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!

The dog days of summer are upon us at last. Kids are now trying to suck the marrow out of their last few weeks of vacation before school starts, and what better way to do that than by playing the best games? Like it is most summers, the release calendar was relatively light, but we still managed to review a good array of quality games across all the platforms. This edition of the Month in Review gives a lot of recognition to football games. It seems like an odd thing for a summer release schedule, but the seasons in both the pros and college just seem to keep getting longer and longer, causing the releases of games like ESPN NFL and NCAA Football to extend earlier into the year. In any case, the release schedule for the remainder of the year should begin to accelerate until it finally reaches fever pitch during the holiday season.

As always, the Month in Review includes an outline of each platform's game of the month, with quick links to reviews, movies, and discussion forums. ESPN NFL 2K5 stands out as July's only Editors' Choice Award winner, but every platform has a good selection of great games to buy. Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube, for example, was especially significant, not only for its quality, but also as the first role-playing game to be released on that system in quite a while. Just as a reminder, we do not necessarily give the Game of the Month award to the highest-scoring game on each platform. We discuss all worthy candidates in detail and take a variety of factors into account before coming to our decision.

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 or 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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