Dear Future Gamer

Your reviews, although worth reading, aren't actually that trustworthy. Although on the whole they're perfectly good, there are just enough exceptions to make me wary of trusting them. For instance: Unreal Tournament on PC: 98 per cent; Championship Manager 3 on PC: 96 per cent; Soul Calibur on Dreamcast: 97 per cent; Age of Empires 2 on PC: 96 per cent; Quake III Arena on PC: 98 per cent.

These are scores that are extremely high and that one game in a million deserves to get, if they're lucky. You award them every eight issues or so. I'd be first to admit that PC Gamer get a bit, ahem, "enthusiastic" every so often (Braveheart?), but never as over-enthusiastic as you do. The only precedent I know of scores like these is when the folks at PC Answers (who obviously don't play games that much) got overwhelmed by Half-Life and gave it 98 per cent. You're experienced - that shouldn't happen to you. But it does.

In your race to make the length between paper reviews and your reviews longer than ever, are you reviewing games on first impressions? Are you showing publishers that you'll review well if they send their game to you first? I really hope not. But whatever the reason, it really has to stop.

If you truly want to be viewed as an enviable alternative to the print magazines then you'll need to have the high amount of credibility necessary to do this. And, because of scores like the ones above, in this house at least, you don't have that credibility.

Nat Kent

FG: Sorry you don't agree with us Nat, but we pride ourselves on our accurate reviewing. We never review a game for the reasons you state - all we're ever interested in is telling our readers which games to spend their money on and which ones not to. Our coverage of good games may seem disproportionately high but that's due to our being able to pick and choose which games we cover each week (we don't have the time or resources to cover everything) and that often means covering the big name games like the ones you've mentioned. We might not get it right each and every time, but we're certainly trying to.