Rome: Total War is more compelling, more beautiful and more expansive than anything that has gone before. [Dec 2004, p.104]

Grid still offers the most on-track excitement (and better car damage), and the forthcoming GT5 already looks graphically superior, but anyone looking for the most rewarding console driving experience to date has found their ride.

Scrape away all the new bits, though, and crucially the magic is still there, the imagination and ingenuity within level and boss design as potent as ever. If you're experiencing it now for the first time, we're rooting for you at every step. Umbasa, as they say. [Issue#353, p.108]

No other beat 'em up developer is quite as willing to experiment with the form in a bid to stave off the moribundity that's gradually subsuming the genre. [Import - June 2003, p.88]

Awakening offers an excellent game of strategy, but it’s the relationship system that makes it.

The freedom of movement requires a new level of spatial imagination. Before Prince of Persia, platform games were like playing Tetris with only the blocks and bars. [Christmas 2003, p.100]

This series offered some of the most memorable hours we spent holding a gamepad during 2012. [Feb 2013, p.102]

While a smattering of minor blemishes mean it shines a bit less brightly than 2014's other headline acts, it's not less essential for it. [Jan 2014, p.112]

The overall impression Guitar Hero II leaves, particularly in light of its multiformat future and MTV's investment in Harmonix, is that it’s ceased to be a stand-alone game, and is now a platform in its own right. [Christmas 2006, p.86]

Journey's real issue, if it has one, goes much deeper than that. It's a resolutely linear game in which your range of interactions is minimal. For some, that will make it a pretty but hollow novelty; boring, perhaps. But for those who play games to explore strange lands, see beautiful sights and to immerse themselves – for however brief a time – in a new world, Journey is perfect. And what's more, they'll find someone like them to share it with.

It's a potent return to form for Takahashi, then, a glowing comeback for the Japanese RPG, and an injection of creativity for some tired hardware. Xenoblade Chronicles manages to impress, enrich and, best of all, inspire wonder.

By polishing away blemishes, Rock Band 2 carefully improves on its predecessor. Those expecting the likes of music-making functionality perhaps aren’t quite on Rock Band’s wavelength, which is about performance, not creativity. [Dec 2008, p.85]

Simogo’s greatest triumph, perhaps, is to intensify the potency of the written word. In using its text both as narrative and as geography – and through its impressively restrained use of illustration and sound – it generates an almost unrivalled sense of place.

Regardless of the amount of familiarity, though, Echoes is as solid and tangible as ever: the uncluttered HUD, the gentle rumble as Samus touches down from her unfaltering jumps, the ingeniously tucked-away power-ups, the smoothness and surety of movement. Its combat and exploration, if taken separately, can feel a little hollow and basic, but taken together they're still a powerful combination for a rewarding adventure. [Christmas 2004, p.76]

If it's an imperfect game for an imperfect world, that in itself is something to aspire towards. [Issue #404, p.104]

Just as in Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, each activity is enlivened by the knowledge that you have chosen to do it right now, out of many alternative options available in every other direction. So when one DOES hold your undivided attention for an extended span, it must be something special indeed. And of those, UFO 50 has more than its fair share. [Issue#402, p.100]

This is brand new, yet it tastes vintage. Because it's nothing less than Capcom at its best in the genre it defines. [May 2010, p.101]

It's a rare delight to play a game with such consistency of vision, its art design, level architecture, rulesets, storylines and writing all working in lockstep.

It provides a revolution, but only inside its own idiosyncratic attitude and aesthetic. Sackboy remains Sackboy, and he won't convert those who didn't like the way he behaved in LBP. And for all the fascinating flexibility of its toolset, clearly this is still a framework: you can stamp a creation with your own style, but the overall vibe will ultimately be Media Molecule's. For those who are happy to embrace it, though, LBP2 represents a dazzling new opportunity for creating deep, diverse and ingenious play.

Despite the laundry list of issues that have arisen as a result of Asobo's ambition, in the end, it's those sudden sensations - especially the frequent feeling that we've finally got our hands on something truly next-gen, imperfect as it may be - that count for the most. [Issue#350, p.88]

Vivid, smart and perhaps a little mocking, then, Infinity Gene, like Extreme, has exchanged the cold depths of space for the trippy vortex of some strange digital migraine: this classic isn't growing old with grace, but it's certainly continuing to evolve.

You’ll discover whether you’re a screamer or a yeller, a wide-striding groover or a bolt-upright pogo-er. This is a game that you can play sitting down, but you won’t. Not once. [Christmas 2005, p.104]

The new control system may ultimately be an upgrade Samus Aran never really needed, but this is still the best – and most logical – Wii reissue from Nintendo to date.

