The Cortex system performs well, but there are times when the Smallville Roleplaying Game just seems to miss the point.

Sure, the point is to put superheroic figures together, but my gripe isn't with the fact that you can wind up throwing a lot of dice.

Character creation is horribly difficult. Weaving a web with lots of players will wind up being difficult if people have too strong an opinion about their characters, and then you have to worry about diluting the player's vision and potentially giving them a character they don't want (or know how) to play. Couple that in with a long, lengthy character creation, and if someone decides that they want to change their concept, a lot of that work will be down the drain.

Don't get me wrong, it's written well, but it's maybe overly ambitious, and my pretty much only gripe is with character creation, but it's just a lotta headache to even get started.

Harvesters does a lot of stuff well. It has full-playability and simplicity, coupled with a simple, Redwall-esque setting. You can play it with any group you wanted to, though its simplicity and style markets itself towards children.

It doesn't have loads and loads of stuff to make it bulky (think about game systems which go to 400 pages and detail the exact effects of a Cobra Venom Poisoned Spike Trap (Lesser), which means that while it's easier to use, it's also harder to run, but if you want a game to play with a younger audience without outright alienating older audiences (assuming, of course, they're open-minded enough to take the thought of playing as talking animals seriously), Harvesters is a one-stop shop.

An interesting take on chess. Looking in the light of its being a playtest, I'm willing to give it a five, just because you can read it quick, play it, and have fun.

The rules are clear and concise (though a cleric, to be less vague, should be noted as lowering the defense scores of allied pieces, rather than raising them, since lower is better). It may also be advisable to note somewhere whether or not multiple cleric defense buffs and similar effects stack, since I'm assuming the intent is for them not to.

All in all, though, despite some minor pedantry, I can't find anything wrong with this. It tries to be a game you could play in the place of chess, and you very well could.

When I first saw this product, I was skeptical.

It's wroth a read, I'll give it that. What it lacks in classes (with only three, though admittedly you can do a fair amount of variation between the three), it makes up for in being fully-functional in the rules department.

I don't think I've seen some of the features in this free game in three or four expensive games combined. It may be simple, but there's still a lot to do in it, so if you wanna play a game quick, and be able to come back to it the next week, choose Stars Without Number!

I'm tempted to like Ingenium's creativity, and I feel it does good at what it says it's trying to do. I do, however, have some gripes.

Characters can almost always be custom tailored for any purpose, but it's also very easy to create a very, very powerful mage quickly (admittedly, he'd get no more than five shots, and most likely just one right off the bat), which seems a little dangerous.

A d10 is very, very easy to have result in an almost guaranteed outcome, and somewhat imprecise, but in a game meant for heroic fantasy, that can be excused.

There is a mix of information overload and not terribly much in some parts. The section on casting magic takes about five pages, but the actual lists of spells go 21 pages, meaning that over a quarter of the book is devoted to magic alone (though, admittedly, the lists are nice to give diversity, and it beats a d6-style system in terms of how much math you have to do for the result).

There's almost no setting information, but this is not plain negative, since there is some merit in having the setting open to players and game masters, but the creativity elsewhere paints this in a bad light.

All in all, I like it, but instead of just leaving me wanting more, it leaves me hungry for more, which is probably not desired.

I don't really know what to say about this product. Poignant, moving, touching, and emotional, with more of a focus on survival rather than winning, Grey Ranks is not a game for everyone, but a mature, sophisticated audience will see that it is one of the most artistically crafted games.

SLA Industries is an awesome game. Granted, the setting is depressing, and you may not be able to sleep as easily (at least if you're squeamish like me) after reading through it, but it is really a great game. Niche audience, maybe. Bad, no.

With a rich background and no dearth of excitement, SLA Industries is one of the more professional science fiction games, and one of the better ones too, with a subtle overtone of horror and conspiracy.

