All PC Reviews

Gumboy Tournament (Review)

Jul 25, 2008

During the quasi-pleasure of playing Gumboy Crazy Adventures, you rolled about collecting stars, changing your shape and sticking to surfaces to open up a portal and finish the level. While the game was a one-trick pony, it had fairly entertaining stables for you to frolic through. ...

The Amazing Brain Train (Review)

Jul 25, 2008

We have to admit how much we enjoyed Amazing Brain Train. This is Prof. Fizzwizzle’s most varied and entertaining outing yet with 15 games, falling into five broad categories, including Spatial, Number, Planning and Memory. We’ve forgotten the last one. We suppose we should have planned ahead by writing it down. ...

The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff (Review)

Jul 25, 2008

This is a content pack for the videogame series The Sims 2. In it, you’ll find the following:

EKTORP three-seat sofa, KARLSTAD sofa, KLIPPAN four-seat sofa, IMFORS coffee table, LEKSVIK coffee table, JULES visitors chair, EKTORP armchair, another KLIPPAN sofa, KARLSTAD armchair, POANG armchair, EKTORP two-seat sofa, HATTEN side table, LACK side table, EXPEDIT TV storage unit, ODDA wardrobe, ANES bedframe, HEMNES bedframe, etc. ...

Catching Features (Review)

Jul 16, 2008

Been hiking recently? If you have you may have noticed that OS maps don’t come printed with handy ‘You Are Here’ arrows. Unlike GPS screens and game maps, they don’t actually tell you where you are. Apparently (there are no instructions so we’ve deduced the following), you’re meant to compare the squiggly lines on the map with the hills, roads and woods in the landscape, and figure out your location. ...

Stronghold Crusader Extreme (Review)

Jul 11, 2008

Hold on a minute, haven’t we been here before? Yes, it’s slowly coming back to us. In 2002 Firefly’s Stronghold Crusader was heralded as one of the finest RTS castle-building games in the business. Now we have Stronghold Crusader Extreme, the same game again, only with an ultra-hardcore campaign and some extreme skirmish levels thrown in for good measure. Who said innovation was dead?

Let’s start with the ...

Cabela's Trophy Bucks (Review)

Jul 11, 2008

Three confessions: we enjoy hunting sims, we’re rather partial to venison, and we once killed a real deer (accidentally. With a Ford Escort). In theory we’re the best chance Cabela’s Trophy Bucks has of getting a decent score around here. In theory.

The trouble is we’re also not a complete idiot happy to spend hard-earned moolah on a game with all the depth and allure of a cow-pie. Truly, this is the worst ...

Beijing 2008 (Review)

Jul 8, 2008

First, a cautionary note. Beijing 2008 requires some form of protection for your hands. Our right hand is cut to shreds; this despite using various aids, including cartoon plasters, a thick promotional T-shirt lying around the office, and a comedy sponge hand. None of those prevented a seeping welt from appearing on our palm, soon to be joined by a pair of blisters and, most irritatingly, cuts on the skin at the base of our ...

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 ...

Devil May Cry 4 (Review)

Jul 8, 2008

There is a reason we’ve given so much space to this Capcom stunner; something that previously seemed destined to arrive mangled during the trip from console to PC. Amazingly though, Devil May Cry 4 is a slick, PC-enhanced title, not a hastily shoe-horned mess. This means the game looks great, it’s graphically scaleable, you can use a keyboard to play it and, to top it off, it plays like the entire PC development team was briefed ...

Alone in the Dark (Review)

Jul 8, 2008

An implacable evil has invaded the world. It attacks indiscriminately, it can’t be reasoned with, and it won’t stop until it has completely obliterated a perfectly good genre. It comes in a little Games for Windows box and it’s called Alone in the Dark. Run for your life.It looked promising enough, with a dark and perfectly serviceable story that plops Edward Carnby in contemporary New York, which is under siege by what ...

The Immortals of Terra: A Perry Rhodan Adventure (Review)

Jul 7, 2008

When you’re driving the bus of British pop culture, you have to be careful. There’s a massive blind spot on the left-hand side, and it’s almost completely filled with Perry Rhodan. Mr. Rhodan is the hero of a slightly camp, heroic sci-fi opera that has been around for nearly half a century. In Germany. The videogame part of this long-running franchise is a traditional point-and-click affair, with an inventory that fills ...

Supreme Ruler 2020 (Review)

Jul 3, 2008

Imagine being thrown into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. This will help you to understand what it’s like to play Supreme Ruler 2020, a complex global strategy game whose woefully inadequate tutorial and manual leave you treading water with something bumping against your leg. Running a country is hard work - a deep supply model, 300 researchable technologies, economics, diplomacy, and warfare all require your attention, and this feat ...

Roogoo (Review)

Jul 3, 2008

You can’t feel cool playing with one of those ‘push the block through the right-shaped hole’ games they give babies, so it’s tough to feel it while playing Roogoo. True, it’s more demanding: expecting you to spin the discs to the right holes at increasingly fast speeds, it mixes it up a bit with monsters to smash, butterflies, and more holes than a Swiss cheese in a gunfight. The challenge comes from fast ...

Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb (Review)

Jul 3, 2008

PC adventure-game developers usually set their stories against grand, larger-than-life backdrops, and French developer Kheops Studio is certainly no exception. In Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb, the fabled Egyptian temptress doesn’t play a leading role - the game’s protagonist is an apprentice astrologer named Thomas - but you work on her behalf throughout the entire narrative.As a civil war between Cleo and her brother Ptolemy ...

Kung Fu Panda (Review)

Jul 2, 2008

With Brutal Legend’s fate still undecided, you might think us mad for recommending Kung Fu Panda as an alternative adventure starring Jack Black (not least because all the voices in this tie-in game are sadly provided by so-so stand-ins), but bear with us. First of all, we’re not so addled with bonhomie thanks to our experience with this silly game to deny that the action is the definition of ‘par for the ...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Review)

Jul 2, 2008

It’s such a familiar quandary – there you are in your local games store, crisp note in hand, looking for a new addition to your collection. There are a few caveats, though: one, you want it to be a linear adventure mainly based around flicking switches and collecting shiny things; two, you’re also very keen for it to have a Christian subtext; oh, and three, there simply has to be a homicidal dwarf involved.
...

Baseball Mogul 2009 (Review)

Jul 1, 2008

Over 11 years, Baseball Mogul has evolved from daunting spreadsheet to a user-friendly General Manager sim. But in its effort to further improve, several important enhancements to the 2009 edition are tempered by obvious glitches under the hood. ...

Political Machine 2008 (Review)

Jun 27, 2008

Political junkies (defined as anyone who’s not already sick of the 2008 presidential race) will find this tongue-in-cheek strategy game based on the upcoming election a great diversion. ...

Dracula: Origin (Review)

Jun 20, 2008

Dr. Van Helsing, one of gothic literature’s most intriguing and adventurous characters, is challenged with tasks more appropriate for an ambitious civil servant than a legendary vampire hunter in Dracula: Origin, a point-and-click adventure from the developers of the Sherlock Holmes series (Secret of the Silver Earring, Nemesis).

The story follows Van Helsing as he tracks the Drac through London, Austria, Egypt, and all the way ...

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Review)

Jun 6, 2008

Making an online game these days is tough, as there are few interesting settings left to force into the bizarre mold that is the MMO. Luckily for us, there’s a chauvinistic lore-trove waiting in the wings: Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria - the world of shirtless sword-swinger Conan the Cimmerian - which has now become the most brutal MMO in existence. ...