For those who favour Vice City above all else from GTA's back catalogue, it's the perfect 80's revival: a chance to live in the past, and love it. [Christmas 2006, p.80]

A work of nostalgia. [December 2016, p.114]

And while The Walking Dead had its share of technical problems, here they’re even worse, with lengthy loading times on 360 fracturing the pace and some several-second freezes completely killing the tension during fight scenes.

THUG2’s biggest step forward – it’s stripped-down Classic mode – is one it takes back. It’s as refreshing as it is nostalgic, taking on old-school Tony Hawk’s levels and goals with THUG’s improved trick set, and proves to be a necessary antidote to the mouthy fluster of the career mode, offering up pure, disciplined high-score play against the clock. [Dec 2005, p.117]

It's not perfect, and even skilled players will struggle with some of the more demanding multitasking required for certain scenarios (the level-skip is an acknowledgement of the inconsistent difficulty), but it's clever, cunning and entertaining.

In no way the cheap plug for the market gap that some have suggested, it may point the way forward for a new model of next-gen development. [July 2006, p.83]

Ultimately, setting out to critique and parody so studiously such a hidebound genre has brought The Bard’s Tale too close to what it was trying to distance itself from. This is a conventional, likeable dungeon crawl whose flashes of brilliance distract you from its accomplishments by hinting at how much more it could have been. [Christmas 2004, p.93]

Word games are only as good as their dictionary is reliable, and while Quarrel has one of the best around, it's occasionally hamstrung by Microsoft's Victorian sensibilities.

The Tormented may read more as a mystery than a truly frightening horror story but, if it’s to be a conclusion to this dark and lonely diversion from the beaten track, it will be a fitting and deserving one. [Jan 2005, p.87]

The result is like the game's own inventory puzzles: disparate notions combining to create ingenious and often surprising new forms. [Issue#369, p.119]

It doesn't willfully withhold information, but it takes some time to acclimatise to what you're supposed to do. [December 2016, p.118]

When you do surrender to Echoshift's world of relaxation, time management, and jarring cruelty, however, time - like your many lives - files by. [May 2010, p.104]

The game, though, is the same enjoyable knockabout romp that it ever was, and Gameloft has thankfully made no attempt to shoehorn touch-screen controls in unnecessarily. If you feel a burning urge to spend 500 points to relive some small part of your lost youth, you won't be disappointed.

Soul Bubbles is so enchanting, its fundamental behaviour so neatly realised, that you can forgive it being a little simple. [July 2008, p.97]

Despite the charm, and despite the sophistication, there’s no disguising that Elebits is a slightly thin idea. Although the locations get grander and the destruction more alluring, there’s little evolution in the task at hand. [Feb 2007, p.76]

A smart and engaging exploration of what Nintendo's strange new machine can muster. Historically, thirdparty releases on a console launch day have been chequered and timid affairs made by inexperienced teams fearful of losing their footing on unknown terrain. When Ubisoft Montpellier's ZombiU works in smart union with its host console, however, it frequently delights.

Playing Not For Broadcast for the first time is akin to having a waking nightmare. [Issue#369, p.121]

For the first time in years, it's easy to meet up with other players, drawn together by enticing new stories. [December 2016, p.120]

Simple and elegant, it takes influences such as Konami’s Ring Of Red and even Pandemic’s Full Spectrum Warrior and elaborates on them to create something unique and interesting. [Christmas 2008, p.100]

With some prudent trimming, this could have been one of Wii U's best games: even with all those maddening missteps, its moments of sparkling brilliance can make it feel frequently close to essential. [December 2016, p.122]

Anyone prepared to look beyond the candy colourings and initially floaty controls will discover a game of real depth and precision. [July 2007, p.90]

Overkill couldn't, for whatever reason, give Payday the development time it needed for its rough edges to be sanded down, but it remains a game with great potential.

City Folk is effectively Wild World 2.0, allowing players of the DS game to migrate to Wii and continue pottering aimlessly around their mature towns, bringing their possessions and neighbours with them. [Christmas 2008, p.97]

Toybox deserves a wider audience. Chunky, colourful and challenging, this is a game that makes the most of its strange conceits. Occasionally those Nobel laureates are onto something, then.

A Frankenstein’s monster that actually works. Its mind is sound, its looks beautiful, its sutures invisible and its stolen parts functional in all the intended ways. It has no soul, of course, nor distinct personality, but that’s the nature of the beast. [May 2008, p.88]

Taking these works in hand isn't merely entertaining, it really does bring us closer to them - a clever touch. [Issue#369, p.123]

Tight ink limitations force creative solutions, but once learnt, certain tricks undermine the action. [Feb 2010, p.94]

While Snowblind never truly escapes the feeling of being a well-dressed, derivative run'n'gun shooter, it never fails to get the running and gunning right, and in that respect, at least, it's a sound success. [March 2005, p.86]

It's a surprisingly tense juggling act, in other words, and while some will lack the patience required to climb its steep learning curve, the stress is worth it for the soaring sense of accomplishment you'll feel at the end of a hard day's work.

The developer’s cleverest trick here, beyond creating a game that’s worth it for the presentation alone, has been to throw open so many of its rules to player customisation. [Nov 2006, p.90]

While Rockfish has created an accomplished open-world experience among the stars, then, it really needn't take up quite so much space. [Issue#384, p.110]

Despite the game's lofty sky-mindedness, this is all about mastery rather than freedom. Thankfully, mastery brings with it plenty of its own rewards.

A puzzle game that's more puzzle than game, Huebrix is a quiet pleasure – a soothing rainy Sunday afternoon to Super Hexagon's hedonistic Saturday night.