Ok, I'll be honest. Heavy Gear and Battletech. I am a Battletech guy. I love my Atlases, and Warlords (and yes, I know they're really, really similar), and I think Awesomes are awesome. I consider a PPC a standard side-arm. I didn't really know anything about Heavy Gear until a few years ago, so I always think in terms of 'Mechs and stuff like that, and a lot of Heavy Gear stuff feels alien to me (who would fight in hand-to-hand combat?). That said, I love both games. Don't find a conflict between them (Battletech being the grungy military knock-down-drag-out style game, and Heavy Gear being more like a guns and glory action-movie game). I especially love the arenas in 'em, be it on Solaris VII or Terra Nova. So when I find a game based entirely on an arena? I'm a happy, happy man.

More seriously, the art's cool, the setting's fun, there's simple, fun, easy rules that allow a focus on gameplay, the combo system just makes sense, and there's no reason to avoid this. If you want a quick arena fighting game for your giant robots, you can get this, or if you want a game with long-term management and decision, you can get this. There's no substitute for quick, fast, exciting Gear action!

For $18, this has to be one of the best games I've seen.

I like Pathfinder, despite my usual aversion to d20, so when I saw this, I was somewhat curious.

I like it, and I don't. On one hand, it's cool, and could be a GM tool even. On the other, it's just too cool.

I like the prospect of players owning cities. Surely some super-powerful bards, clerics, sorcerers, and the like have the brains, guts, and charm to pull it off. It's a good source of resources and responsibility, and allows fleshing out a world easily and quickly. Also, it has a wilderness exploration aspect, which is pretty cool, though nothing to write home about.

The one bad thing about city ownership is that it gets to the point where it could become either another game, or just a background trickle with an occasional effect. On one hand, I don't want an epic character defined by his ownership of a city, nor do I want an under-epic character using a city as his only means of strength.

Ultimately, like all supplements, this depends heavily on GM intervention, but requires a special amount of moderation, as it can wind up to be either an awesome addition to a campaign, or a tool for munchkins.

I like it, though, despite its flaws, and it's certainly priced decently.

This product makes me really, really excited for the full game. I've always wanted to play a sci-fi Pathfinder game, and this looks like it will deliver.

My only gripes, though are:

3d rendering: Most of it is nice, but I'm still not loving anything with exposed skin in a render, even though there are programs coughSkinVuecough that allow such rendering without such a heavy uncanny valley effect. Typos: Few and far between, but there's some, the most glaring (for me), is when being a Space Pirate captain "take no soul".

Ultimately, I feel that this game has the potential to overcome its backgrounds on the d20 system (Yeah, I have to bash it once a review, being a d6/d8/d10 snob), and be a really, really fun game. I'm just not 100% sure, but you can look for yourself.

This product is probably one of the things that has brought back the most nostalgia for me.

I loved playing with die-cast cars as a little kid, and still have a carrying case full.

This makes me want to whip out the cars and some paper (or maybe I'll just design a course on my rug with Legos or something) and play with them again.

My only gripe is the small size, and the price. For 9 pages, it's not terribly long. But if it's what you need to get you off your computer and playing, it's worth all five dollars.

I like this product. It's one of the better quickstarts I've seen, with a simple, engaging sample adventure, plus character creation rules (so you don't have to use pre-made ones). All-in-all, this has good art, good writing, and no reason not to give it a read-over, if not a run.

Decent creepy music.

My main gripe with it is that while it's all good, at times I couldn't tell which song was which, unless it was one of the ones with exposition mixed in.

Sometime I'd like to see a pack of short musical tid-bits mixed in with one of these things, with little 15-second motifs that you could intersperse dramatic moments with. But that's just me.

It's a lotta music for $10, and it's all good, though some of the bits with exposition may not be suitable for every game.

Get it if you need vampire-themed music for anything, because it really is top-notch value, but it's a little niche.

The question I have to ask about this product is:

Why hasn't everyone with an internet connection downloaded this?

Take everything I like about L5R, put it in an easy-to-play package, and you've got Legacy of Disaster. Granted, there's a lot you can do with more, but if you wanna give the system a quick spin, this is perfect for you.

This is like a slice of cake: There's still more out there, but it's really, really good.

There's one thing you know for certain when you look at anything related to L5R. High quality.

That's all I can say about the GM screen and Descent into Darkness.

Top notch art, top notch writing.

While the $9 may be a lot for a GM Screen, if you play L5R, this is a must-have, and the included adventure provides a great stepping point for a campaign.