All PC Reviews

Fable: The Lost Chapters (Review)

Apr 27, 2006

Fable: The Lost Chapters improves the original Xbox RPG with an advertised 30 percent more content to the game. Much of the new stuff comes in the form of extra side quests, plus a tacked-on story quest at the end of the game that takes you to a new land (which we won't spoil). You start out as a young boy, living happily, until a vicious bandit raid wipes out your idyllic village. Orphaned, you are taken in by the Guild of Heroes, who train you to be a great warrior into your adulthood and ...

Fable: The Lost Chapters (Review)

Oct 12, 2005

Can we ever be truly free? The fundamental point of a role-playing game is to give us choice: help or exploit, liberate or repress, give or take. But even the best RPGs fall short of offering real freedom, because a game must also have structure and a story to be fun. Be a hero? No thanks, I'd rather retire and grow carrots. Now that would be an RPG. Fable does its damnedest, though, and loftily aims to give you huge freedoms with your character, a nameless Hero in a fantasy world who is ...

Faces of War (Review)

Sep 27, 2006

You wont construct bases, produce units, or command vast forces in Ubisofts latest WWII real-time strategy Faces of War. No, this time, the Great War takes its cues from a completely different genre. You're in charge of a single squad, and while you can direct units with traditional point and clicks, Faces of Wars unique Direct Control command allows you to move, aim and fire manually with the keyboard and mouse, much like you would in a first-person shooter. This feature works well with the ...

Fantasy Wars (Review)

Feb 14, 2008

Fantasy Wars is the game you pick last in a three-for-$10 budget deal and end up enjoying more than the game you picked second. Those silly orcs, elves, men, and goblins are at each others throats again. What was the spark this time? We honestly can’t remember. ...

Far Cry (Review)

Mar 30, 2006

If Far Cry were a movie, youd never go see it. You are Jack Carver, former Special Forces commando and all-around generic badass in a Hawaiian shirt, involuntarily recruited by a fine-lookin woman to stop a mad scientist conducting genetic experiments on an isolated island chain. Um, yeah. Luckily, Far Cry is not a flick - its actually one of the best PC shooters youve probably never played. Far Cry really shines in its enormous outdoor environments. Levels look like something youd see on a ...

Far Cry (Review)

Mar 23, 2004

The sea caresses the beaches like a supernaturally attentive lover. The sky is powder-blue, the sea a living mirror and, emerging from it, verdant isle after verdant isle. It's all so perfect it seems a shame to pull the trigger and bring a heaving bag of violence to this unearthly paradise. It's clear that we're in that stage of the gaming hardware cycle where the PC takes a lead over static platforms. While Deus Ex: Invisible War was hamstrung by a somewhat dour graphical aesthetic and a ...

F.E.A.R. Extraction Point (Review)

Oct 24, 2006

To those unfamiliar with the first-person shooter F.E.A.R., the atmosphere may be unsettlingly supernatural and spooky, but the combat is akin to gun-humping the world. Youve got a sleek, voluptuous arsenal of maniacal phallic tools, erupting into the night. As your bullets mercilessly pound enemy-flesh, severing torsos, heads, arms and legs, the stray shells wreak equal demolition to your surroundings, crafting a visual symphony. Chunks of plaster, multicolored sparks, glass shards, smoke ...

FEAR: First Encounter Assault Recon (Review)

May 5, 2006

About two hours into FEAR I find myself in an open area. A rooftop, to be precise, criss-crossed with metallic steps and walkways. And on every raised section I can see patrols. Handily, there's also a low, flat wall to the left offering enough cover for me to make some headway. I'm halfway along it when I hear a shout of "Grenade out!" and an ominous chink from a few metres behind. I run - into a little cubbyhole just beyond the grenade's blast. Now I'm in trouble. FEAR's levels are never ...

FEAR Perseus Mandate (Review)

Nov 8, 2007

Nov 8, 2007 FEAR has always been a game of two halves, both heavily involving people being cut into halves. On one side, perhaps excepting Crysis, it's the most cinematically kinetic shooter on the PC; on the other, a story-led atmosphere-fest. It's equal parts Hong Kong gun opera and Japanese horror. This (standalone) expansion pack rarely deviates from the - ahem - mandate, and this is both its strength and its weakness. When it does deviate, it mostly just lifts tricks from its peers. For ...

FIFA 08 (Review)

Oct 19, 2007

Oct. 19, 2007 So, what are our suggestions for FIFA 08, EA's latest effort at essaying our national sport? Well, first off: sort out the passing. In principle, it's great. Full 360-degree, any-weight passing is a great idea, but two things render it a pretty pointless inclusion. First, the twitchy, flicky inaccuracy of analogue pads make it impossible to direct passes with enough precision reliably and second, the regimented patterns that the AI players of both sides take up means your options ...

