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Surely.

Novell DOS (DR-DOS) came with a multiplayer first person 3D space combat game (wireframe) called NetWars. It was great fun and pretty impressive for a game bundled with a text-based OS.

FPS was a hack anyway. Remember Wolfenstein? Precious little 3D code in there. That was "3D" done with sprites. Now think back to Phantasy Star I. Remember those dungeons? How about Bard's Tale? Same dungeons. Ultima I? Here you go:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/ultima-collection/screenshots/gameShotId,23667/

That's 1981 for you. The graphics have gotten better since then, but the perspective is the same. Is he too close for a rocket launcher?

http://www.mobygames.com/game/red-storm-rising I'm sure you can probably locate the actual game with a little bit of searching, or there's a few up on amazon.

There's definitely some truth in that. One thing that especially strategy games can teach is to deal with resource constraints and to strike a balance between the different objectives that must be pursued, especially a balance between short-term defensive action and the pursuit of mid-term to long-term strategic goals.

I first heard a manager say this in December 1995. He was one of my business contacts and around that time became VP Sales & Marketing of Germany's largest publisher of dictionaries and language-learning materials. I had done some work on the German version of Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness (PR, marketing, sales, and translation; got listed twice in the game's credits) and I gave copies to business partners like the person I just mentioned. He became addicted to it and told me that when his wife criticized him for spending so much time on the thing, he explained to her that this was basically like management training :-)

At the time computer games weren't online, so except for those who went to "LAN parties" with other gamers, gameplay was a solo mission. Now one can actually practice leadership and diplomacy. But even just the virtual resource management challenge of a game like Warcraft II has value in itself.

When I was running the NoSoftwarePatents campaign years ago, it also felt like real-time strategy in many respects :-) And lots of Orcs to fight against.

> This court ruling was a win.

How so? The lower court wanted to force patents to be put through the "particular machine or transformation" test. The Supremes said, well, sure THIS patent is too abstract... but we're not sure about that test. So we'll make a narrow ruling and discourage people from using that test, which could be used to eliminate software patents wholesale, unless they can start convincing the courts to buy trivial "transformations" like the hard drives doing their thing.

In short, nobody got what they wanted, but we ended up with less than we started with. Seriously. Read Patently-O or one of the sites where they love patents. They hated the test imposed by the lower court, but they're somewhat relieved that this decision wasn't as bad as they feared it could be.

> So why does Mueller continue to lie and spread fud? It's what he does - he's a lobbyist. Not a programmer.

You mean like how he lobbied the EU against software patents? And he did program a lot more in the C64 days, but he has credits in Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness, Diablo I and Starcraft I's German version, though it says something about translation so I'm not sure about the details.

Believe it or not, he's not out to destroy FOSS. Yes, PJ hates his guts. But that doesn't make him a bad person. She hates almost everyone who disagrees with her, after all.

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Try getting a good adventure game like the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventures

There are actually more new point-and-click adventure games released than you probably think. Their biggest difference from the 2D classics are that most of them are rendered with beautiful 3D graphics even though they often have a fixed camera position to emulate the 2D-adventure style of play.

Try browsing around at Adventuregamers or MobyGames for a while.

Some examples:

• Secret Files: Tunguska
• Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis
• Tales of Monkey Island
• Sam'n'Max
• Syberia 1 & 2
• The Runaway series
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
• ...and many more

Also don't forget that with ScummVM you can play LOTS of those classic 2D adventures that you never had a chance to play when you were younger. :)

Yup. Just about all of the Koei games, including the still-frakkin-awesome Bandit Kings of Ancient China, used the same hex-based combat system. And that was in 1989, and they were released on the Amiga for extra awesome points.

Could you have program an effective hex-based map (taxes, military, etc.) for the computers in 1991?

No, you're right. The very concept of using a hexagonal grid would have been far beyond the computing power of any such system. To even begin to display a hex map like this requires at least a 3.0 GHz, quad-core processor and a DX11 video card with a minimum of 512M DDR3.

