (the good future is basically the bad future with fewer enemies). It's an interesting mechanic that can be used to keep things fresh for multiple playthroughs. |
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Unreal review (PC)Reviewed on December 30, 2011As a first-person shooter, it’s incredibly competent. Quake 2 might have had the tempo, and Half-Life the suspenseful pacing, but Unreal had the variety and the challenge. Its weapons drew criticism for feeling weak and weedy against the Skaarj oppressors, and it’s a fair comment. They often do. But I’m sure that’s partly because the buggers are so tough, right from the start. |
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Quake review (PC)Reviewed on December 30, 2011Quake still absolutely stands up today. Its visuals might be pixellated, the environments often rather monochrome, as became the running gag. Yet the design of the world is tremendous, the levels balanced, structured and elegantly paced. The variety on display, despite the vast swathes of brown, dwarfs that of most modern games as well. |
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Quake II review (PC)Reviewed on December 30, 2011Enemies dart and dodge, firing sprays of bullets in the final seconds of their lives, trying everything they can to bring you down, even if it means losing their own lives in the process. The range of enemies on display is perhaps the only area in which Quake II rivals the variety of its predecessor, too. |
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Planescape: Torment review (PC)Reviewed on December 30, 2011Planescape’s fiction is perfect: it takes two intrinsic human fears, turns one on its head, and allows the other so much room to breathe. In Planescape, you play as a man who has already lost his entire memory, including that of his own identity, yet he can never escape this dreadful state. |
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Omikron: The Nomad Soul review (PC)Reviewed on December 30, 2011In The Nomad Soul, you don’t play as any of the main characters. Instead, you play as all of them. Sort of. In fact, you play as a person playing a computer game, in which the player plays as a soul who can transfer between different bodies. Yes. And it’s all absolutely merrily acknowledged by the game. None of this is real, it tells you. It’s just a game. |
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Back to the Future: The Game review (PS3)Reviewed on December 26, 2011Back to the Future: The Game basically tries to be a fourth Back to the Future movie, and it tries hard. Everything about this game is a reference to the movies. Some of the music from the movies is used in the soundtrack, there are plenty of references to all three films scattered around the game world, and even the box art follows the template used by the posters for all three films. Christopher Lloyd reassumes the role of Doc Brown, and Marty McFly is played by a new actor (named A.J. LaCascio) who does an amazing job. Seriously, he sounds so much like a young Michael J. Fox, it’s kind of eerie, especially in Episode 5 when Fox himself makes a cameo as one of Marty’s ancestors and the two characters have a conversation. |
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