All Reviews

G1 Jockey Wii [import] (Review)

Jun 22, 2007

G1 Jockeys release is a byproduct of you and seven million other Wii owners reaching out for new games with your fourteen million clasping game-hands. G1 Jockey comes recommended because of its neat career mode structure. You get to choose from a list of horses for each race, make decisions based on characteristics - which are presented as an intuitive list of light-up tabs and then see first-hand if you made the right choice as you straddle your decision while it pounds around a ...

Galactic Assault: Prisoner of Power (Review)

Nov 7, 2007

Nov 7, 2007 A year before the Strugatsky brothers penned the novel that inspired S.T.A.L.K.E.R., they churned out the sixth installment of their “Noon Universe” series. Prisoners of Power was a subversive tale of totalitarianism and revolt set on a planet with an atmosphere so refractive the locals had to look straight up to see the horizon. Were telling you all this because you wont learn it from playing the game allegedly based on the book. Galactic Assault: Prisoner of Power is ...

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar (Review)

Feb 21, 2007

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar makes enough changes to qualify as a full-fledged expansion, though you could be forgiven for not noticing most of them immediately. The new races aren't that much different from the old ones, the asteroid mining is a minor asset to your industrial sector and many won't play the new story based campaign for very long. But developer Stardock shows that if you add enough tweaks, you can force even veteran players to rethink their entire ...

Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor (Review)

May 23, 2008

Turn-based strategy games may seem dramatically old school next to their flashy RTS cousins (like Company of Heroes), but when they work as well as Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations II, we’ll happily enroll. GalCiv 2: Twilight of the Arnor is the second and final expansion pack for the critically acclaimed 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) space conquest game, and it makes delivering one of the most fulfilling strategy ...

Galactic Command - Echo Squad (Review)

Jul 8, 2008

Really, this whole review just needs one sentence. Echo Squad is a Derek Smart game set in the Battlecruiser 3000AD universe. Whether those words make you shiver in orgasmic ecstasy, or shudder like you just walked in your dad experiencing the same, they say it all. The BC3000 series is simultaneously a glorious example of one man’s desire to make the perfect game, and as much fun for the average mortal as having your toenails ripped ...

Galaga - Xbox Live Arcade (Review)

Jul 26, 2006

No discussion: Galaga is one of the best space shooters the golden arcade age ever produced. There's almost no need to review it now that it's on Xbox Live Arcade, right? Instant classic plus reissue equals massive score? Not so fast. There's something missing that makes this oldie a little less of a goodie. The core gameplay still gets our adrenaline pumping. Insectoid aliens swoop down on your tiny starfighter, dropping bombs and flying in suicidal, looping lines as you frantically try to ...

Gallop Racer 2006 (Review)

May 23, 2006

The basics of racing a car are simple enough: hit the gas and go. But racing horses? Far more complex than any machine. Handling a horse demands skill, finesse and even intimate knowledge of its personality quirks. This and many other previously unconsidered realties become apparent upon sampling Gallop Racer 2006, the latest in Tecmo's long-running series of horse-racing simulations. Gallop Racer's attention to detail is meticulous, so much so that it becomes difficult for an outsider to crack ...

Game Party (Review)

Dec 12, 2007

Dec 11, 2007 Wii is quickly becoming a third-party crap magnet and Game Party is the latest game you shouldnt buy unless youre either really easy to please or one of the 10 people who rented Gigli just to see how bad it was. Game Party is no Gigli, but each of the 7 events collected here has its fair share of mechanical issues (except maybe Hoop Shot and Trivia) that nearly take the fun out of partying. Here, in all their half-baked glory, are the games: Darts, Table Hockey (air hockey), ...

Gangs of London (Review)

Oct 2, 2006

Gangs of London is a great portable gangster game. The real success is the focus on fast, fun sequences that put you in the middle of the British underworld Guy Ritchie is so good at depicting. Rather than long expensive cut scenes, comic book-style panels convey the story before and after missions. Missions flash by as you murder, maim and kidnap on foot and on the road to seize control of London's crime subculture. Fail to kill a rival gang boss or kidnap a new round of prostitutes from ...

Gauntlet - Xbox Live Arcade (Review)

Apr 20, 2006

We're sure a good amount of you Xbox 360 owners don't remember the days of wallet-murdering arcade games. The claustrophobic dungeon crawler Gauntlet was the worst kind - one quarter wouldn't cut it. As you ran through overhead, labyrinthine passageways packed with monsters, you were constantly losing health. To keep it up, you had to find scarce items like food, or keep pumping Washington's skull into the arcade ...