Or, of course, you could have just played Sword of Aragon, Battle Isle, Conflict: Middle East, or just about any other authentic computer wargame from that era. You could even have played Advanced Squad Leader back in 1985, which despite being a board game still has more lines of code in the rulebooks than most computer games.

Hexes are nothing new, and they're not complicated.

Could you have program an effective hex-based map (taxes, military, etc.) for the computers in 1991?

No, you're right. The very concept of using a hexagonal grid would have been far beyond the computing power of any such system. To even begin to display a hex map like this requires at least a 3.0 GHz, quad-core processor and a DX11 video card with a minimum of 512M DDR3.

Or, of course, you could have just played Sword of Aragon, Battle Isle, Conflict: Middle East, or just about any other authentic computer wargame from that era. You could even have played Advanced Squad Leader back in 1985, which despite being a board game still has more lines of code in the rulebooks than most computer games.

Hexes are nothing new, and they're not complicated.

Could you have program an effective hex-based map (taxes, military, etc.) for the computers in 1991?

No, you're right. The very concept of using a hexagonal grid would have been far beyond the computing power of any such system. To even begin to display a hex map like this requires at least a 3.0 GHz, quad-core processor and a DX11 video card with a minimum of 512M DDR3.

Or, of course, you could have just played Sword of Aragon, Battle Isle, Conflict: Middle East, or just about any other authentic computer wargame from that era. You could even have played Advanced Squad Leader back in 1985, which despite being a board game still has more lines of code in the rulebooks than most computer games.

Hexes are nothing new, and they're not complicated.

Prince of Persia was butchered the instant they started making the shitty 3D series.

This and this are the only ones worthy of the name.

Prince of Persia was butchered the instant they started making the shitty 3D series.

This and this are the only ones worthy of the name.

Sorry, I thought the CD version was released (along with LeChuck's Revenge) as Monkey Island Madness to coincide with the release of Curse of Monkey Island.

Comparison of Monkey Island: IBM vs Amiga Of course, the IBM was using EGA graphics.

From what I remember, Amiga games tended to be "lovingly crafted". Apple IIGS games, on the other hand, were often ports of EGA version-- so the extended color palette was never used.

Compare the screenshots for Pirates! Yes, there was a later remake for VGA, but at the time, the Amiga afforded a distinctly different experience.

The idea of digitized sound through the PC Speaker was around long before Star Control 2 (1992); the earliest game I know of to do this is Czorian Siege in 1983. Of course, it was just a few short clips and was far more limited than what SC2 accomplished but it's an impressive trick and would have been surprising to hear at the time! Access Software used the trick extensively in the late 80's; I think most if not all of their later games supported this. What was interesting about SC2 though was that it took the idea a little further; instead of just playing back a sound clip it actually mixed samples together on the fly to create the music/sounds much like on the GUS version or an Amiga.

Also, reading the sales brief for a previous game (also named Bodycount, funnily enough) one notices a few.. marked similarities:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/operation-body-count

Quoting:
"OBC also features a near fully destructible environment; the Flame Thrower can set bad guys, scenery and the level itself on fire, which could make movement extremely hazardous for the player, especially as the fire randomly spreads. The Grenade launcher meanwhile can destroy any wall (with some hard coded exceptions)."

Which sounds just like what we have here. Except this game was released in 1994...
"Next Gen" huh?

And still waiting for one to be released for the PC.

Well there was one....

http://www.mobygames.com/game/adventures-of-willy-beamish This is first game where I felt like I was playing a cartoon I'd watch on Saturday mornings... (besides Dragon's Lair).

There was a game with (IIRC) Harrier in the title that gave you control over the invasion of a small island nation. I can't recall whether you actually got to dispatch the ground forces or whether they arrived on a time table, but you definitely did have control of a few Harrier aircraft, which you could launch from your carrier with an autopilot or fly on your own. You planned out your (or the AI pilot's) objectives before hand, setting waypoints and targets.

It's pretty obscure, and a bit hard to find as there are several more-well-known games with Harrier in the title. I'm pretty sure it's this one:

AV8B Harrier Assault

Sounds a bit like EF2000, so assuming you can get it to run and can tolerate the old graphics, you might enjoy it.

