Warthur Queen had by this point become a rather soulless pop hit machine, cranking out catchy but disposable singles one after the other. This time around Another One Bites the Dust is the obligatory "anthem", Play the Game and Crazy Little Thing Called Love are the love songs, and the rest is rather forgettable. The band make a token effort to strike up some hard rock fury with Need Your Loving Tonight but fail to convince. The Game here is clearly "the music industry", and by this point Queen had become very adept at playing it indeed, because it sold like crazy - but do you know anyone who sincerely claims their favourite Queen song is Another One Bites the Dust? I don't.

UMUR "The Game" is the 8th full-length studio album by UK rock act Queen. The album was released through EMI/Parlophone in Europe and Elektra/Hollywood in the USA in June 1980. "The Game" was a great commercial success upon release and generally received favorable reviews too.

Compared to "Jazz (1978)", "The Game" is quite different sounding. While the former featured quite a few hard rock tracks with edgy riffing, the latter is more of a sophisticated pop/rock album. Of course such a simple description of Queen´s music is somewhat ridiculous, as they are eclectic beyond eclectic and their music features so many different elements, moods and atmospheres. That´s also the case with "The Game", but it´s like they´ve toned down their most wild theatrical/progressive ideas and gone with a more commercial mainstream sound on this one. It´s starts out pretty interesting with "Play the Game" and "Another One Bites the Dust" is of course also a "classic", but there are not many highlights on the album. In fact I´d say that even though the musiciaship as usual are on a high level and the sound production and songwriting professional, most of the tracks on the album come off unremarkable to my ears. Sure "The Game" is a decent listen and there´s nothing offensively bad on the album, but I´m not feeling Queen´s usual burning passion on this one.

"The Game" is a step down from anything Queen released in the seventies. The few glimpses of excellence on the album are not enough to for me to rate "The Game" higher than 3 star (60%) rating.