Sega's loss is Nintendo's gain: Bayonetta, twirling away from a gigantic demon's maw and smacking the highest choir of angels on the nose, has just given Wii U its first true classic. [Nov 2014, p.100]

Vlambeer’s game is, as its title suggests, ridiculous. In its simple, gleeful rhythms of play, it’s sublime, too.

It's taken two near-miss games to get here, but Insomniac has finally nailed the art of war, lock, stock and around 20 smoking barrels. [Christmas 2004, p.89]

Added depth and nuance are the guiding principles for this spectacular follow up. [Nov 2009, p.100]

Certainly, Ubisoft Montreal has succeeded in welding a game to what once felt like a proof of concept, and without overshadowing its many strengths. Much devolves into mere stuff – one sword is much like another; a painting’s easily bought and just fills a hole in the wall – and once the story is over there’s little reason to replay it. At the end of it all, though, you’re left with that setting, those cities, and Ezio, and they lend the experience a substance that endures.

It’s the most loveable, exasperating, unhinged, pretentious, ambitious, gorgeous, funny, tedious, thrilling, subversive and just plain silly Metal Gear yet. It’s the most Metal Gear Metal Gear yet, a franchise turned in on itself, a snake eating its own tail. It’s perversely wonderful. [Jan 2005, p.80]

The Wii addition sends players on the same astonishing, grisly funfair ride with a slight new twist. But, though it does little to take the experience to new heights, Resident Evil 4 is still an immense pleasure to return to. [Aug 2007, p.95]

There’s not much that can be said about Shadow Of The Colossus. Not because there aren’t pages to be written about the designs of the colossi, the wisdom of some of the puzzles involved in defeating them, or the deliberately ambiguous implications of the story, but because this is a game with so little content that to discuss specifics would be to tarnish an experience that needs to be approached with as few preconceptions as possible. [Christmas 2005, p.98]

This series has always felt like a breath of fresh air in a genre that grows ever more obsessed with the fidelity of its simulations. With Forza Horizon 3, Playground has flung open the biggest window in the building, then stuck on a few fans for good measure. [December 2016, p.106]

You'd have to be a bumbling turdbag not to at least give Yamada the chance to win your heart. [April 2017, p.123]

If "Far Cry" was a game of ambition, then here is one of power. Power which Crytek has channelled, with both passion and care, into superb freewheeling gunplay. [Christmas 2007, p.84]

Tecmo's refusal to extend any kind of handhold to less dedicated players is simply a failure of design, not a badge of hardcore honour ... it's impossible to believe they couldn't have found a way to increase the accessibility of the game without undermining the gloriously intractable nature of the challenges it contains. [Apr 2004, p.96]

At the halfway mark, Chains is so tremendous, striking an almost perfect beat of difficulty spikes, weapon upgrades and stupendous visual reveals, that you have to question its endurance. And, sadly, it flounders right on cue. [Apr 2008, p.92]

But without the first game’s ambiguities,? ?a sense of humour or even an ounce of? ?intrigue,? ?its story stinks.? ?It’s so slight you could play the levels in random order to? ?little ill-effect,? ?and it assumes knowledge of everything and everyone,? ?not once recognising the real-world echoes of its premise:? ?an allied invasion of an enemy? ?the allies themselves created.?

Reach is a fine conclusion to Bungie's stewardship of the series, but that's what stops it from being anything more. Halo felt like the future. Reach is merely a brilliantly engineered present.

Mass Effect is still enjoyable enough to warrant 24 hours of play (completion with sub-missions), and the stops it makes en route are visually stunning. It just doesn’t find what it goes looking for: the myth and exotica to accurately follow Star Wars. [Christmas 2007, p.86]

On balance, the fourth Forza gets things right. The franchise has earned its place at the forefront of console racing sims and has done more for advancing the social/online element than any of its rivals.

It still requires a deeper commitment than most games ask for, but the rewards positively tumble forth, year after year, generation after generation, treacherous vassal after treacherous vassal. [Issue#351, p.94]

While the script spills plenty of ink on questions of fantasy, sci-fi and prose fiction, Split Fiction's most compelling statements are made without a word, in the shape of the game itself. [Issue#409, p.100]

A much-needed statement of authority for PC - an online spectacle that eclipses the grand rhetoric volleyed back and forth between the manufacturers of tomorrow's super-powered consoles. A new level of multiplayer combat begins here and now, with shock and awe.

It’s a game that rewards the long-haul with deep, inventive missions which eschew the usual fetch and kill structure, ensuring that the many hours spent in Fallout 3’s wasteland aren’t wasted. [Christmas 2008, p.88]

The degree of refinement and technical polish across every facet of Gears 3 is enough to make most other games look tatty.

