Gratifying though it is to see your decisions produce such tangible results, Where The Heart Leads is consistently let down by its storytelling. [Issue#362, p.120]

Where B-Boy crucially disappoints is in the execution of its gameplay. The turn-based nature of its stages is interminably frustrating. [Oct 2006, p.94]

Given that its bland combat is little enhanced by the ability to create cover, you suspect that the promises made for the technology have simply dug its own grave. [Dec 2008, p.90]

At its best, Orgarhythm's disparate ingredients coalesce into scenes of thrilling tribal warfare, a winningly eclectic soundtrack stirring your men to march into battle. Too often, however, you end up feeling like your fragmented cabal: disorientated, frustrated and battered into submission by an unforgiving enemy, with little reason to keep on fighting.

The overall impression is of a game that’s both bravely and badly designed, and weighted towards the latter. [July 2006, p.84]

It’s a solid concept, but Honeyslug struggles to develop it in any meaningful way.

The plot may be filled with sub-Lynchian fumbles, but it weaves an intriguing story, while the charismatic muddle of awards that accompanies each solution goes some way to wiping away the grey memory of what you're actually being congratulated for.

This simply has the air of a development team biting off more than it could chew. [Issue#139, p.118]

If the Old West is anything, it's a giant myth, and one that the Call Of Juarez games have always embodied. What The Cartel replaces this with – a mishmash of 
The Shield and conspiracy theories – is a much less substantial vision, played out within a world with no real resonance to it.

Feels cheeky to be criticising a scrolling beat 'em up for being too shallow, but TMNT is possibly one of the most tedious ever. Repetition is only acceptable when you're repeating something gratifying. [Jan 2004, p.109]

This less ambitious, full-priced follow-up is a lesser experience in every sense. [Issue#349, p.92]

This may not suffer the indignity of being delisted, but it's highly unlikely anyone will remember it in a decade's time. [Issue#395, p.122]

Haven doesn't lack for heart, but the spark sadly just isn't there. It's not us, it's Yu. [Issue#354, p.116]

An undercooked dish. [Issue#368, p.123]

It’s a game that makes you desperately want to feel like a Jedi, arcing your lightsaber across the screen, ducking under attacks, parrying counters and going in for the kill, but the subtlety just isn’t there. [July 2005, p.94]

It's in need of plenty more flair, not so much that it strains against what its buttoned-down framework is trying to achieve, but just to inject some feeling of variety into its skirmishes and sorties. [Sept 2006, p.88]

What it didn't factor into the design is that kleptomaniacs rarely bother collecting items without emotional gravitas, and this oversight becomes immediately obvious when you compare Rumble to its source material. [Jan 2010, p.98]

Soldier of Fortune’s damage model is probably its major selling point and, lamentably, the only thing that makes its combat entertaining. [Feb 2008, p.96]

For a title trying hard to inject personality into the genre, the experience feels irreparably mechanical. There's plenty of variety in terms of racing categories and machinery, but the overall lack of involvement is inexcusable. [Feb 2004, p.102]

A dismally paced and hugely frustrating expansion of a fine core mechanic, and a badly missed opportunity. [Tested with Vive; June 2016, p.120]

Moops isn't a bad idea for a iOS title, then, but it's extremely poorly implemented. For a game about bug hunting, it's failed to catch enough of its own.

Yes, Beat Down revives the warped charisma of Capcom’s beat’em up heyday, but that’s the only area where it actually triumphs. [Oct 2005, p.90]

Playing it instils a completely neutral response, as though it were no more than a means of absorbing time. [Jan 2008, p.91]

Even with just an additional pair of buttons for camera movement, a broad switch of irritations could have been avoided, but as it is, Death Jr is recommended only for forgiving platformer enthusiasts. [Nov 2005, p.113]

Cheap bosses and stingy save points ensure that it's a drag as well as a bore, while a handful of crash bugs do very little to improve proceedings. My Little Hero's greatest charm is its air of sweet innocence, perhaps, but in truth this adventure is primitive rather than childlike.

Bad Day LA is the game people often say they want and then ignore when it arrives; it prizes ambition over execution and flair over finesse and both pays the price and reaps the rewards for daring to do so. [Sept 2006, p.82]

The last thing on Glory Days’ mind is fun: it instead angrily stomps forward to the beat of the ‘war is hell’ drum. [Oct 2007, p.99]

You can see things worth admiring here. The promise of sandbox combat emerging from the interplay between environment and gun-modes never comes good, instead devolving into a repetitive, gruelling bedlam - but that promise alone is more than many shooters offer. To make anything of it, however, Hard Reset would need to go right back to the drawing board.