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,

Is Aliens versus Predator 2 the unsung hero of the early‑’00s shooter renaissance or a B‑movie sideshow that happens to be interactive? (Spoiler: it moonwalks somewhere between the two while licking acid off its own mandibles.) Released in late 2001, Monolith’s sequel still feels like the gaming equivalent of juggling chain saws on roller skates, dangerously show‑offy yet

What happens when a Spanish studio condenses every WWII action‑film cliché, U‑boat sabotage, POW breakouts, cigar‑chomping berets, into a single isometric playground, then dares you to finish the whole affair without tripping a single alarm? (Spoiler: it involves more quick‑loads than coffee breaks and at least one keyboard hurled in righteous indignation.) Commandos 2: Men of Courage is at once