GamesRadar - PC Reviews

The Da Vinci Code (Review)

30/05/2006

How's this for a deep, dark conspiracy: we think a secret society seeks to make crappy games out of intriguing book and movie licenses. When we uncover the identities of any of the members, we're going to strap them down and force them to play through The Da Vinci Code for themselves. As in the bestselling book and box-office powerhouse, American professor Robert Langdon and French cryptologist Sophie Neveu stumble into a murder investigation at the Louvre; a cryptic string of clues leads ...

Damnation (Review)

27/05/2009

Damnation is a glowing example of how technology in the wrong hands can lead to disaster. Now, when we say this, are we referring to the story, which sees you taking on an army of evil robots in an alternative, steampunk version of the US Civil war? Or are we referring to the fact that Blue Omega have made one of the worst Unreal Engine-powered games we’ve ever seen? Hmm… ...

Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble! (Review)

24/06/2009

Unique is a word immediately associated with Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!, a name that just screams “Play me now!” You’ve just got to find out what it involves and why everyone seems to think it’s so good. Is it good? Yes, it is, although its charms and engaging nature only hold attention for so long. ...

Dark Age of Camelot (Review)

21/07/2005

Forget old Arthur and his Knights - Dark Age of Camelot seems to have the monopoly on almost any mythology you could name. Give it another six months and we'll probably be sitting here with character classes like Rusalka (sit in the middle of a lake until a hero comes along, then try to seduce and drown them), Domovoi (take care of a house while its owner is away - possibly through a Sims style interface) and Bigfoot (attempt not to be noticed, using the amazing power of not actually existing. ...

Dark Age of Camelot: Labyrinth of the Minotaur (Review)

29/05/2007

Going strong after nearly six years, Dark Age of Camelot is now lavishing higher-level players with enough new PvP, PvE and Realm versus Realm content to keep them going for many a moon with this expansion. Set, as youd expect, in a gigantic labyrinth below PvP-haven Agramon Island, Labyrinth of the Minotaur expands on current Champion Level formulas, allowing players to further develop ability-wise, rather than adding levels above ...

The Dark Eye: Drakensang (Review)

25/02/2009

After playing so many D&D variants, it’s easy to forget what a beast its game systems really are. We just found ourselves typing something about what a complex, very, very German RPG Drakensang is, but, really, it’s not. What it reminded us of most was our first time playing The Witcher. ...

Dark Horizon (Review)

22/10/2008

The days of the space opera are, unfortunately, long gone, with no prospect of a new Wing Commander or Privateer appearing through a wormhole any time soon. With Dark Horizon, the initial signs were promising: a space combat game without the trade and with a heavy emphasis on laser-induced death. ...

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic (Review)

27/10/2006

Where was Dark Messiah of Might and Magic when we had the summertime blues? Barging through this fast-action fantasy story was as good as it gets - perhaps just shy of an Indiana Jones flick on full volume. Sure, Dark Messiah could be billed as a fantasy action role-playing game, played from the first-person perspective - but it'll sucker punch you in the kidneys if you think it's an Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion clone. Dark Messiah is about as far from the lonely, ponderous, soul-searcher ...

Darkest of Days (Review)

16/09/2009

How would the Civil War have been different if you’d been there with a modern machine gun? I’ll tell you: It’d have been much more awesome. In Darkest of Days, you play as a 19th-century American soldier plucked out of his own time moments before becoming a casualty at General Custer’s Last Stand. ...

Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder (Review)

14/12/2007

Dec 14, 2007 Apparently inspired by the work of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, Darkness Within only manages to retain traits from the legendary Cthulhu, in that to even lay sight upon it will lead to insanity. A world of nausea and terror awaits, full of terrible writing that will lead you to flay yourself and weep for your lost money. The game's controls seem to have been designed by a drunken Myst fanatic - you walk around stilted 3D environs clicking your mouse in the eager hope that you ...

DarkStar One (Review)

15/08/2006

What is it with space pirates? They don't fly the Jolly Roger, they don't wear flowing garments and they don't abuse the word "arrrr". These guys aren't pirates; they're just losers. So there really isn't any moral dilemma when you blow them out of the sky in DarkStar One, a game that tries too hard to be a cinematic drama when it should just concentrate on what it does well: blowin' stuff up. You play Kayron Jarvis, novice fighter pilot, on a mission to find the assassin who killed his ...