...was a game almost impossible to complete without a hint book.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/demons-forge

"Or maybe I'm just showing my age by knowing exactly what he was talking about"

You're showing your age, because virtually no one under 30 (born 1980, making them 4 when the game came out) would have any idea what he's talking about. There was a NES version for kids of the 80s but it wasn't released in the US.

Actually, it can be relatively simple.

Have a look at Omega, brought out in 1989: http://www.mobygames.com/game/omega_
A game teaching you how to program a tank.

Another nice thing came out in the late 80s for the Mac: ChipWits.
(Obviously I now have to point to my free PC version in the sig, although that's not the point of this post)
You programmed a ChipWit robot to drink coffee and avoid bugs by a simple icon-based language. Great fun :)

Ciao,
Klaus

Funnily enough, the topic of video game music came up in conversation the other day. The right music can put a great finishing touch to round of a game. I'm sure everyone is familiar with Braid, but Hardw[a]r had some pretty decent music to go with the setting of the future on Titan.

Additionally, if a game is good it creates a pleasurable association with the music present. Sounds obvious, but I still listen to the music from the original GTA because it reminds me of the fun I had. That and some of the songs were hilarious - listen to The Ballad Of Chapped Lips Calquhoun*, or 4 Letter Love by 'Stikki Fingers'). I loved playing Total Annihilation too, and thought the orchestral compositions by Jeremy Soule were great. For 10 years I had no idea they were synthesized! Doesn't detract from them, of course, I just assumed that because they sounded so *good* they must be recorded from real instruments.

Lastly, to this day I have a certain fondness for ragtime music (of all things!) that stems from days spent playing Virtual Pool.

/nostalgia

* If you remember the lyric "the menfolk found their women scary, 'cause they were so big and hairy", this is the song. If you don't, well, that lyric sets the tone.

Picard gets a knighthood, neat... but Kirk gets his name in a computer game , which is much cooler.

For the curious, a few years ago the 1990s game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space was open-sourced to the "Race Into Space" project:

http://www.raceintospace.org/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/raceintospace/
http://www.mobygames.com/game/buzz-aldrins-race-into-space

It's pretty cool and now runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. Here's the description from MobyGames:

Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space re-creates the thrilling endeavor of trying to lead your country's space program to the moon before a competing superpower does the same. As head of your country's space program you will need to develop all the hardware you need for your spacecraft and make it safe, choose the right persons to send into space and make sure they come back alive. Loaded with lots of historic video clips, and other historic correct items make this game reflect the "Cold War" situation as it should.

Have you tried The Path?

That reminds me of the red button in the pool of Maniac Mansion:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/maniac-mansion/screenshots/gameShotId,267642/

If you pushed the red button it would trigger a nuclear explosion would. I believe the text on the button was something along the line "Do not push".

Were you playing Dragon's Lair

No, but I was playing it on my PC in 1987.

or Space Ace on your IBM PC in 1990?

Was on the PC in 1989

Amiga also had the eye-popping visuals of Myst. Images (262,000 colors)

Myst was created on a Mac and the images were all stored in 8-bit format. That's 256 colours per image/video on all of the platforms that could support that many colours. Common PC video cards at the time had support for 16.7 million colours, my Cirrus Logic VLB card certainly did.

Amigas were also used to create the CGI for television shows and movies, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, seaQuest, and Babylon 5.

Only the first season of Bablyon 5 was done on Video Toaster. All of the rest was done on PC, without specialised support hardware. Don't know or care about the others.

There's a reason it was called the first multimedia computer.

Not sure why that would be. I've been using PCs starting from the 8086 and was never impressed by the Amiga. It felt like a cheap computer with a couple of graphical gimmicks but not much real processing power.

Were you playing Dragon's Lair

No, but I was playing it on my PC in 1987.

or Space Ace on your IBM PC in 1990?

Was on the PC in 1989

Amiga also had the eye-popping visuals of Myst. Images (262,000 colors)

Myst was created on a Mac and the images were all stored in 8-bit format. That's 256 colours per image/video on all of the platforms that could support that many colours. Common PC video cards at the time had support for 16.7 million colours, my Cirrus Logic VLB card certainly did.

