GamesRadar - PC Reviews

Mabinogi (Review)

30/05/2008

Dust off your lute and break out the sheep shears - the “fantasy life” of Mabinogi awaits you. A free-to-play MMORPG based on Celtic mythology, Mabinogi has been delighting Korean gamers with its rich fantasy setting since 2004, and now it’s our turn. You aren’t bound to classes like “wizard” in Mabinogi. ...

Machinarium (Review)

29/10/2009

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. ...

Madballs in Babo: Invasion (Review)

13/10/2009

Based on the 1980s rubber ball toys (no, us neither), Madballs should be awful. But it’s brilliant. You play one of a few rolling eyeballs, equipped with a selection of weapons, shooting stuff in platformy 3D levels, gathering bonuses and giggling at the silly jokes. ...

Maelstrom (Review)

12/03/2007

Life after the apocalypse is going to be tough, but we think well cope with the help of our survival kit. Buried in an old biscuit tin at the bottom of a garden weve got a pair of studded shoulder pads, an eye patch, a mohawk wig, a battered leather jacket and a rust-streaked Hummer. How did we manage to fit so many post-apocalyptic clichés into such a small container? Lets just say we got a few tips from KDV ...

Mage Knight: Apocalypse (Review)

5/10/2006

Mage Knight: Apocalypse brings the tabletop game system to the PC. Fans might be disappointed that more factions aren't playable, but character customization is easily Apocalypse 's strong suit. Choose from one of five guardian types - Vampire, Draconum mage, Elven paladin, Amazon, or Dwarf - and you'll find three skill trees for each, filled with active and passive abilities that'll help you survive and slaughter. In the game's nicest touch, experience points and levels are thrown out in ...

Majesty 2 - The Fantasy Kingdom Sim (Review)

8/10/2009

If you’ve ever wondered who pays a hero 200 gold to walk 40 metres and kill a rat, there’s now a series of strategy games to answer that question. Majesty 2 is an RTS wherein you have no direct control over any units. All you can do is offer gold for the completion of objectives, and hope some nearby hero is short on cash and in the mood for a quest. It’s bizarre. ...

Major League Baseball 2K9 (Review)

23/06/2009

Just like with the other recent 2K Sports title NBA 2K9 the sheer quality and sheen on display here is superb. Despite all the efforts EA Sports have made to make their games feel like TV broadcasts, they’ve never come anywhere near 2K’s level of presentation. The graphics are spot on, the sound and commentary is exemplary and the whole thing just feels like you are participating in a game of baseball. ...

Making History: The Calm & The Storm (Review)

11/04/2007

George Santayana, the Spanish-American writer, famously said, "Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it." We think he was probably describing the gameplay concept behind developer Muzzy Lane's Making History: The Calm & The Storm, the latest PC descendent in a long, proud line of turn-based strategy games focused on global domination in World War II. You play as one of eight countries (Japan, Germany, England, U.S., U.S.S.R., China, France, or Italy) during history's most ...

Maple Story (Review)

3/01/2007

Maple Story is an anomaly in the current MMORPG market. The graphics consist of flat, 2D images on a sidescrolling field. Its characters are cute anime caricatures, rather than the grimy orcs, hulking warriors and top-heavy elf women we've come to expect from the genre. But perhaps its biggest differentiating factor is that it's a 100% free download - at least, according to the ads and the website. Starting up in Maple Story is as simple as hopping over to the Nexon website, registering and ...

Marc Eckos Getting Up Contents Under Pressure (Review)

2/03/2006

By all rights, Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure should be terrible. The latest in a long line of mostly dismal "urban" games, it's packed full of brand logos, but still aims for a guerilla image. It's been delayed for years. And if that weren't enough, it's the brainchild of a fashion designer. So it's a shocker that Getting Up not only does its "street" atmosphere up right, but actually puts together a competent beat-'em-up/graffiti experience. Playing like an inner-city Prince ...

