GamesRadar - PC Reviews

Sacred Rings (Review)

Mar 21, 2007

Remember Myst? Of course you do. The program changed the course of PC gaming forever, with its gorgeous static graphics, mind bending puzzles, and decently twisted characters. It also spawned loads of clones after it hit big back in 1995. The Sacred Rings can best be described as one of those clones, just 15 years late. Outside of the fact that you can actually scroll the camera around each of the static screens in the game, you'd be forgiven for mixing this up for one of the aforementioned ...

Safari Photo Africa: Wild Earth (Review)

Apr 12, 2007

How do you make children enjoy, rather than feel insulted by, edutainment games? Well, getting them to take photos of elephant poo and urinating rhinos is not a bad start. This Animal Planet-branded FPPS (first-person photography shooter) will make your child a better person in three ways: 1) education about the animal kingdom, such as why male lions are chauvinist pigs, 2) a vague sense of how photography works, and 3) a grasp of how to navigate an open 3D environment using the WADS keys and ...

Saga (Review)

May 2, 2008

Often, an unremarkable game can inspire the most conversation. Though a score of 8 was the height of our passion for Dawn of War: Soulstorm, we spent drunken, ranting hours discussing it. How, we asked, can an RTS come up with a truly satisfying metagame to link its single-player skirmishes together?Even if it’s got a bucket load of its own problems, MMORTS Saga is a fascinating answer to that question. ...

The Saga of Ryzom (Review)

Nov 3, 2004

First impressions count. Sorry, Ryzom, but it's true. Within the first 15 minutes of play, I'd had one character disappear in the middle of a conversation, breaking the tutorial, encountered animals with names like biguglymonster_2b, and had been assigned a starter quest that involved - no joke - delivering a package to a nearby village, two kilometres away... within five minutes. Not that I got there. I was too busy being beaten up by giant crabs. Also, my head kept disappearing, and I was ...

Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock (Review)

Oct 24, 2006

It took 13 years, a high-profile cancellation and a corporate schism that ended with the formation of developer Telltale Games, but bizarre crimefighting team Sam & Max have finally returned to computer screens. In Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock, the dog-and-rabbit detective duo hit the pavement in their festering New York neighborhood, this time to shut down an incredibly chintzy world-domination plot. Like 1993's Sam & Max Hit the Road (and Telltale's earlier Bone games), Culture Shock ...

Sam & Max Episode 2: Situation: Comedy (Review)

Jan 8, 2007

The first episode of a series is rarely the best, so it wasn't too surprising that the point-and-click adventure Sam & Max: Episode 1: Culture Shock - while fun overall - was short, meandering and packed with uneven humor. We knew it'd get better, though, and with Episode 2: Situation: Comedy, it has. The writing is tighter, there's much more to do and the humor has edged closer to the inspired lunacy of the Sam & Max comic books. In short, the series is really starting to get off the ...

Sam & Max Episode 202: Moai Better Blues (Review)

Jan 10, 2008

Jan 10, 2008 Two episodes in, the second "season" of Sam & Max is already blowing the first six-game series out of the water. In fact, it's not a stretch to say that Episode 202: Moai Better Blues is the best game so far in the demented point-and-click series about a dog detective and his gruesome rabbit sidekick. It's certainly the funniest by a wide margin, being the first episode to actually make us laugh out loud more than once. And considering what a bunch of jaded humor snobs we are, ...

Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead (Review)

Feb 12, 2008

Zombies can improve anything - anything - and the Sam & Max series is no exception. As the second season's third episode opens, the walking dead have swarmed Sam and Max's run-down neighborhood - and strangely, that's a good thing. Frankly, the addition of a few shambling corpses makes the place livelier than it's ever been, threat of brain-eating or no. ...

Sam & Max Episode 204: Chariots of the Dogs (Review)

Mar 14, 2008

Episodic gaming’s dynamic detecting duo travel through time and space (and the local convenience store) in Chariots of the Dogs, the latest installment of their series' second "season". A substantial improvement from the lackadaisical content of episodes two and three, Chariots never quite reaches the awesomeness of season two opener Ice Station Santa, but it does offer some solid yuks and a head-scratcher or two. As with all the ...

Sam & Max Episode 205: What's New, Beelzebub? (Review)

May 7, 2008

Killer robots spouting disco lyrics, teenage rats with Tourette’s syndrome, the dark lord Satan reduced to an ineffectual middle manager - what’s amazing about the second season of Sam & Max’s adventures is its power to surprise and delight, long after you would expect the writers’ funny supplies to have dried up. Its finale, What’s New, Beelzebub?, also proves that they had planned out this season’s ...

