Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: May 22, 2006

In a PC gaming market inundated with massively-multiplayer online games, first person shooters, and real-time strategy offerings, it’s refreshing to see that the granddaddy of computer entertainment genres, the adventure, is still alive and kicking. While the big names of the past like Sierra and LucasArts regrettably no longer uphold the adventure gaming tradition, Norwegian developer Funcom has filled in nicely. Funcom, best known for their Anarchy Online releases, came out with the Avault Seal of Excellence award-winning adventure title, The Longest Journey, in 1999. Despite receiving critical acclaim, a sequel seemed far off for this graphical adventure, but designer Ragnar Tornquist was determined to continue the story of heroine April Ryan. The result, after 3 years of development, is the newest chapter in the epic series: Dreamfall.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: May 6, 2005

While many people these days seem to be preoccupied with the ongoing situation in Iraq and global terrorism in general, it’s important to recognize the contributions of the men and women in law enforcement protecting the nation domestically. Organized crime, gang violence, and high profile robbery has escalated over the years, requiring police agencies nationwide to organize elite units to handle homeland problems quickly and effectively. These are the Special Weapons and Tactics units known as SWAT, and they are respected around the world for their military precision and effectiveness in securing situations and saving lives. Now, after a few years hiatus, Irrational Games has developed a new first-person tactical simulation of the SWAT experience in their latest iteration of the series, SWAT 4. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: April 6th, 2005

It’s evident by the success of PC titles like Spider-Man: The Movie, City of Heroes, and even the tabletop game HeroClixthat classic comics make for fun entertainment beyond their dusty, worn pages. Perhaps players enjoy the novelty of campy, bloodless battles found in comics in contrast to the trend of realistic videogame violence or maybe the old comic book fear of fascism and communism strikes a chord in gamers living in a new era mindful of terrorism. Regardless, the developers over at Irrational Games recognized that a gaming audience was out there ready to embrace a superhero action / strategy game when they released the successful Freedom Force in 2002. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: December 15, 2004

Ask the average American what their favorite sport is, and you might be surprised to find out it’s not football or baseball, but car racing. Europeans also enjoy racing, but unlike the US, where NASCAR reigns supreme, folks across the Atlantic avidly follow competitive off-road rallies. These sports usually involve compact, souped-up cars racing across narrow, twisty dirt roads or tracks, or even offroad. Whereas NASCAR focuses on speed, the slower road-rallies often rely on their competitors’ endurance to win the day. As such, rally games like the Colin McRae series seem to be more popular in Europe than America, but the developers at Bugbear have created a new racing title with a twist that they hope will garner worldwide appeal. Catering to the child in all of us that loves to smash cars in addition to racing with them, FlatOut places players in a racing environment where everything is affected by physics, crashing is commonplace, and no windshield is safe from a flying driver.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: December 3, 2004

Half-Life is a true PC classic. I remember first playing it way back in 1998 in my college apartment on my Voodoo-accelerated Pentium 3, plowing through an intense single-player experience filled with soldiers, walking zombies, headcrabs, and a trusty crowbar. After finishing the game, I couldn’t wait for more from the creative and twisted minds at Valve. Recognizing both my desire and those of fans around the world, Valve and other developers released a number of Half-Life add-ons over the years, both commercial (Opposing Force, Blue Shift) and downloadable (Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, They Hunger). Despite the original Half-Life‘s success, however, the One True Sequel seemed to be nowhere in sight. All that changed with an announcement back in 2003 that the five-year-old franchise would finally be getting its modern makeover, taking advantage of the new decade’s advances in graphics, physics, and playability while maintaining the great story elements that made the original so successful. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: November 25, 2004

While the mystery genre may be less popular than it’s been in the past, there’s no denying the appeal of the hard-hitting television crime drama, Law & Order. The show (now in its 15th season) is one of TV’s longest running drama series, with three successful spin-offs and a fourth on the way. Much of Law and Order‘s appeal comes from its tried and true formula of presenting an entire criminal case in one hour, from the detectives who arrest suspects, to the district attorneys who prosecute them. Recognizing the large television fan base and a dedicated brand of adventure and mystery gamers, Legacy Interactive decided two years ago to create a series of interactive titles based on the show. For this third release, the story focuses on a beautiful young tennis star’s murder in Law & Order: Justice is Served. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: October 22, 2004

The transition from 2D to 3D in gaming is sometimes a hit-or-miss affair. With the growing accessibility of powerful 3D video cards, many developers once used to comfortably designing traditional 2D real-time strategy titles, have found it necessary to make the dramatic leap to the third dimension. Sometimes things can go terribly wrong in the process, as was the case with 2000′s clunky Force Commander.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: October 8, 2004

