IGN

• PC
• 7.8 / 10
• États-Unis

Midnight Nowhere is a pleasant surprise. For old school fans, it has the edginess of a Tex Murphy game, although not quite as good. Midnight Nowhere sometimes goes too far with the adult theme. I enjoyed the story but the ending was a big disappointment. The ending might even confuse most players because the explanation happens so quickly and is very vague. However, despite the ending the story is still gripping. It's an excellent point-and-click adventure game and a good addition to any genre fan's library, provided you are over the age of 18 and don't mind a little full frontal nudity.

• PC
• 5.8 / 10
• États-Unis

Gangland feels like a game that's still in the midst of development, with the underdone vehicle system, odd dialogue quirks, lack of auto-saves or manual saves and random violence. After playing games like Mafia and Hitman 2, there really isn't much I can recommend about Gangland. In addition to all the design issues, the visuals are all behind the curve, particularly the blocky character models. Instead of having a sort of cartoonish Warcraft III look about them, it just feels low-budget, especially since there isn't much of anything cartoonish or intentionally funny about the game. And although the game seems to advertise an empire-building model, it's far more about straightforward street mayhem and violently acquiring property for someone else. And while the world looks open-ended, it doesn't have the appeal of other games of its type that reward and invite exploration. With roving bands of syndicate soldiers on virtually every street corner, you're hemmed into your particular mission. Imagine GTA III with five times as many enemy gangs, and you're about there. There's too much unavoidable combat and other frustrations to make it recommendable.

• PC
• 7.5 / 10
• États-Unis

In the end, there's nothing like getting your money's worth. Firestarter initially comes off as unabashedly shallow -- a budget title hell bent on delivering nothing but the bare minimum. Yet the game expands its simple 'run and gun' action through a satisfying skill system, yummy graphics, and a handful of playable personas. Firestarter delivers rich action without raping the wallet -- not much else to ask for in a game.

• PC
• 9.4 / 10
• États-Unis

• PS2
• 8 / 10
• États-Unis

• PC
• 7.8 / 10
• États-Unis

• NGAGE
• 6 / 10
• États-Unis

• PS2
• 6.8 / 10
• États-Unis

Like Rockstar's PC-to-PS2 port ofMax Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Take-Two's port of Mafia is a wreck. Given the amount of time the team had between August 2002 and today, its inability to bring the PC code into line on the hard-to-develop-for PS2 is just short of a disaster. You should of heard the yelps of pain from PC editor Dan Adams when he saw this game. He was devastated. Sadly, beneath the awful looking exterior, the gameplay on PS2 is mixed at best. The poor framerate doesn't help any, the stiff controls are only worsened, and pretty much everything about the PC version is either watered down, ruined, or lost altogether. What makes this game worth owning, or at the very least, rentable, is the story. It's not The Godfather, but as videogames go, this is a well thought out story, carefully crafted with solid cutscenes, great dialog and excellent voice acting. In short, this game looks like a wreck, but if you only own one console and it's a PS2, you should at least rent it. You'll have to be patient and forgiving, but the story is great and the intensity of the shoot-out scenes are engaging and powerful.

• XBOX
• 5.5 / 10
• États-Unis

On the whole Carve offers an average gaming experience. If you are a fan of the genre you have probably played similar games that are far better. However, considering Carve hit the shelves at about 20 dollars and features full Live support, it may satisfy your needs if you are desperate for a watercraft racing game.

• PC
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis

Gates of Discord is refreshing in a lot of ways and has surely offered a bold answer to the question of whether there's room in the game design for challenge at the high end. The new leadership abilities are major features that add broad new dimensions to this already rich tapestry. The instanced zone concept has taken evolutionary steps here as well. The rich detail in the new zones, multitude of new monsters and challenges show that much effort went into Gates of Discord across the board. With such a large number of changes in one expansion, balance issues can turn up that may need to be tuned. The new difficulty and the single group focus of the instanced progression zones may put to the test the long-term player class equilibrium that has been so delicately tuned from expansion to expansion. For a guild to progress to Kod'Taz, for example, members must be flagged through single group expeditions in Vxed and Tipt. These zones really seem to require balanced groups that will put heavy demands on some classes like warriors while make other classes like mages, wizards and rogues in oversupply for the 'DPS' role. Hopefully this potential crimp on group makeup flexibility will not dominate the entire expansion. Being able to enjoy the game at a group level with unconventional group setups has been a great part of the game and we hope to see a place for that in this expansion as well in order to call it a truly great expansion. Will the deeper zones and raids address this? It can take many months for the mysteries of a new expansion to be discovered, but for the player who has played this game for a while, there's a palpable aura in the air -- the risk and challenge are back, the dangerous continent of Taelosia beckons. We are playing with an enthusiasm many of us haven't felt in a long, long time. Hats off.

• PC
• 5.9 / 10
• États-Unis

This game is like skyscraper built and maintained by a handful of people—an impressive architectural achievement, given the small amount of resources and staff, but it's still a skyscraper. Meaning, there are details that one person or a small group can't polish or improve. There are things that will be overlooked, and things that will get dusty and stay dusty. And you'll have to cut a few corners in the bells and whistles department. Universal Combat does offer some interesting moments, especially when dogfighting in the clouds—tumbling corkscrews, death-defying loops, missiles flying, warning alarms going off and all that. But “content” is not successfully determined by sheer size and interface depth, but by an environment that feels alive and, in the open-ended design, doing its own thing with its own routines. I would rather have explored a single, dynamic system or three, rather than piles of basically static ones that felt like they hadn't existed the moment before I arrived.

• PC
• 7.7 / 10
• États-Unis

• NGC
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis

• XBOX
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis

• NGC
• 5 / 10
• États-Unis

• GBA
• 7 / 10
• États-Unis

Torus' Pitfall game attempts to improve on what Activision tried on the Super NES and Genesis a decade ago (and what Majesco ported to the GBA for a launch title) in Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. There are far more references to the Pitfall brand, and a lot more variety in gameplay in Pitfall: The Lost Expedition, but the majority of the game's development revolves around a slightly flawed side-scrolling design that needed a bit of tweaking before it shipped. Other than that issue, Pitfall Harry's latest adventure is a fun, lengthy, if just a little generic one on the handheld.

• PS2
• 10 / 10
• États-Unis

• PS2
• 9 / 10
• États-Unis