Sam & Max Episode 3: The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball (Review)

Jan 26, 2007

Another month, another $9 episode of Sam & Max. That's something we could get used to, so long as the quality holds up, and so far the series manages to get a little better with each installment. Sure, Sam & Max Episode 3: The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball might play exactly like the last two, with no real changes except for the puzzles, settings and plot. But the comedy's a little sharper, and the hit-or-miss stabs at pop culture have been chucked in favor of big guns, absurd gangsters and ...

Sam & Max Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die! (Review)

Feb 23, 2007

If you've been following previous episodes of Sam & Max, by now you should be familiar with the series' tropes. You should expect, for example, that paranoid convenience-store owner Bosco will sport a new fake accent and flimsy disguise, and that endearing hack-of-all-trades Sybil will have a new, doomed career that she'll ditch by episode's end. What you probably don't expect is that Sam and Max, the lovable canine shamus and hyperkinetic rabbity thing, will assassinate two presidents and be ...

Sam & Max Episode 5: Reality 2.0 (Review)

Apr 4, 2007

They've conquered giant presidents, fibbed their way to daytime-TV stardom and brought down mafiosos in creepy bear masks. Now, five episodes into their six-episode series, Sam and Max face their greatest challenge to date: learning to use the internet. And this time, the very fate of western civilization hangs in the balance. As Sam & Max Episode 5: Reality 2.0 opens, Max - the psychotic rabbity half of the dog-and-rabbit-thing duo - has somehow managed to hang on to the US presidency after ...

Sam & Max Episode 6: Bright Side of the Moon (Review)

May 1, 2007

Fresh off their success destroying the internet in Reality 2.0, dog-and-lagomorph crimefighting duo Sam and Max have returned for one final adventure - at least, until their next "season" starts. Putting a coda on an episodic series that's seen psychotic rabbit Max elected president, the world plunged into offscreen chaos and the duo's neighbors suffer through multiple identity crises, Sam & Max Episode 6: Bright Side of the Moon pits players against the man behind it all. We speak of none ...

Sam & Max Season One (Review)

Aug 28, 2007

After a 13-year absence from videogames, amoral dog-and-rabbit crimefighting duo Sam and Max made a triumphant comeback in late 2006, with a series of six surreal adventures that took them from the seediest streets of New York to the depths of outer space. Originally released online for $8.95 a pop, their criminal-squashing escapades have been bundled into one $30 collection and peppered with cool extras, giving those who've managed to avoid the series thus far one less reason to do so. If ...

Sam & Max Season Two, Episode 1: Ice Santa (Review)

Nov 9, 2007

Nov 9, 2007 It's been just six months since dog-and-rabbit detectives Sam and Max wreaked their particular brand of havoc on the point-and-click adventure genre, and already they're back again to deliver more punishment. Christmassy punishment. Santa's gone crazy and started shipping out presents that are either useless, deadly, or both, and it once again falls to Sam and Max to hurt people and ruin things by way of response. Sam & Max Season Two, Episode 1: Ice Station Santa (available for ...

Savage (Review)

Feb 18, 2004

Oddfish, this Savage game: it tastes just like an online FPS, with third-person elements, but there's a strange smell about the place. It's almost as if... there's some real-time strategy going on. For the beginner, Savage is a disconcerting experience: just what is this strategy element? Where is it coming from? What does it mean? And whose orders am I completely ignoring? Important questions indeed.Perplexingly, these are questions that remain unanswered by the game itself. There is no ...

Savage 2: A Tortured Soul (Review)

Jan 29, 2008

Savage 2: A Tortured Soul desperately tries to deliver a new kind of game where real-time strategy and first-person action get it on to provide the ultimate new two-in-one genre combo. Unfortunately, its multi-genre elements dont always get along, and playing the game will sometimes make you feel like youre watching your mom and dad fight. To be fair, Savage 2 has smoothed out a ton of the rough spots since developer, S2 Games took their first stab at creating a Frankenstein game thats one ...

Secret Files: Tunguska (Review)

Dec 20, 2006

In 1908 a gigantic blast roughly equivalent to the power of a nuclear bomb rocked the area of Tunguska in Siberia, felling trees in an area of over 800 miles. Although most scientists agree that the blast was the result of a large asteroid or comet, conspiracy theories involving extraterrestrials remain popular to this day, making Tunguska the Roswell of Russia. Although the mysterious premise of Secret Files: Tunguska involving foul play and aliens shows promise, the game itself won't make a ...

Secrets of Atlantis: The Sacred Legacy (Review)

Jun 19, 2007

Right away, we realized that Secrets of Atlantis had big problems. In the opening cutscene, hero Howard Brooks deadpans, “It all started one morning in April 1937. I was aboard the celebrated Hindenburg …[LOTS of pointless voiceover cut – youre welcome] …when a most disagreeable meeting occurred, which would make its mark on my whole future.” Really? On your whole future? Then, in a scene which desperately mimics Indiana Jones, two men knock him unconscious and ...