Normally after the title, I would add a load of these: !!!! Anyway, walking into work, I was gonna pick up the new copy of PC Gamer UK. It had Empire at War all over the covers, and it was screaming First UK review... I thought, well they must be impressed... I opened it up, looked at all the nice pictures and found the score at the end of the 3 page spread to be a measly 79%!! I was like zOMG!! WTF!!! PC G4m3r5 5ux0r!!!11111eveleven!! After my little fit at the fact that I wouldn't even give the demo 79% (Ok I gave it 82% but it was still only a demo ) I gave it a quick read over. Even started off a great or cool, and all seemed promising. I was beginning to wonder why they gave it this score... Then I realise that in order to review something that holds good, you praise it and make it sound great, then you throw it off a tall building.. before you summerise it and percentage it according to how well it survives the drop. They loved the concept of the Galactic map.. were highly impressed by the Space battles... and then Ground battles... They obviously got so excited they exhausted themselves... This part they called plain, dull, uninspiring and boring.... Not all in the same sentence, but any context you could explain dull in, they put ground battles as being just that... They weren't too impressed by the multiplayer either. Enjoying it, but finding that not being able to build bases caused a downfall in the fun factor. This included a critical eye at what they say is a somewhat buggy multiplayer. I don't know much more than that, I got rather fed up with reading it, and put it back in the rack. Even with the comments they made, I couldn't really see why they said it doesn't really work at all levels. The (censored) (censored) (censored) (censored) <<< did them myself.. They gave C&C: Renegade a 47% back in 2002, and now they're not entirely happy with this. I dunno whether or not they did their homework, because the only time Petroglyph was mentioned was in the stats section at the bottom which gave specs and stuff.... I'll reserve my own judgement until Friday and the weekend, and I'll write my own unbiased Review on the full game for Monday/Tuesday @ Empire-At-War.com. But the approach they took on the game just didn't seem to justify even the Demo, let alone the full game, that's what upsets me. P.S. - I normally buy PC Gamer, and would have added scans to this post... But I wasn't prepared to pay the money unless the review was over 80-85%... OK I am biased, but I don't appriciate the best RTS developers receiving such a score. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. I'd prefer them to be wrong, but we shall see eh guys?