"Holy Metacritic, Batman! They've finally bothered to dedicate considerable time and resources to putting you in a decent videogame!" [Oct 2009, p.86]

Disco Elysium's skill system is a marvelous reworking of calcified genre conventions. [Issue#339, p.100]

Nintendo’s nervousness around punishment, for fear of putting off newcomers, continues to undermine ALBW’s attempts at novelty.

When this enthralling hybrid is delivering blood by the bucketload and thrills by the dozen, you won't exactly be thinking about what it isn't. [Issue#330, p.110]

Nintendo has still made something uniquely enjoyable, while wantonly shredding the playbook in the process. Whatever plans might be in place for Mario's next adventure, Donkey Kong has changed the lay of the land. [Issue#414, p.100]

If, as Roger Ebert said, movies are a machine that generates empathy, then Spelunky 2, even more so than the original, is a machine for generating surprise. And, inevitably, its close cousin: delight. [Issue#350, p.]

Here is a game not only made over decades but one that feels made to be consumed over an equivalent timeframe. To play Caves of Qud is to be aware that you have just one life to give it - and that you might well come up wanting. [Issue#407, p.104]

For all its little tweaks, Dark Souls II is, foremost, a game made for Souls players. It is a game that asks everything of you and gives so much back, keeping its cards close to its chest, and revealing them only to those prepared to die and die again. It is made to be played for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours as you try new builds, explore PVP and experiment with covenants, all the while slowly peeling back the layers of its lore.

Undersized and profoundly linear, but that cannot shake its solidity and the sheer intensity of the spectacle it creates. The most fun thing you'll get on the PC this side of Christmas. [Christmas 2003, p.108]

Instantly familiar, and instantly entertaining, Nintendo could hardly have picked a better title for its wi-fi debut. [Christmas 2005, p.106]

As Sid Meier once said, games are a series of interesting decisions. Well, Balatro has those in spades - and hearts, clubs and diamonds besides. [Issue#395, p.120]

The fascination of those lingering unknowns is part of why Basso's remarkable indie debut takes up residence in your brain when you're not playing it. But on a more fundamental level, it is simply a beautifully constructed, wonderfully characterful adventure, one that marks the blossoming of a major talent. [Issue#398, p.98]

There's no denying that Project Gotham Racing 2 is one of the most aesthetically accomplished titles ever produced. Yet this doesn't stop PGR2 from feeling a little heartless. In terms of excitement PGR2 is found wanting. [Christmas 2003, p.113]

To play New Horizons is to retreat to a fairer, kinder place, where even the supposed bad guy is a philanthropist who gives you interest-free loans you can pay off at your leisure. Animal Crossing has always been a pleasure; never has it felt quote so essential. [Issue#344, p.110]

When two Sims lovingly clasp each other as they sleep, even the coldest gaming hearts will begin to melt. [Oct 2004, p.102]

A beautiful and graceful fighting game that lets imagination loose, and winks before slapping Dante, Kratos and every other hero back to the drawing board. [Christmas 2009, p.90]

That the game hangs together visually is remarkable; that it should cohere so well in design terms, unfathomable. [Aug 2016, p.104]

Its multiplayer component is far better suited to the game’s design potential than a singleplayer campaign that’s more the frontline rookie, dazzled and dazed by blast upon blast upon blast. [May 2006, p.88]

Masterfully done, and certainly set to become an instant Wii and PC cult hit. [Dec 2008, p.98]

Superstar Saga does justice to Miyamoto-san's original vision: a world of deliciously impossible creatures and impeccably illogical logic. A world where you never know what'll happen next but, once it has, you know it's what always should have happened. [Jan 2004, p.100]

We're not sure it's entirely wise to save a game's best material for its back half, when the climb to reach it is so steep. It's hard to judge, even, whether it was all worth it - from the top of the mountain, those struggles at its base tend to seem so small and far away. But as we approach that third act, a game that at times we were struggling to find the motivation to pick back up has become one we cannot put down. As a payoff to dozens of hours of struggle - not to mention eight years of waiting before that - it's undeniable. [Issue#416, p.98]

Narrative designers everywhere should be taking notes from a psychological horror that gets well and truly inside your head. [Issue#393, p.123]

The fifth Tony Hawk's title doesn't just suffer because of its embarrassing attempts to be edgy and urban, it's poorer because it lacks the verve and imagination so prevalent in previous iterations. [Christmas 2003, p.122]

A game that's more than the sum of its parts. [Dec 2009, p.98]

The ambitious, exacting craftsmanship of Evolution goes a long way to ensuring that every person who gives the game a proper chance will be seduced into becoming precisely such a fan. [May 2012, p.106]

A rewarding stopgap for anyone after something old on something new. [July 2010, p.102]