FIFA Soccer 07 (Review)

Dec 21, 2006

It ain't easy managing your own soccer club. Between your bosses on the board, fans in the stands, scribes in the media and players on the pitch, it seems like everyone is working against you if even the slightest things go awry - which they often do in the Beautiful Game. Whether you're running a world-class side or a second-tier bunch of also-rans, the gods will conspire to make your life difficult. Of course, if you've got what it takes to build a champion, everyone loves you (until, of ...

Final Fantasy XI (Review)

Feb 15, 2006

You won't often hear this MMORPG mentioned in the same breath as the big players, but Final Fantasy XI undeniably has the scope, detail, imagination and population to rub shoulders with the best. You quest, you fight monsters, you develop your character - all in a peculiarly console-flavoured fantasy world. FFXI has been going for a few months over here, a little over a year in America, and around two in Japan. There have been two full-blown expansions, both of which are bundled into this ...

Firefight (Review)

May 23, 2007

Lunchtimes in our household have become a lot more pleasurable lately thanks to two products: Innocents banana, pineapple and coconut smoothie, and Sean OConnors WWII skirmish simulation Firefight. Neither the drink or the game look all that appetizing. The smoothie is the color and consistency of baby puke; Firefight is all gaudy top-down countryside and miniscule misshapen sprites. Fortunately once youve gulped your first mouthful/assaulted your first hill, you forget all about ...

FlatOut 2 (Review)

Aug 9, 2006

Reckless destruction and gross bodily harm are two things were fond of in our games and FlatOut 2 delivers plenty of both. The focus here isnt so much on racing as it is on aggressive driving and destructible environments - cars will wreck, gas stations will explode and hordes of orange cones will go flipping through the air. And all this chaos runs surprisingly well, even on a system that meets only the minimum system requirements. Tracks are littered with dangerous obstacles and brutal ...

FlatOut Ultimate Carnage (Review)

Aug 26, 2008

We’ll forgive the creators of this game for bringing this to PC almost a year after releasing it on console, because this smash-’em-up racer is enormous amounts of fun. ...

Flight Simulator X (Review)

Nov 1, 2006

The latest chapter in Microsoft's long-running Flight Simulator series will knock your windsocks off. Flight Simulator X is the prettiest and most ambitious edition in the franchise's 25-year history and it'll transport you to a stunning new world of photorealistic scenery and marvelously detailed aircraft… if you have a liquid nitrogen-cooled Cray supercomputer tucked in your tower. We'll get to the technical stuff later. FSX ships in two flavors, with the pricier Deluxe version ...

Flight Simulator X: Acceleration (Review)

Nov 9, 2007

Nov 9, 2007 Anyone remember towing ticking nukes around in the Lunar Lander-like TerraFire? Every pendulum-swing of the bomb tugged at your twirly spaceship with just the right amount of force. The effect was mesmerising, and just the sort of Newtonian naturalism I was hoping to find in ...

Ford Bold Moves Street Racing (Review)

Oct 19, 2006

Ford Bold Moves Street Racing may tempt you with its low retail price of $19.99, but racing fans should steer clear of this clunky lemon. You cant expect the best from a bargain title like this, but the game still fails to deliver any bang for your buck with clumsy controls, poor damage detection, repetitive gameplay, and generic tracks. Bold Moves lets you drive 18 licensed Ford vehicles. However, your driving experience will be equally bad no matter which car you choose. Youll be using the ...

FreeStyle Street Basketball (Review)

Jun 21, 2007

Now that the term "MMO" is synonymous with PC gaming (thanks World of Warcraft), game publishers have been looking for ways either to build upon Blizzard's success or differentiate without straying too far from the accomplished MMO mold. The trickiness inherent in this now-established genre is working out the kinks in pricing; do you have a higher cost of the game with all items available or a low-grade budget title where the publisher slowly bleeds your cash away? FreeStyle Street Basketball ...

Frontline: Fields of Thunder (Review)

Apr 25, 2007

The biggest tank battle in history is the subject of this WWII RTS - Kursk, 1943, Russia. It was the moment when Hitler threw the lions share of his best remaining Panzer divisions into a meat grinder, in a tired old rehash of previously successful Blitzkrieg tactics. Which is ironic, as this game is itself a tired old rehash of Blitzkrieg - the last RTS game from developers Nival. Despite the mid-Russian setting, the terrain here feels mighty familiar. Its one of that veritable battalion of ...