Darwinia (Review)

5/07/2006

Darwinia sounds like the sort of game that ought to involve tweaking squirmy single-celled organisms all the way up to pensive, brooding bipeds. In fact, Introversion's quirky Darwinia has nothing to do with its "Charlie Darwin" namesake. Instead, it "evolves" (if thats the word) a few coin-op principles into a psychedelic real-time strategy romp with rudimentary arcade tendencies. If retro-funky were real estate, Darwinia would own it coast to coast. This is gaming at its weirdest, where ...

Dawn of Magic (Review)

18/10/2007

Oct 17, 2007 Dawn of Magic is perhaps one of the least offensive games ever made, but it's also one of the most toothless. The game successfully copies moves from the Diablo book of success, but in the end it simply does not have enough soul to rest anywhere near that classic franchise. As its title suggests, Dawn focuses heavily on magic for combat, with a series of strange classes - the Baker's Wife, the Fat Friar, etc. - able to specialize in twelve schools of magic. Spells can be mixed ...

Dawnspire (Review)

12/04/2007

Attempting to strip an MMO down to pure PvP is a nice plan, but one that requires a lot more depth than Dawnspire possesses. You choose one of five character classes, build their skills from a pool and then its straight into frenetic battle. With only one game mode (others promised), the battles feel perfunctory, with no leveling, PvE or pickups. Limited skills and frequent deaths mean you spend more time waiting to resurrect than fighting. Perhaps in a few months time, when more modes and ...

DCS: Black Shark (Review)

13/04/2009

The residents of Gudauta must hate our guts. We’ve spent the last few evenings flying about their lovely town, landing on the tops of tower blocks, kicking up dust storms in back gardens, and pulverising harmless buses with rockets and anti-tank missiles. There’s nothing malevolent in our low jinks, we’re just trying to get comfortable with a virtual Ka-50 attack helicopter so thoroughly modelled it’s a wonder the KGB (or whatever they now call themselves) haven’t popped ‘round to the Eagle Dynamics studio with a box of Polonium 210. ...

Dead Space (Review)

20/10/2008

Dead Space is the first game that can truly be called post-BioShock. You’re an inexplicably mute character on a dark, claustrophobic spaceship dripping with spooky atmosphere, taking instructions from people who may or may not be playing you. But where BioShock was a psychological thriller, Dead Space is an action-horror game that prioritizes blood over brains. ...

Death to Spies (Review)

26/10/2007

Oct 26, 2007 Just from the looks of it, Death to Spies feels like a typical war game right away. But when you actually do start it, you'll realize you were totally off. This is a game that isn't about shooting whatever wherever, but rather, it's a game that requires strategic combat and precise planning to just get to the next area. The developers obviously tried something new here, and while they didn't completely prevail, they succeeded enough to make this an entertaining, unique ...

Death Track: Resurrection (Review)

12/06/2009

The main premise of Death Track: Resurrection is that you compete with a group of other drivers on a series of post-apocalyptic renditions of famous cities, like London, Paris and Moscow. As you drive about the tracks, you can shoot at your opponents, and they can return the favour. Between races you can upgrade your vehicle with better weapons, armour, etc. There are a reasonable number of racing options to choose from as well, although there is no multiplayer at all. ...

Defcon (Review)

3/10/2006

Remember WarGames? That '80s film where Matthew Broderick plays a school kid who inadvertently hacks into the US military's defense mainframe and plays a game of Global Thermonuclear War? DEFCON is that game in all but name: a world map in glowing outline, showers of vector-graphics warheads arcing between superpowers, and the silhouettes of subs creeping ominously across international waters. The war plays out in silence but for a ghostly soundtrack of unsettlingly off-key tones, coughing and ...

Defense Grid: The Awakening (Review)

5/02/2009

A little extra presentation magic can go a long way to help a game rise above a sea of play-alikes. Take Defense Grid: The Awakening: Granted, it’s yet another variation on the tower defense genre - a crowded subset of real-time strategy puzzlers in which you set up specialized weapons towers to prevent increasingly powerful waves of aliens from grabbing your power cores and retreating off the map - but this particular example is so polished that it's worth paying for. ...