Amigas were also used to create the CGI for television shows and movies, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, seaQuest, and Babylon 5.

Only the first season of Bablyon 5 was done on Video Toaster. All of the rest was done on PC, without specialised support hardware. Don't know or care about the others.

There's a reason it was called the first multimedia computer.

Not sure why that would be. I've been using PCs starting from the 8086 and was never impressed by the Amiga. It felt like a cheap computer with a couple of graphical gimmicks but not much real processing power.

I used to buy software (mostly games) many years ago, and found that many games were just total crap, despite glowing reviews.. For instance:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/rise-of-the-robots

Apparently "Amiga Joker" rated this 91%, and the box itself touted high 90s reviews.. The game itself was total crap, and the few honest reviews gave it laughably low scores.

A lot of commercial non game software is also total garbage these days too, all bloat and fancy graphics to disguise horrific performance and showstopping bugs.

As a result i stick to free software... Sure, much of it is just as bad as its commercial counterparts but free crap is a lot more acceptable than expensive crap.

Fallout MMO - From the People who Brought You Descent to Undermountain

The first real-time 3D engine I ever played or saw was Midwinter for the Amiga. It was released in 1989, 4 years before Doom, and featured flat-shaded polygon rendering in a true 3D environment. I just remember the environment being incredibly huge and immersive, and I spent many hours walking and skiing around desolate white landscapes.

Wikipedia article (which mentions nothing whatsoever about the game's technical aspects);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwinter_(video_game)

Screenshot of the 3D environment (Atari ST version):
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/midwinter/screenshots/gameShotId,362797/

Gamespot seems to be one of the few that actually recognize how groundbreaking this game was:
http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/unsung_heroes/sec2_10.html

I got a kind of beta version of UFO Defense on my WM5 machine. It's kinda buggy but still a time guzzler like always. And if you liked the original X-Coms and want more I'd seriously recommend getting a copy of the new UFO series: http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/ufo-series The first one is completely awesome, the second a bit of a downer but the third is also wicked cool. And I'm not talking just mechanics, I'm talking storyline, narrative connections, drama, action, whatever...

While I never played Tunnel Runner (was probably a bit before my time) I have to say thanks for reminding me of a game I did play a lot of when I was little http://www.mobygames.com/game/tunnels-of-armageddon Tunnels of Armageddon. Wasn't released until 89, but the tunnel bits still look similar.

I've wondered for a long time why none of these MMO games from Asia (Lineage, Lineage II, Aion, Granado Espada, etc) have an art direction from mythology and fantasy of the region. It's all a baroque looking western fantasy setting. Finely decorated plate armors, massive double bladed swords and axes etc. Personally, I think samurai look great, katanas, japanese armor, martial arts inspired magic ala Avatar (I know, it's not magic, it's bending). I know that the east Asia has more cultural diversity than I'm describing.

The only games I can remember that tried an art direction like that were Jade Empire, Throne of Darkness and, oddly, Summoner. I think Jade Empire did pretty well, but no word on a sequel from the company that gave us Neverwinter Nights 2, KOTOR 2, and is giving us Mass Effect 2.

TOD and Summoner are both relatively old games, and even though Throne of Darkness was made by a lot of Blizzard vets, it didn't do that well at the store I don't think. Certainly not well enough for Click Entertainment to make more games or even exist anymore. Summoner got a sequel, but I don't know if they kept the art direction. I guess Red Alert 3 has some anime influence in one faction.

If we expand into console games while we're on the subject of Summoner, there was Shenmue and I guess any fighting game.

This is all just from memory so I'm happy to be shown as wrong and learn about some good games I might have missed or forgotten.

For me it's all about the feeling. Graphics, background music, sound effects, narrating and of course the story line are all part of that.
I can love beautiful, near-photorealistic graphics and I can also love simple, cartoonish graphics. What I don't like is graphics that try to be photorealistic but fails to.