Ratchet & Clank 2 shows all the signs of a game that's been focus tested to death; at no point will you have to repeat a section more than three times. It's a frustration free journey but sometimes feels anodyne. [Dec 2003, p.97]

It's a game that rewards the long-haul with deep, inventive missions which eschew the usual fetch and kill structure, ensuring that the many hours spent in Fallout 3's wasteland aren't wasted. [Christmas 2008, p.88]

Whether this is the best Spider-Man GAME will likely be debated at length, but in so vividly capturing the intensity of the superhero experience, it is unquestionably the best Spider-Man simulator. [Issue#391, p.106]

The best platformer on iPhone just got better, and there's still no sign of any meaningful competition. [Sept 2009, p.93]

It is an instinctive, ingenious joy to play for every minute, and it sets a new gold standard for game interface design on any platform. [Sept 2007, p.86]

Thank heavens, then, for the brilliant Survival mode. Of all Dual Strike’s little reinventions it’s the only one to twist the template into a persuasive new shape. [Sept 2005, p.97]

It takes more than caffeine, luck and a nosebleed to truly become master of these streets, and this is Revenge’s greatest achievement over its predecessor. The eight locations, split as usual into varied circuits, are arcade racing dreams given form. [Nov 2005, p.98]

It's clear that Disney's ideas are far from drying up.

It's a game you'll come back to the next day, having faced constant defeat in levels that are surely impossible, and find yourself beating them. [July 2016, p.120]

What an achievement Hallownest is: its insect-themed design letting it dance either side of the line between adorable and unsettling, a place that tucks its tales away without guarding them too jealously, that prints its twisting tunnels and lamplit tableaus behind the eyelids and upon the memory. [Issue#323, p.114]

They may unplug the servers, but those connections will never be fully severed. [Issue#388, p.120]

It's unusual to find a game of this sort deal with losing, which is obviously the majority experience, with such care – the packaging of Barry's mad dash turns it into an endlessly rewarding marathon, rather than a series of disconnected sprints.

Playdead's debut title is a rare thing – a wholly realised place as well as a successfully realised game, and both Limbo and the Limbo inside it are one-of-a-kind places to be stuck in.

Klei's Saturday morning cartoon style visuals intersect smoothly with your ninja's slinky animation and flowing moves, and the range of visual effects (position-betraying lightning strikes, a blurred fog of war-style filter on activity beyond your sight line) folds neatly back into the game's light-and-shadow based stealth systems. The result is a slick and striking game, one with presentation worthy of the potent and flexible set of powers at its core.

The majority of SMB is a finely executed tightrope act of death and rebirth, as funny as it is fun and as precise as it is inventive. [Christmas 2010, p.103]

At a time when Nintendo's status as a creative powerhouse is slipping, Pikmin 2 demonstrates that there's still no company that can touch it when it works its alchemy of rigorous play mechanics, artistic excellence, irrepressibly communicative characters and all-round appeal. [July 2004, p.102]

iBlast Moki 2, with its slightly bland charm, unremarkable origins and questionable English, isn't going to be the next Angry Birds. But while playing, you occasionally think it should be.

It may be pulled together from no more than shards of light, but few games manage to be both a science and an art. [Oct 2008, p.99]

Civilization's revolution is daring for a series built on expansion. It strips and pares away, making management easy and command enjoyable. [Nov 2010, p.91]

It homes in, with a clockmaker's precision and a playful gleam in its eye, on what Mario does best.

Most importantly, the old jokes are still funny. [Issue#372, p.116]

Masterful controls aside, Corruption sees Retro lost for a while, like Samus, down some mystifying and convoluted dead-end of its own making, populating a universe that should have stayed desolate and dead. [Nov 2007, p.84]

It's still Monster Hunter. This latest - and surely greatest - entry simply makes it easier than ever before to understand why its fans fell in love with it in the first place. [Apr 2018, p.104]

You’ll never be able to play enough Dota 2 to totally master it, and although it’s an F2P game it can be too cruel and unusual for some. But persist through the tough start and accept the idiosyncrasies, and you’ll start to understand why so many have stuck with it for more than a decade. Why would they need something new when they’ve got this incredibly deep, rewarding multiplayer experience?

Guild Wars 2 is a few brushstrokes short of a masterpiece, then, but ArenaNet has succeeded in trying to paint over the worst of the genre's cracks. Thanks to a rigorous programme of restoration, only sometimes do its underlying imperfections show through the glossy veneer.

The racing, in itself, is excellent. Striking a wonderful balance between simulation and thrills. [July 2007, p.86]

From its sluggish, restrictive start, Human Revolution opens into a world of scintillating possibility in which your actions' significance reaches far into the future. And with something like that difficult future approaching fast, Human Revolution achieves a rare accolade: it's not just a great game, but a timely one.