Gears of War (Review)

Nov 2, 2007

Nov 2, 2007 Let's pretend, for the first half of the review, that no one here has played Gears of War. We'll put our fingers in our ears, count backwards from 10 and allow the hype and hoopla to drift from our ears like a beautiful smoke effect. And… you're under. So, Gears of War in one word: meaty. Even the sneering lips of the heroes manage to be muscular, and the dialogue stinks of five-day sweat. The weaponry is tactile, and the sound effects are like someone slapping strips of ...

Gears of War (Review)

Nov 22, 2006

Blending unmatched twitch-action with an incomparably oppressive atmosphere and multiplayer that will monopolize your broadband for months, Gears of War is the game the 360 was designed to play. Talked up for months in a marketing campaign whose cost undoubtedly dwarfs the gross national product of most third-world nations, we can safely announce that Gears of War delivers on the promises developer Epic has made. Here's how it suckered us... Gears of War zigs when you expect it to zag - where ...

Geist (Review)

Sep 6, 2005

Given that Gamecube hasn't really had its fair share of first person shooters, you could easily understand why we were looking forward to this. Geist's pedigree isn't exactly the best, but after so many delays to improve the gameplay, we were pretty confident that it would at least be a decent game. And to a point it is. Kind of.On paper Geist sounds pretty tasty. You have your standard FPS action, but the developers N-Space have added a particularly clever gimmick - this time you're a ghost, ...

Generation of Chaos (Review)

Apr 7, 2006

Frogmen are no match for Knights. Dragon Warriors obliterate Magic Hunters. Demon Knights are decimated by Magicians, but those same mages are absolutely shredded by musket-wielding Buccaneers. Oh, and watch out. Wild armies of Wyverns, Skeletons or Forest Elementals could ambush you at any time. These are the kind of lessons one learns when playing Generation of Chaos. Fancy-pants armchair generals would describe it as a fantasy-based, tactical warfare simulation. Normal folks would say its ...

Genesis Rising (Review)

Mar 22, 2007

We came, we saw, we conquered. Thousands of years in the future, mankind has dominion over all species in the universe, ruled by a militaristic religion founded on the Savior, whose martyrdom 3000 years before saved humanity and established the empire that now spans the known universe. Genesis Rising is publisher DreamCatchers newest, a real time strategy game set in space. DreamCatcher is known mostly for point-and-click adventures like Syberia, so we expected a lush, beautiful setting ...

Genji: Days of the Blade (Review)

Nov 13, 2006

If you're lucky enough to get a PS3 on launch day and you've got a burning hack-and-slash itch, Genji: Days of the Blade might look like a pretty good way to scratch it. It's stylish and pretty, and its Onimusha-style samurai-on-demon action is fast and visceral. But while its dazzling visuals and animation are a decent showcase for what the PS3 can do, don't be fooled - scratch the surface, and there's very little here that qualifies as next-gen. Set in ancient Japan during the legendary ...

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Review)

Nov 20, 2007

Nov 20, 2007 At its core, Geometry Wars: Galaxies is pretty much the same as Retro Evolved on the 360, and that's a good thing. You still pilot the same old claw-shaped ship and must survive never-ending waves of hostile shapes that attack you from every angle for as long as possible. Dodging death by mere pixels, while blasting your way through swarms of enemies amidst the colorful chaos is still mesmerizing on the Wii, but does Galaxies have enough meat to warrant the price of a full game? ...

Geometry Wars: Galaxies (Review)

Nov 20, 2007

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved (Review)

May 23, 2007

So it turns out Windows Vista was one big Trojan horse to get Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved on the PC. Vista crept onto the newest PCs, waited until darkest midnight then Pow!, delivered a Xbox 360 Live game straight to the back of the head. We're still throbbing. You're a little claw-shaped ship at the center of a swarm of enemies. Movement and shooting are controlled separately, both with a full 360 degrees of freedom so that you can slip away and fire at the same time. All you need to do is ...

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 - Xbox Live Arcade (Review)

Aug 15, 2008

It’s almost three years since Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved first appeared on the marketplace, but three spin-offs later and it’s still classed as the pinnacle of twin-stick shooting. So just how do you go about reinventing the wheel? Developer Bizarre obviously knows. The key to this sequel is that it’s Retro Evolved... evolved. ...