GamesRadar - PC Reviews

Race 07: Official WTCC Game (Review)

Oct 2, 2007

Oct. 2 2007 Simbin's last effort, RACE, left us feeling a little underwhelmed. After the heady heights of GTR 2, the lesser-powered vehicles and lack of graphical polish felt like a bit of a step back for the developers. But true to the World Touring Car Championship series which it emulates, SimBin are back with this year's version. Complete with the new drivers and tracks featured in this year's WTCC, there's also a whole garage of extra content bolted on. On top of last year's WTCC '87 and ...

Rail Simulator (Review)

Nov 27, 2007

You want us to make a joke? You think rail simulators are funny? You think the idea of recreating a largely event-free one-dimensional journey is absurd? Why not think of it as Half-Life, without the excellent narrative or the satisfying combat? There you go. That's made you all ...

Rainbow Six Lockdown (Review)

Jun 22, 2007

Its been a whole year since the last Rainbow Six game, Black Arrow, and developers, Red Storm Entertainment seem to have taken a long hard look at things. From the onset Lockdown feels tighter and more intuitive than any of its predecessors and, like the protagonists within the game, have righted many of the wrongs that have gone before. One of the first things youll notice is that command of your three tactically minded comrades has been tightened up. While having fewer commands for your team ...

Rayman Raving Rabbids (Review)

Jan 4, 2007

What if the hero didn't save the day? What if, instead, he was hoodwinked and mocked by his captors? If Rayman Raving Rabbids on the Wii is any indication, the resulting forecast would be partly innovative with a 95% chance of hilarity. However, the PC version - while the same game - ditches all innovation and plays like a mediocre mini-game-a-thon on your rig. Rayman is a prisoner of the insane Rabbids - evil animals that are one part Bugs Bunny, and one part Sloth from The Goonies. He's made ...

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (Review)

Apr 17, 2006

World War II shooter Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 somehow manages to do the impossible: it makes ultra-realism fun. It shoehorns extremely accurate ballistics, vehicle and weapon modeling into a game that requires close teamwork in order to win. The retail price of $24.95 sets it apart even further in the teeming town of WWII Shooterville, and makes Red Orchestra a cant-miss title for fans of team-based shooters looking for something substantially different. With no real single-player game ...

Requiem: Bloodymare (Review)

Jul 29, 2008

Remember those free Cracker Jack prizes, like the magnifying glass too crappy to fry ants with, and the rub-on tattoos that became ugly smudges? Downloading Requiem: Bloodymare (from www.playrequiem.com) is like finding a five-dollar bill in your Cracker Jack box - quite a pleasant surprise!

Despite being free to download and play, Requiem is fully featured, and arguably better than many subscription-based MMOs out there. ...

Reservoir Dogs (Review)

Oct 25, 2006

Before we start talking about Reservoir Dogs, there are a few things you should know. First, you won't saw the ears off any cops - at least not on camera. Second, the game isn't a Grand Theft Auto clone. Third, of all the actors whose careers were jump-started by the iconic 1992 crime flick, only Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) appears in the game. And fourth, you can't just shoot undercover cop Mr. Orange at the beginning to win the game. Rather than straight-up adapting the film about career ...

Resident Evil 4 (Review)

May 4, 2007

In all honesty, we didn't realize they still peddled shit like this. A console port so insultingly cut-and-pasted that its menu systems make you weep, its refusal to recognize even the existence of a mouse makes you incensed with anger and its insistence on showering one of the greatest games of the past decade in noxious shit makes you gag. Yes, we're pissed ...

Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War (Review)

Jun 14, 2006

Its not exactly a new idea: take charge of an ancient civilization and lead them into war. Upgrade your soldiers, develop super-weapons and destroy any differently-colored enemy you come across. Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War marches a well-worn path, but it tries to do a few things differently along the way. First among those is the hero. Each civilization can summon a hero to fight on its behalf - one that you control. With a simple double-click, you “possess” the leader of ...

Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (Review)

May 19, 2006

If you cottoned to the history-lite real-time strategy game Rise of Nations, chances are you'll dig the steampunky history-schmistory Rise of Legends too. Not exactly a sequel (it's science fantasy and uses a new 3D engine), it "borrows" elements from several hits to create an extension, but not a reinvention. Take Civilization's borders and attrition rates, mix in the Conquer the World campaign (think Total War only not as deep), then add city districts, a trim two-resource economy and ...

RoboBlitz (Review)

Dec 21, 2006

Most reviews start out with a synopsis of the game's plot. But honestly, RoboBlitz doesn't need that. Your job, as robot technician Blitz, is to run through 19 levels of shooting and puzzle action in order to load and fire a giant space cannon. The real motivation to keep playing lies more in earning each new weapon or toy and seeing what kind of wacky things you can do with ...

Rogue Trooper (Review)

May 31, 2006

Carving out a place among the glut of third-person shooting games can be a tough task, as the well-intentioned but entirely average Rogue Trooper proves. A combination of straight-forward shooting, stale sci-fi nonsense, and some clever use of gadgets and gear, Rogue Trooper manages to provide a few hours of gaming goodness despite some mediocre ...

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked (Review)

Feb 15, 2006

Why did Rhyll, Blackpool, and Stoke-on-Trent, all post-industrial blackspots, invest in wet and wild water parks? Maybe the Soaked expansion for RollerCoaster Tycoon: 3 (you'll need the original game) holds a clue. In it, you build monstrous body slides, over-sized swimming pools and cartoon log-flumes for the paying visitors to your expensive theme parks. Water, in Soaked, is fluid cash. Every guest to your new swimming pool pays an entry fee - for which they're granted access to the pool ...

Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI (Review)

Sep 9, 2008

In many ways, Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is much like the love that old people have for each other: it’s deep, it’s been going on for a long time, and to most people it’s completely impenetrable. You don’t understand how this decrepit system has kept together all this time, but it turns out that there’s real beauty behind it all, once you take the time to look past the silence and weirdness. ...

Rome: Total War (Review)

Mar 31, 2006

Bear witness to the spectacle of 10,000 troops defending their homeland to the death, tearing into invaders' ranks. Giant catapults launch flaming buckets of death into panicked troops and war elephants stampede into columns of routing infantry, angrily tossing them aside and brutally crushing the unlucky underfoot. This is your fight to win or lose. This is Rome: Total War. Rome: Total War masterfully blends two complete games: a turn-based strategy game steeped in history and a real-time ...

Rome: Total War (Review)

Oct 6, 2004

The summer of 265BC, in what is now northern Italy. Years of peace had lulled the House of Julii's Generals into a false sense of security: the supposedly troublesome Gauls seemed occupied elsewhere, and life was good for upstanding Romans. But the Senate had other ideas, and sent the Julii north and west to expand Rome's borders. Like the callow, untested soldiers they were, the Julii forces pushed forward, supposing the limited Gaulish resistance to be all that stood between them and ...

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion (Review)

Apr 13, 2006

You conquered the world in the real-time strategy masterwork Rome: Total War, but can you hold onto it? The Barbarian Invasion expansion puts you in the hot seat as the leader of your faction during the apogee of Rome's power, as the Roman Empire begins to fade and barbarian hordes invade. You'll conquer land during the tumultuous rise of Christianity and decline of Paganism. If you side with the Romans, the odds are stacked against you; pressure from all sides makes it nearly impossible to ...

Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion (Review)

Feb 15, 2006

Like both previous Total War expansion packs (Shogun's Mongol Invasion and Medieval's Viking Invasion), Barbarian Invasion injects dynamism into Rome Total War's static campaign map, with new mobile factions. And happily, it goes further still, offering a wide choice of campaign types. Will you take up the management challenge of an already-large empire, complete with unhappy populace, porous borders and expensive armies? Or attempt to turn one city into two, then three, then 20... then march ...

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 ...

Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle (Review)

Mar 15, 2007

Today we'll be heaving flaming boxes of Dream of the Turtle through the living room windows of wealthy white men's homes. Mm-hmm, the homes of pundits and congressmen. Because we're revenging at everyone who has ever squealed nationally about how video games devolve America's youth into mind-fried violence-guzzlers. We're not violent. But we're going to rip your spines out. Mortal Kombat! Doom! Grand Theft Auto! ...