Welcome to the GameSpot Complete Buyers' Guide. Our guide is in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format, and it's laid out so you can print it out and take it on the go. With this guide, you'll have access to our thoughts and ratings for every title that's appeared in the last month. Take the guide to your local game store and inform your buying decisions. Never buy a bad game again!

Games, games, games! September is the start of the rainy season in much of the country, and it also begins the yearly deluge of games as publishers flood the market with fourth-quarter releases. There were several great games that scored above an 8.0 on our rating scale, and a handful that broke above 9.0 to win an editor's choice award. With so many great games to choose from, our month in review feature helps you separate the wheat from the chaff so you can determine which games are most worthy of your limited gaming dollars.

One of the top games of September was Burnout 3: Takedown for the Xbox and PlayStation 2. This fast-paced, visceral racer earned GameSpot's highest marks so far in 2004. Burnout 3 is easy for us to recommend, with its extremely polished and accessible gameplay, coupled with tons of content and online capability. Other top games included ESPN NHL 2K5, which is easily this year's best hockey game and really one of the only choices for hockey fans this year, as the real-life NHL is shut down due to a lockout. On the PC side, there was a bonanza of fantastic games for strategy fans, led by Rome: Total War, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, The Sims 2, and Kohan II: Kings of War. PS2 owners should check out Katamari Damacy, a quirky and highly enjoyable game from Japan, which offers a gameplay experience unlike any other. Rounding out our picks were Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on the Game Boy Advance, and Might and Magic on mobile phones. The latter is a great translation of a venerable PC role-playing franchise to mobile format, offering great depth along with astonishingly great graphics.

GameSpot Complete members have the unique privilege of downloading our Complete Buyers' Guide. Check out the right sidebar of this page for the link. Our buyers' guide is available in Adobe Acrobat format, making it both searchable and printable so you can take it with you to the store or anywhere else where you might need to get quick information on all the latest games.

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