GamesRadar - PC Reviews

Left 4 Dead 2 (Review)

Nov 17, 2009

Unlike most other shooters, Left 4 Dead hinges on cooperative multiplayer. You and three friends must shoot, tear and slash through an unrelenting mass of raging zombies. From the moment you leave the safe house to the final rescue chopper, you are completely dependent on each other and constantly hunted by special boss zombies that behave with their own aggressive, strategizing intelligence ...

Cricket Revolution (Review)

Nov 13, 2009

Certain sports are tough to recreate in the “interactive digital medium,” cricket and rugby seemingly being the most difficult to pull off. Yet this effort is one of the best attempts we’ve seen, despite it looking rougher than a man in a sandpaper leotard. ...

NBA 2K10 (Review)

Nov 12, 2009

While no sports game will ever properly recreate what it’s like to participate in the activity, they can at least make it look like you’re watching the sport on the TV. NBA 2K10 does this almost perfectly, with superb commentary and broadcast presentation making every game a big occasion. ...

Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood (Review)

Nov 11, 2009

And so, on to the fourth episode of Tales do we go, with the series progressing nicely. The end is nearing though and Telltale should now, surely, have begun to move on from merely being good to reminding us why we all loved the Monkey Island games in the first place. Whether they manage this is open to debate, sadly. ...

Metal Drift (Review)

Nov 7, 2009

There’s an abundance of chrome, explosions, flashing lights and sincere-sounding commentators exuding a casual enthusiasm regarding the brutality taking place before them. Welcome to Metal Drift, a futuristic sporting arena that has a lot in common with the likes of Rollerball and Speedball, but with oh-so-floaty hovertanks. ...

RACE On (Review)

Nov 7, 2009

In our first race, we took the corner too fast. As we smacked into the crash barrier, we saw the hood fly up and away. In the rearview mirror, about 20 cars thundered past in a billow of dust, and one of our wheels followed meekly behind them.

A lot of RACE On’s energies are devoted to letting you live your WTCC (World Touring Car Championship) fantasies. ...

Dreamkiller (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

As dream-walking, tough-talking psychologist Alice Drake, you must enter your patients’ nightmares to fight their fears. With a minigun. The world’s only First-Person Freud-’em-up. The 12 dream-levels are a series of lush set-pieces connected by short corridors; the diverse gallery of baddies is often functionally identical – either a little dude, a slow dude with rockets, or an enormo-dude. ...

Grappling Hook (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

Remember the smart, weird kid in your class? This platform puzzler is that boy: clever, but no looks or personality. It’s just you and a grapple gun, trapped in 22 levels of cuboid puzzlement. Reach a teleporter to escape each level, pick up the access codes along the way, avoid electrified panels. The trick is to use your grapple gun to hook onto the green areas dotted tactically around levels. ...

Eufloria (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

Imagine a game where you plant trees that grow on asteroids, produce seedlings that fly, and send these to new asteroids to grow new trees. What makes the resulting RTS so smart, beautiful and compelling is the neatness with which this astroscience fantasy is presented. Clear, logical relationships and a look halfway between Japanese inkbrush art and scientific insemination diagrams. ...

Astro Tripper (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

This is a fizzing neon vision of the scrolling shooter: a limited left-right arena in which waves of beautifully abstract baddies come whirling towards you, spitting bullets as they go, and turning into even more deadly enemies if you don’t deal with them swiftly. In other words, Astro Tripper is pure videogame. ...

Fatale: Exploring Salome (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

From the weird-merchants behind The Path comes the game of Salome – the princess who asked Herod for John the Baptist’s head. It begins in clunky first-person, with you in a dungeon with nothing to do but be tormented by randomly appearing snippets from Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. ...

League of Legends (Review)

Nov 5, 2009

The last few years have seen Defense of the Ancients devour millions of man hours, both in its original incarnation as a WarCraft III mod, and in its refined DotA Allstars evolution. League of Legends, by the original team, is here to provide the definitive version. It’s a multiplayer-only RTS battle between two teams. ...

Painkiller: Resurrection (Review)

Nov 4, 2009

According to the official website, Painkiller: Resurrection had “a Catholic priest advising” it and offers “painstakingly researched details” of its purgatorial setting. You have absolutely no idea how much we want to see those notes. The official word on whether Satan could have his bottom handed to him with a shotgun? That’s edutainment! ...

Torchlight (Review)

Nov 4, 2009

Three playable characters: a brute, an archer, and a mage. A town atop an endless dungeon that’s randomly stitched together as you play. Hundreds of enemies that die in a torrent of clicks. Scrolls. Health and magic potions. Quests. Leveling. Loot. More loot.

Diablo is the obvious comparison you could draw with this combat-heavy RPG, but Torchlight is more than a clone. This is like a super-clone with psychic powers. ...

Dragon Age: Origins (Review)

Nov 3, 2009

Dwarves. We already know what dwarves are. Dwarves are short, but strong. They make for good warriors and live underground. We already know all about dwarves, elves, mages, and dragons. So we thought we already knew all about everything Dragon Age: Origins could possibly throw at us while browsing through the unsurprisingly wide selection of beards for our upcoming dwarf warrior in the character creator. ...

Machinarium (Review)

Oct 29, 2009

There’s nothing like waking up after being unceremoniously dumped into a heap of scrap only to find your head and limbs have gone missing amidst the filthy debris. Making a crummy situation worse, mechanical hooligans have strapped a large, makeshift bomb to the central tower in the looming industrial city you were just booted from, and your shiny lady friend is nowhere to be found. ...

Borderlands (Review)

Oct 26, 2009

We’ve discovered a new psychological condition: Gun Envy. It begins with a peek at another player’s weapon stats. Sleepless nights follow. You begin by coveting: opening crates, killing everyone, frantically searching for a bigger, better penis. We mean gun. You end up peeking jealously out of the corner of your eye at your partner’s gleaming Caustic Gamble revolver. You’ll feel inadequate. Less of a man. ...

Tropico 3 (Review)

Oct 20, 2009

This should be fun, right? Thrust into the squeaking, tropical shoes of a cruel and vitriolic dictator, you’re going to get to lord it up over your very own island paradise, raking in oodles of cash and setting up the sort of brutal military regime that’d make Darth Vader blush. Unfortunately, like the luxurious tropical island holidays we’ve all been on, a chunk of Tropico 3 is spent sheltering from perpetual drizzle. ...

CITIES XL (Review)

Oct 15, 2009

Like a tramp thrusting his crotch at you while singing Katy Perry, Cities XL makes a bad first impression. It’s a real-time city-builder that has the management of Civilization and the presentation of a Crayola-penned Watchmen. This doesn’t mean it isn’t fun; it’s just hard to sink the initial hours into. ...

FIFA 10 (Review)

Oct 15, 2009

There’s a basic problem with FIFA 10 on PC that needs to be addressed up front. EA’s developers don’t believe that PC gamers have machines capable of running the next-generation football engine that powers the game on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Therefore we get a version that feels significantly last-gen, akin to playing on the PS2. ...