The Mark (Review)

30/05/2007

The British and the Americans have a very different way of waging war. The Mark captures this difference perfectly, and with a real sense of understated panache. The difference is this: when Fletcher, your US “go go go” character shoots a bad guy, he shouts: “Hope that hurt!” But when Hawke - the sneaky camp Englishman - kills someone, he snidely oils: “Hope that didnt hurt.” Spot the difference? The English are sarcastic to ...

Mass Effect (Review)

27/05/2008

We waited a long time for the PC version, and here it is at last: Mass Effect is an awesome space epic in which you, as an elite above-the-law agent known as a Specter, must prevent - what else? - the destruction of all life in the galaxy. With action-packed gameplay, excellent art design, and cinematic flare, BioWare has successfully created a universe as believable and fully realized as Star Wars or Star Trek. In fact, you could (but ...

Medal of Honor Airborne (Review)

4/09/2007

Sept 4, 2007 The main innovation in Airborne, and the one most obvious from the title, is that you play Boyd Travers, a paratrooper in the US Airborne Division. The tactic of dropping soldiers into enemy territory from planes was a new one for the 40s, and its one of those ideas that - once heard - youre surprised nobody has converted into a game before (well, not for a few years anyway). With this first innovation came a necessary second. Because you can drop in anywhere on the map, the AI ...

Medal of Honor Pacific Assault (Review)

15/11/2004

December 7, 1941. Hawaii. There's a war going on, but you don't expect the devil to make an appearance. Not in Paradise. Not on a Sunday. But sure enough... planes. Hundreds of them. They fill the sky, spew lead like hail and tear the American Navy a new one. They're the common thread running through all the best bits of EA's assault on the Pacific and with every set-piece you're reminded just what your newest recruit could have been.Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault is the tale of rookie Tom ...

Medieval II: Total War (Review)

28/11/2006

Forums all over the net were littered with cries of "Hey, they've already done that!" when game developer Creative Assembly announced that its next game in the Total War series would be something of a blast from the past called Medieval II. But nobody's complaining now. Even though the subject matter may be a little familiar, all the games that came before Medieval II: Total War seem like warm-ups for this one. The strategic and tactical aspects have finally been polished to near ...

Medieval II: Total War (Review)

6/11/2006

Monday 6 November 2006 Whoever came up with the Chivalric Code was an incredible optimist. Or, rather, an incredible prat. "Thou shalt never lie. Thou shalt be generous. Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy. Thou shalt make ceaseless war against the infidel..." Follow ethics like that in Medieval Europe and you'd likely end up a dead pauper in no time at all. That's certainly what would happen if you tried it in the mesmerisingly challenging Medieval II: Total War. Creative Assembly has ...

Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms (Review)

29/08/2007

Aug 29, 2007 Medieval II: Total War's first expansion is immense and has taken up pretty much every waking moment of our past week. It's an RTS add-on pack unlike any we've ever seen before, one that shames many standalone games with its sheer depth and wealth of options. Nestling inside this package is not one, not two, not three, but four full campaigns bursting with content. That's around 50 hours of gameplay if you want to get numerical about it. And that's if you decide to only play ...

Men of War (Review)

27/02/2009

Cast your mind back a few years and you may well recall a plucky little WWII strategy game going by the name of Soldiers: Heroes of World War II. It was great. Despite this, it didn’t sell as many copies as it should have, but it did well enough to be rewarded with a sequel – Faces of War. By this time, people were fed up with the setting and potential buyers ignored it, preferring to bask in the glow of their X-Stations and Playboxes. But Russian behemoth 1C wasn’t to be stopped. ...

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (Review)

17/09/2008

Only two things in the beautiful, open world of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames can’t be reduced to smoldering rubble: a handful of structures essential to the story, and a ton of bugs. The latter is a shame, because after playing this otherwise exuberantly destructive shooter to its conclusion, I’d love to call in a carpet-bombing strike on those damned bugs. ...

Merchants of Brooklyn (Review)

4/05/2009

In the future, according to doomsayers Paleo, global warming will flood most of New York City, leaving it made of slumdogs and rich people in the high rises. This bewildering and barely elaborated upon concept is about as inspiring as the rest of Merchants of Brooklyn. ...