Review System
PC Zone prides itself on its reviews scoring system, which is based on the idea that 50% is an average grade. As a result, many publishers accuse the magazine of being too harsh. Games that score 75-89% are given a Recommended Award; games that score 90% or more are given a Classic Award. Very few games, perhaps only ten a year, receive the latter distinction. Games scoring under 20% are given the PC Zone Dump award (Previously the PC Zone Pants).
As a combined result of its honest scoring system and its age, PC Zone manages to acquire many UK and world print exclusives in terms of news, previews and reviews. PC Zone contained world exclusive previews for Half-Life 2, Doom 3, and Deus Ex, the first of which achieved an almost-unprecedented record score of 97%, a ranking it shares with three other games: Quake II, Alone in the Dark 2 and the relatively unknown flight simulator EF2000. Only one game has ever received the lowest score of 0%, which was the multimedia package Newsweek 3 Globocop, given the biting summary, "The most expensive beer mat in the world." The reviewer of this package also commented that everyone involved with the project should be "boiled alive like lobsters".
The lowest scoring game ever in the Budget section was Simon the Sorcerer 3D, which garnered the impressive score of 3%, "one point for each of its worthless dimensions."
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