Aliens have always gone hand-in-hand with video games, from the classic Space Invaders to practically every sci-fi first person shooter. Certainly when you think about science fiction, one of the first things likely to come to mind is the presence of aliens. Whether they are the monstrous, egg laying, acid spitting variety or those gray-skinned humanoids with the big eyes and no noses, those mysterious beings from another world have always been a staple of the genre. It is no surprise, then, that a massively multiplayer online role-playing game would use these extraterrestrials as the new threat fueling its gameplay. Bringing this idea to light is the development team responsible for Anarchy Online, the first sci-fi MMORPG. Following on the heels of their success with the expansion Shadowlands last year, FunCom has decided to release another expansion pack focusing on many elements its dedicated fan base had been requesting, including a massive alien threat. The result is Alien Invasion, an add-on that focuses on group interaction while providing additional elements of gameplay to the three year old Anarchy Online franchise. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: September 29, 2004

Last year marked the emergence of one of the best squad-based, first person WWII shooters on the PC, Call of Duty. The title boasted gritty, realistic graphics, adrenaline-pumping locales, and some of the most memorable scripted-action sequences of any game in its genre. Based on Call of Duty‘s success and the vast scope of the war it covers, it seemed inevitable that Activision would bank on an expansion pack, bringing players new and more exciting scenarios, weapons, and game modes. Heeding the call, Grey Matter Studios (the team that designed Return to Castle Wolfenstein) has developed the add-on named United Offensive, returning gamers to battle by land, sea, and air. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: June 25, 2004

Real time strategy games seem geared for space and sci-fi. Beginning with Westwood’s Dune 2 up through Blizzard’s StarCraft, the genre has found a core market with gamers ready to organize different futuristic troops to blast aliens and dominate worlds. Enter Massive Entertainment, the Swedish development company who first announced their entry into this genre with their groundbreaking 2000 RTS release, Ground Control. Based on that title’s success, they present the gaming public its sequel: Ground Control II: Operation Exodus. With this latest installment, Massive hopes to once again add a new chapter to RTS greatness. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: June 11, 2004

One of the most important and prolonged elements of ancient warfare has been the siege, a battle technique involving a large force of troops surrounding an enclosed city or castle in order to conquer it by force or attrition. There have been several famous sieges throughout history, many of which have resulted in death, destruction and ruin. Such actions seem to make for interesting computer games, a fact apparent to the Russian developers at Primal Software. Borrowing some pages from Viking and Cimmerian fiction and folklore, Primal has created a new real-time strategy game called Besieger that lets players build fortresses, amass huge armies and develop inventive technologies to smash the enemy and bring glory to their people.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: October 21, 2003

There’s an undeniable appeal to fantastic tales filled with mysterious and wonderful characters in strange settings. Certainly, some of our civilization’s oldest stories can trace their roots back to myth and fantasy. These legends have traditionally found a niche in medieval settings, where wizards and warriors battle monsters and conquer dungeons on epic quests. With science fiction gaining a hold in recent years, though, there has been a rise in the popularity of so-called cyberpunk.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: August 22, 2002

Most recent military simulations share one thing: they deal with conventional warfare. Admittedly, major conflicts typically involve huge, organized forces, but most warfare you read about in newspapers can be classified as small-scale “guerilla operations.” Keeping that in mind – and fresh off the success of last year’s Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis – game publisher Codemasters has surrendered to the public’s desire for increasingly realistic scenarios using the flexible Flashpoint engine. First came Operation Flashpoint Gold Edition, which included a Soviet campaign, and now the developers at Bohemia Interactive have released their second official add-on campaign, this time establishing players as freedom fighters facing overwhelming Soviet forces. Their newest release, Operation Flashpoint: Resistance, once again breaks new ground, bringing forward one of the first realistic guerilla warfare titles of its kind.

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Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: July 6, 2002

Most long-time gamers up on their titles will tell you that adventure gaming is a fading genre. Shedding a tear of nostalgia as they don their old blue-ringed Sierra Online t-shirt and Zork baseball cap, they mutter bitterly that the days of King’s Quest and Monkey Island have gone the way of the dodo, replaced by newer, more graphically impressive real-time strategy games or first-person shooters. While weekly sales figures back up this claim, there will still be developers out there who continue to have a desire to tell interactive stories despite what the current gaming environment may dictate. Such spirit is still alive and well in Russia, a country known for its rich literary works by such names as Chekov, Turgenev, and Pushkin. It is here that a small development company called Saturn Plus has pooled resources with Russia’s largest publisher, 1C, to create a new gaming release geared towards those yearning for the adventures of the past. They present the unusually titled Jazz and Faust, Saturn Plus’ first release outside of Russia that promises the necessary adventure elements of intrigue, foreign lands, mystery, and treasure. ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: June 29, 2002

When it comes to creating an air combat simulator for the computer, it’s almost a no-brainer for software developers to design one with WWII in mind. The second Great War had everything exciting about aerial combat: wild dogfighting melees, dramatic bombing runs over enemy territory, torpedo runs through a gauntlet of hostile fire, as well as fast machines and the men who flew them. Many companies have come out with flight sims over the years, but Jane’s simulations from Electronic Arts have traditionally stood apart, demonstrating unparalleled realism and cutting-edge graphics while filled with extensive, well-researched manuals. Recently, EA passed the Jane’s license over to Xicat Interactive, who now presents Jane’s Attack Squadron, their latest entry to the well-established WWII flight simulation genre.

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