Is The Settlers IV a cozy village simulator masquerading as a real-time strategy contest, or a devious logistics spreadsheet that lures you in with cartoon piggies before sucker-punching you with supply-chain calculus? (Answer: emphatically both.) Underrated? Definitely, outside the German‐speaking world it’s remembered chiefly by people who can still recite lumber-to-sawmill ratios in their sleep. Overrated? Only if […]

Is The Legend of Mir 2, the 2001 Korean MMORPG whose chunky sprites look like Diablo I after discovering bubble-tea colouring, secretly the Rosetta Stone of today’s free-to-play economy, or just an eccentric curio for anyone who still thinks 640×480 is a lifestyle choice? Underrated? Only if you’ve never stepped into a Chinese net-bar circa 2003, where Mir’s

Is Skateboard Park Tycoon a long-lost evolutionary step between RollerCoaster Tycoon’s spreadsheet adrenaline and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s kick-flip swagger, or is it merely that odd jewel case marooned in your attic between a stack of burned LimeWire discs and your dad’s install floppy for Duke Nukem 3D? Trick question, back in 2001 I spent alternate evenings swapping MSCDEX commands, ripping Bad Religion

Is MechWarrior 4: Vengeance a straight-laced slug-fest or a wonderfully weird artifact from that pre-Steam epoch when “LAN party” meant dragging CRTs through dorm-hall fire doors? Both, obviously. One minute the game is serving up grand-opera political intrigue (“Reactor online, monarchy offline”), the next it’s letting you drunken-giraffe-dash a 65-ton Uziel through a pine forest while “Bitchin’ Betty”

Is Max Payne a straight‑laced noir yarn or a delirious bullet‑ballet fever dream with a painkiller addiction? (Trick question, like a good detective novel, the answer keeps lighting cigarettes in shadowy corners and refusing to testify.) Dropped onto PC hard drives on July 23, 2001, Remedy Entertainment’s debut feels at once traditional, hard‑boiled narration, grieving cop, endless snowfall,