GamesRadar - PC Reviews

1701 A.D. (Review)

1/11/2006

Do you remember the first time you played Sim City or Civilization? The joys of constructing buildings, improving your city (or civilization) and helping it prosper are sometimes hard to remember. Instead, we recall the frustrating gameplay, convoluted menus and poorly designed battle systems that have plagued the second-rate imitations that have flooded the market in recent years. Luckily, 1701 A.D. manages to breathe life back into this crowded-but-listless genre. You won't see any far out ...

18 Wheels of Steel: American Long Haul (Review)

9/04/2008

Before now something had kept us unaware of the macho-romanticism of the long-distance truck driver. Now, suddenly, the appeal of the open road strikes us: We’ve got a big blue truck and a delivery that needs to be in Las Vegas, like, yesterday. There’s a whiff of management, but really this is a driving simulator. Not a driving game, in that Grand Theft Auto style, no: a simulator. You pick up your load, you head out on the ...

2006 FIFA World Cup Germany (Review)

6/06/2006

The two main "simulation" franchises in the soccer video game genre - FIFA and Winning Eleven - have been engaged in a death struggle for years now. 2006 FIFA World Cup adds a little more of Winning Eleven-style flair to its familiar gameplay formula this time around, but not much. FIFA remains more pick-up-and-play for the mainstream sports gamer, but offers some depth and subtleties that will enable more experienced players to do their best Beckham impersonation. Experienced FIFA gamers will ...

32nd America's Cup - The Game (Review)

19/06/2007

Youve got a yacht, right? Because the extreme wealth weve acquired from typing stuff about video games has allowed us to purchase the fourth official GamesRadar Boat. So join us for our annual race: the first one to sail the circumference of Gangsta Party Island (thats the new ditty in the Philippines we also just bought) wins a bottle of Hennessy, and a Wii. But you wont win. Weve been practicing on Virtual Skipper 5, and this game taught us the way of the dinghy. We are true navigators. Next ...

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity (Review)

4/09/2009

Jump off a tall building while opening your mouth as wide as possible, and you’re likely to emit a sound that closely resembles the name of indie developer Dejobaan Games’ latest effort. How cleverly fitting, since that’s exactly what Aaaaa! is all about. This out of control base jumping simulation wins far more than the award for being one of the longest and weirdest-named games around. ...

Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile (Review)

12/12/2008

Forget what you’ve seen on CSI. When it comes to solving a murder case, all that you really need is the ability to locate five peaches in a cluttered bedroom. In this mystery-themed puzzler it’s not powers of deduction that’ll help you play the role of Poirot, but I-Spy skills and 20/20 vision. ...

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (Review)

3/01/2007

Botched movie-to-game adaptations are nothing new, but blunders of the book-to-game variety may be on the rise. As the second Agatha Christie game from The Adventure Company, Murder on the Orient Express casts you as an eager assistant to the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, as you work to solve a mysterious murder aboard a luxurious train to Paris - but the fun gets derailed before you even leave the station. Sticking close to the plot of the novel, the game moves at an ...

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (Review)

6/06/2008

Making an online game these days is tough, as there are few interesting settings left to force into the bizarre mold that is the MMO. Luckily for us, there’s a chauvinistic lore-trove waiting in the wings: Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria - the world of shirtless sword-swinger Conan the Cimmerian - which has now become the most brutal MMO in existence. ...

Age of Empires III (Review)

9/03/2006

The original Age of Empires sold a gazillion copies by ushering in the idea of epochs in real-time strategy games (where you slowly move your civilization through a series of technological ages). Since then, Age of Mythology and Age of Empires II each offered incremental changes, and Age of Empires III keeps the streak alive. That's both good and bad: the gameplay is accessible, easy to learn and very polished, but too often Age III has a "been there, done that" feeling. The single-player ...

Age of Empires III expansion pack (Review)

17/10/2006

Exploring the new world was one of Columbus' greatest feats, but it was the colonization of that land that brought about a new era in civilization. And it was that era that was chronicled in Ensemble's Age of Empires III as you took on the role of a mighty European power. Now it is time for the tables to turn as the balance shifts to three Native American tribes and you lead the WarChief to victory. Each of the three new tribes, the Iroquois, the Sioux and the Aztecs bring a new style of play ...

Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties (Review)

1/11/2007

Nov 1, 2007 After two years on shelves, Age of Empires III was beginning to look like it was locked in predictability. So The Asian Dynasties expansion from developer Big Huge Games (best known for creating Rise of Nations) arrives at just the right time, like new menus showing up at your favorite Chinese place just when you're getting sick of the same old sweet-and-sour chicken balls. New civilizations that play unlike any of their predecessors, a host of revamped features, and a return to ...

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (Review)

25/09/2006

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales, a sort of unofficial sequel to the recent Pirates of the Caribbean game (itself a renamed sequel to Sea Dogs ), is a Jack Sparrow of all trades. It just can't seem to get the individual elements up to the basic level even generic genre titles can manage, let alone master them. Part island vacation, part RPG and part empire builder, it seems like the pirate's life could be reasonably fun for a while. Sure, the missions never get more interesting than bare bones ...

Ageod's American Civil War - The Blue and the Gray (Review)

8/11/2007

Nov 8, 2007 The best war-themed board games are objects that cry out to be framed and hung on bedroom walls. Their digital equivalents are rarely as handsome or full of character. Why? We blame devs too short-sighted or mean to employ art talent like Robin Pirez and Sandra Rieunier-Duval, who have ensured this deep, turn-based treatment of the War Between the States is as decorative and atmospheric as it is engrossing and elegant. At its core, this is a game about moving armies and molding ...

Aggression - Reign over Europe (Review)

29/10/2008

Not to be confused with the tactical meteorology epic, Depression: Rain over Europe, this real-time strategy from Buka Entertainment is aggressive indeed. It aims to be rather like a Total War for the first half of the 20th century. You know, that period when the most enlightened continent on Earth decided it was a good idea to make all its young men shoot each other with rifles. ...

Agon: The Lost Sword of Toledo (Review)

17/03/2008

To call Agon a point-and-click game is to grossly overstate the amount of clicking. For a very long time, the game involves nothing more than exhausting dialogue trees of the characters you meet. Although the puzzles you’ll eventually reach are decent enough, the swamp of extremely middle-class dialogue you have to trudge through makes it feel more like a book than a game.Worse still, the dialogue sounds like it’s delivered slowly ...

AI War (Review)

5/10/2009

The difficult thing is trying to describe what AI War actually is. It’s an RTS with turn-based combat. It’s tower defence with spaceships and wormholes. It’s galactic conquest where the silliest thing you can do is try to conquer everything. It’s a skirmish game where the AI has no interest in pretending it’s a human player. ...

Aion (Review)

8/10/2009

One of the most striking things about Aion is its grand visuals and fantastic environments. The azure skies, fantastical fauna, and floating cities in Aion make for a nice break from the boars and dusty castles you’re used to seeing in fantasy MMOs. But it’s the highly detailed lore that really helps create a vibrant and believable fantasy world. ...

Air Rivals (Review)

16/07/2008

Korean-model massively-multiplayer games have yet to trouble the highest ranks of our scoring scheme. Nevertheless, their attempts to make genres other than the straight roleplaying game work in the MMO mold is deeply admirable. This is one of the best. Air Rivals takes the character class leveling we’re perhaps a little over-familiar with, and then applies it to a third-person shooter, similar to console hit Starfox. Oh – and ...

Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine (Review)

3/04/2007

This is a game from another decade, and its definitely not the 90s. A time when adventure games had lots of screens, many of which were just graphical interludes to walk through. Where your inventory quickly swelled with dozens of items, and visual clues telling you what to pick up were considered patronizing. Al Emmo isnt just old-school; its total old-school immersion thatll thrill genre-lovers and the pathologically curious. It does its best to be funny, with an every-line-as-joke approach ...

Alien Shooter: Vengeance (Review)

21/02/2007

Alien Shooter: Vengeance is a game where you, you guessed it, blast extra-terrestrial beings into space goop. It's an entertaining, standard shoot 'em up game for the PC, with no plot to speak of other than... well... exacting vengeance upon the aliens by shooting ...