Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: May 24, 2002

The World of Darkness: White Wolf’s key franchise and a widely spread landscape of pure terror. Clans of vampires secretly control the world and have shadowy truces with the leaders of humanity. On the fringes of society dwell proud and vicious werewolves who are able to disguise themselves with the same ease with which they can disembowel anyone who stands in their way. Added to this macabre cast you’ll find countless ghosts, wraiths, spirits, and walking dead, all of whom have their own agendas, or serve the agendas of others. ( read more… )

Review by: Nick Stewart
Published: April 18, 2002

Little could George Lucas have suspected that when filming a little movie called Star Wars, he was in fact laying the foundations for what would later become a full-blown cultural phenomenon of staggering proportions. Attribute it to the epic story, to the special effects, to the interesting characters; whatever the reason, the legendary reach possessed by this cinematic giant has been enough to carry the film’s popularity across generations and through the decades, leaving a nearly endless trail of books, spin-offs, and merchandising mania in its prodigious wake. Even during the 16-year lull between the original series and Episode I, countless products have emerged in an attempt to satiate fans’ eternal longing to catch even a faint glimpse of the Star Wars universe. One such product was the PC title Star Wars: Dark Forces, which introduced the gaming community to Kyle Katarn, a grizzled, pessimistic mercenary who reluctantly found himself a hero to the Rebel Alliance. Meeting with great success, it was soon followed by the award-winning Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, which found Katarn fighting a much more personal mission to avenge his father, while becoming a Jedi Knight and defeating a group of Dark Jedi along the way. With the ongoing series now in the able hands of Raven Software, creators of Soldier of Fortune and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Kyle Katarn returns to action once more in the anxiously anticipated Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. ( read more… )

Review by: Gavin Carter
Published: April 5, 2002

The Heroes of Might and Magic series is a stalwart defender of the turn-based strategy genre. Just when you think real-time games have beaten down turn-based offerings once and for all, developer New World Computing releases a new Heroes title or expansion, and players and critics alike are enthralled. Still, after three successful iterations, fans were wondering if 3DO could maintain its standard of excellence. New World’s soothing answer to such concerns is Heroes of Might and Magic IV, which in some ways is a departure, and in many ways is the same title people have loved since the initial release. I tore into Heroes IV to see how much has changed since 1999′s Heroes of Might and Magic III, and whether it was for the better. ( read more… )

Review by: Gavin Carter
Published: January 11, 2002

The real-time strategy genre is one of the largest and most popular categories in PC gaming today. Within such a large crowd, differentiation between one product and the next quickly becomes muddled. Sci-fi and fantasy games rule the genre, and often new titles borrow so much from their successful predecessors that differences are only skin deep. Liquid Entertainment’s first foray into PC gaming avoids such pitfalls by taking a tried-and-true setting and injecting it with a booster shot of personality. The result is Battle Realms, a matchless RTS experience. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: January 10, 2002

By now, the Final Fantasy series seems to have fallen into a formula. Starting with the much hyped Final Fantasy VII, the series has kept several constants, including the winding plots, fairly linear gameplay that finally frees the player right around disc three, and a cast of unique and individual characters. Somehow, despite rarely deviating from this formula, the wizards at Square manage to spin a new tale and revamp their mechanics with each new installment. Most impressively, though, some sort of nameless grace surrounds this series, such that as gamers who’ve enjoyed any Final Fantasy, we can rest assured that we will enjoy all the others. Some titles, of course, strike a stronger chord with players than others — Final Fantasy VII was more warmly received than either of its sequels — though none can really fault their technical excellence. Leaving the PlayStation behind meant new expectations for Square, and fans were excited to hear that combat would be changed, character voices would be introduced and the graphics would astound. How well does this Fantasy stack up against the others? Read on to find out. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: November 26, 2001

Although the adventure genre was proclaimed dead by naysayers, the last few years have seen a steady stream of releases in this category. Nonetheless, I have reviewed a series of decidedly mediocre titles lately, including Adventure at the Chateau d’Or, Road to India, and Mystery of the Druids. Now Polish developer LK Avalon has entered the fray with a new title in this same niche — Schizm: Mysterious Journey. While available for CD-ROM, this product was designed for DVD (the version reviewed here), and takes advantage of the large capacity and improved speed of this new technology. The game takes up both sides of a single DVD, facilitating a gargantuan total of over 10 gigabytes of data. Can this mega-release restore the vitality of the genre? ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: November 22, 2001

Larry Niven’s Ringworld series can always lay claim to being one of the best stories ever told about this theoretical construct. Put simply, a ring world is a torus or doughnut shaped structure that has a landscape on the inner curve of its axis. Usually constructed using technologies that even our widest science fiction can’t describe, a ringworld’s surface area would be billions of times that of Earth’s, and all connected by the underlying ring structure. Taking this idea and running with its shape as inspiration, Bungie and Microsoft have teamed up to deliver us Halo for the X-Box. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: November 8, 2001

Given the chance, how far would you push the boundaries of the law? Certainly, ninety-nine percent of us transgress some minor prohibition every day, be it removing the tag from our mattresses or changing lanes in the middle of an intersection. Suppose you could go further, and not face any serious consequences? Would you rob cars from the street? Or would you go even further and run down the former owner with his own car and then steal his money? These are the sorts of questions Rockstar Games and DMA Design have posed to PS2 owners the world over with their release of Grand Theft Auto 3; in a time when gaming is growing increasingly mature, this title marks a new outer limit. ( read more… )

Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: October 31, 2001

After a deluge in the late 1990s, the arcade racing scene on the personal computer has been mighty sparse of late. After having been spoiled by Psygnosis’ Wipeout XL and Rollcage, Ubi Soft’s POD, Digital Illusions’ Motorhead, Beam Software’s Dethkarz, Crave Entertainment’s Killer Loop, and even Electronic Arts’ more mainstream Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, my expectations in this most exciting racing niche have been raised to a sky-high level, and nothing coming around the bend has seemed to stack up. But now the Swedish company GRIN is just in the process of releasing the much ballyhooed futuristic arcade racer Ballistics — so are my long-unfulfilled cravings finally about to be satisfied? ( read more… )

Review by: Josh Horowitz
Published: October 25, 2001

The Eighties. It was a time of excess and greed, pop music and Pac-Man, home PCs and yuppies driving BMWs. It was also a time of military tension, with the ardent American president Ronald Reagan preparing his nation to face the cold war against the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union. Today everyone seems to be caught up in the frenzy of fighting faceless terrorism, but there was a time less than 20 years ago when the enemy was highly recognizable and more predictable. The cold war ended with the U.S. and NATO on top, but what if Soviet and American forces had butted horns conventionally before the fall of the Berlin Wall? It would have been a great contest between two equally powerful nations, and for the Czech developers at Bohemia Interactive, the scenario provides an intriguing back-story for a realistic computer war simulation. With that in mind, Bohemia and Codemasters present one of the first Cold War era combat sims on the market, Operation Flashpoint. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: October 9, 2001

Being a kid can be tough. Other kids teasing you, the pressures of growing up, those pains in your legs when you hit your growth spurt, and, of course, that time in your life when your voice deepens and your horns grow into their full size. Admittedly, most of us don’t have to worry about the horns part, but in one village, every generation has one child who is born with nubs that eventually grow into full bullhorns on their head. This child is shunned, blamed, cursed and eventually exiled for their disfigurement, leaving them loveless for most of their lives. Such is the lot for the titular hero of Ico, SCE’s first adventure release for the PlayStation 2, but we as gamers are offered the chance to guide this young man into adulthood through a trial that most of us would be terrified to face. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: September 28, 2001

When gamers talk about anticipation, there are certain titles that have left them hanging on a larger cliff than Tim Curry’s famous lyric in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. PC gamers were salivating over Black and White for months, while Dreamcast owners were hanging by a thread before the release of Shenmue. Of course, the PS2 has no shortage of these hotly anticipated games, including the still impending Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and the now arrived Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. Racing fans everywhere have loved this series for years in its PlayStation incarnations, and with hordes of screens from the PS2 flooding the net before its release, the hype had reached incredible levels. As much as “any press is good press,” this kind of hype can make or break a game, since it must leap from a tower of its own anticipations, and from this either soar or crash mightily amidst a crowd of knowing nods and crushing reviews. Read on to see whether this racer soars or sinks in our review of what some were considering the first “killer app” on the PS2. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: September 22, 2001

Like the summer solstice, Christmas and New Years, gamers have certain annual events circled with red ink on their calendar. Obviously, this year’s launch dates for the X-Box and GameCube are receiving special attention, and every year the media blitz makes it impossible to overlook E3, but when it comes to gaming institutions that you can use to define your annum, none of these have the permanence of the release of each year’s Madden NFL game. This year mark’s the series’ second appearance on the PS2, which puts the pressure on EA Sports to deliver a solid sophomore effort. This time out, football fans aren’t going to be wowed by pretty graphics alone, as the last version was a major leap forward for the series in that department. Thus, the designers have the momentous challenge ahead of them of trying to improve upon a series that has been slowly evolving for years. Gamers have always agreed that this series is one of, if not the premier football simulation available on Sony’s systems (Sega fans have always stood strongly by Sega Sports’ NFL 2K series), but no one would ever declare that they are “perfect” recreations by any means. Will this year’s edition finally deliver the authentic experience of the NFL, or will it merely be an update of rosters and a few minor tweaks? ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: September 1, 2001

When the ESRB was founded, it was created on the principle that gaming needed a self-regulating watchdog group. The industry needed an organization that would not limit the contents of games, but instead judge them and deem the content acceptable for specific age groups. Of the three most commonly seen levels, Everyone, Teen and Mature, the latter carries with it the most history. Typically these titles are the ones pointed out in Congress, and the ones blamed for destroying the fabric of North American culture. As a result, some developers shy away from such mature, and potentially disturbing content, but there are a select few studios that gratefully accept the Mature mantle into their hearts, and view it as a license to run wild with their ideas and concepts. Incog Inc., a group of developers who slaved over the original Twisted Metal for the PlayStation are just such a group, and their return to the series that defined vehicular combat demonstrates just how grown-up gaming can be. So forget your preconceptions about slightly silly cars and drivers, and enter the morbid and disturbing world of Twisted Metal Black. ( read more… )

Review by: Mike Laidlaw
Published: August 24, 2001

We’re at an interesting time in the handheld market, as Nintendo still runs the show, but their product line is in the midst of a changeover from the tried and true GameBoy Color to the GameBoy Advance. Fortunately for the handheld gamers out there, the Advance is backward compatible all the way to the original GameBoy system’s cartridges, making it a versatile beastie indeed. During the changeover, Nintendo has apparently recognized that it will take a while for the Advance to catch on, but in order to speed its introduction the company has introduced some nifty gimmicks into their last-generation GBC releases. ( read more… )