Remember that the more you put into details, the more the details you miss will become obvious. I wouldn't care that the water didn't look very realistic in a game where all graphics looks unrealistic, but if the grass and the trees are dead gorgeous, unrealistic water would suddenly become a minus point because it wouldn't fit in.

Basically, if you aren't willing to put major effort into making the graphics look realistic, don't try. Instead aim for some other style, like Prince of Persia, Zelda: Wind Waker or Little Big Planet.

For me it's all about the feeling. Graphics, background music, sound effects, narrating and of course the story line are all part of that.
I can love beautiful, near-photorealistic graphics and I can also love simple, cartoonish graphics. What I don't like is graphics that try to be photorealistic but fails to.

Remember that the more you put into details, the more the details you miss will become obvious. I wouldn't care that the water didn't look very realistic in a game where all graphics looks unrealistic, but if the grass and the trees are dead gorgeous, unrealistic water would suddenly become a minus point because it wouldn't fit in.

Basically, if you aren't willing to put major effort into making the graphics look realistic, don't try. Instead aim for some other style, like Prince of Persia, Zelda: Wind Waker or Little Big Planet.

For me it's all about the feeling. Graphics, background music, sound effects, narrating and of course the story line are all part of that.
I can love beautiful, near-photorealistic graphics and I can also love simple, cartoonish graphics. What I don't like is graphics that try to be photorealistic but fails to.

Remember that the more you put into details, the more the details you miss will become obvious. I wouldn't care that the water didn't look very realistic in a game where all graphics looks unrealistic, but if the grass and the trees are dead gorgeous, unrealistic water would suddenly become a minus point because it wouldn't fit in.

Basically, if you aren't willing to put major effort into making the graphics look realistic, don't try. Instead aim for some other style, like Prince of Persia, Zelda: Wind Waker or Little Big Planet.

People round here have some short memories.

Back in the day, we had this thing called GameShark and it was just about the only way some people could win Contra or, more to the point, Bayou Billy. No one but Rain Man could beat Bayou Billy without a cheat. GameShark was a product gamers paid good money for.

Problem is, it is a hack, and Nintendo is using the Wii as an online distribution system, among other things, and hacks are right out. They just got their butts handed to them in a sling over flash carts on the DS, and that means they can't abide any third party products designed to hack the system.

So all they're doing is providing the product themselves so they can keep control of the platform. They're satisfying an historically proven market demand. They're finding a way to deliver more difficult games, knowing full well that some of the original Nintendo games were sometimes more fun with cheats enabled.

Now does someone want to tell me that only casual gamers bought GameSharks? Or are we looking at the past, with all the cheat codes we used to pass around when games got too tough, with peril-sensitive stone black colored sunglasses?

Yikes.

--
Toro

People round here have some short memories.

Back in the day, we had this thing called GameShark and it was just about the only way some people could win Contra or, more to the point, Bayou Billy. No one but Rain Man could beat Bayou Billy without a cheat. GameShark was a product gamers paid good money for.

Problem is, it is a hack, and Nintendo is using the Wii as an online distribution system, among other things, and hacks are right out. They just got their butts handed to them in a sling over flash carts on the DS, and that means they can't abide any third party products designed to hack the system.

So all they're doing is providing the product themselves so they can keep control of the platform. They're satisfying an historically proven market demand. They're finding a way to deliver more difficult games, knowing full well that some of the original Nintendo games were sometimes more fun with cheats enabled.

Now does someone want to tell me that only casual gamers bought GameSharks? Or are we looking at the past, with all the cheat codes we used to pass around when games got too tough, with peril-sensitive stone black colored sunglasses?

Yikes.

--
Toro

You are absolutely right. One only need look at the whole fiasco with Gamespot, Kane & Lynch and Jeff Gerstmann to see just how corrupt these publications are.

I like MobyGames for game reviews. They present generally in-depth reviews by actual gamers, you can submit your own reviews and they provide review scores given by various "official" publications. The only drawback is it can sometimes take a while before a review is submitted for a new game, depending on how popular it is.

I don't know how reliable it is, but this link mentions that Alexey Pajitnov didn't have anything to do with the making of Clockwerx, he simply "introduces" the game