As an RTS, Black & White 2 is less deep, but just as flexible and responsive – and when creatures, miracles, wonders and large armies are all in play it’s arguably the greatest show in gaming. [Nov 2005, p.94]

We need more games like this - ones that are confident and individual - but we need them to be less roughly hewn. The core of the game is solid, but the way it's applied throughout the levels just isn't interesting enough. [Mar 2004, p.98]

Death himself is an amusingly grumpy fellow, in constant need of a cup of coffee to stay motivated. [Issue#384, p.112]

Contracts redeems Absolution, but it doesn't absolve it. The game has taken a unique formula and diluted it, allowing the fashionable trappings of other stealth titles to intrude upon a series that has always confidently eschewed convention.

We can't shake the sense that we've trodden these paths before. [Issue#409, p.104]

There’s a polish here that belies the game’s browser origins, even if the Vita-specific additions – a tilt-controlled camera, rear touch for aiming grenades – are little more than token gimmicks.

In terms of quest interaction, there's simply not a great deal going on. Fable III largely gets away with it through sheer charm, and the infectious sense of fun in its detail. [Christmas 2010, p.80]

When so much work has gone into the game’s visuals and so much effort has been poured into the most insignificant cosmetic flourish, you find your patience for the hiccups that still plague many games is reduced to almost zero. [Christmas 2005, p.92]

It's simple, simple enough that a Bishi Bashi Special minigame had the basic idea years ago, but Match Panic does brilliant things with it. Every time you think you've got a handle on its workings, something changes up and confuses you for just long enough that the wrong thumb falls. It's a one-trick pony, but you should really see what she does with it.

Beyond the sharper picture quality, there's little here that couldn't have been done on DS, though it matters little in the face of such ageless design. Picross E may not do much more than the basics, then, but sometimes that's all that is needed.

Thanks to the feel, the car collection and the online toolset, FM achieves a victory by a fine margin. [Issue#391, p.110]

Guardians keeps you strapped in for the ride, and while it does dip once too often, the emotional highs outweigh the patience-testing lows. [Issue#366, p.108]

Seeing the game from beginning to end reveals its true artistic merit: it never gets stale; every episode has been drawn with minute care and attention. It would have been an incredible achievement if the gameplay had matched the outstanding art direction. [Dec 2003, p.94]

While a game that tries to be something for everyone will always fail to be everything to someone, Riders Republic has that certain something that makes it hard to stop. [Issue#366, p.110]

Nippon Ichi’s disregard for the cult of stagnated updates is at once exhilarating and unnerving. It’s exhilarating because it leaves the player wondering exactly where these craftsmen of the strategy minutiae will go next, and it’s unnerving because Phantom Brave’s reworking is a bridge too far for all but the most dedicated of videogame strategists. [Nov 2004, p.100]

Gunplay is conveyed through some truly dazzling visual feedback and blare. But, once the smoke clears, it feels all too repetitive in terms of its deathmatch-style objectives. [Christmas 2005, p.109]

Sunrise does nothing truly brilliant, but does it with such engaging raw excess that it’s hard not to be sucked in by its fairground attraction. [May 2005, p.88]

The Atlus faithful who remember the anguish of Matador in Nocturne the first time will probably swallow their pride and press on, but newcomers who may confuse godhood with god mode are in for a rude awakening. [Issue#366, p.112]

Heavy Rain pulls off its branching narrative by donning blinkers and sprinting down the chosen routes. Countless permutations of each scene are allowed, safe in the knowledge that they will never be addressed again.

Runic Games has created something bright and punchy, if a touch aimless, which makes up for the lack of personality (and multiplayer) with a beaming smile and lots of encouraging pats on the back. [Feb 2010, p.90]

What was once a pleasing console compromise now seems overly restrictive post-"Knights of the Old Republic." Despite hints of moral choices and a dusting of side-quests, it soon boils down to a straight slog, mashing the 'A' button as you wander through prettily rendered - if largely linear - dungeons. [Feb 2004, p.100]

It's a quality RTS, then - though a few irritations sour the experience. [Issue#366, p.114]

It may not linger in the mind for too long once it's over, but it provides at least an evening's worth of quiet magic. [Issue#410, p.123]

This is a grand, unwieldy behemoth of a sequel, buckling under the weight of its features and bombast. In lacking a sense of direction, though, it sometimes delivers in unexpected ways. [Issue#413, p.102]

Even when it's going wrong, Twelve Minutes exerts an uncommonly firm grip. [Issue#363, p.114]

If nothing else, Lost Judgment proves it would be a great shame if he didn't get another opportunity to find his niche. [Issue#365, p.112]

For beginners and intermediate level players, Oratorio Tangram presents an unmatched experience, a bright and energetic burst of fantasy combat, still quite unlike anything else in videogames.

That’s what Shadowrun Return provides, of course: it’s not just a single tale of murder and techno-conspiracy. It’s a ruleset and a tileset, and a promise of more to come.

It captures moments of messy humanity that cut through the wreckage. [Issue#384, p.119]

Could Nintendo have made similar cuts, sliced out singleplayer, and left us with the perfect party game? The shadow of missed opportunity occasionally looms over Nintendo Land, but as with any good theme park, there are moments where you'll yell, scream and laugh yourself silly. Just add friends.

Three times the protagonists gives you three times the number of toys and an engaging, if thoroughly convoluted, story, but it’s not without cost. What Simon, Trevor and Alucard give to the mechanics and narrative they take from its flow: you still feel gated, even when you’ve got all the gear.

There’s a terrific immediacy to the events, too. The days are short enough to guarantee a constant hustle and bustle, and the results of the previous day’s adventuring are cunningly given after the save screen, drawing you in to the next day before you realise it. [Aug 2008, p.98]

For all its appealing idiosyncrasies, No More Heroes has lost some of its urgency and, with that, its potency. [Issue#363, p.116]

The combat is beefy enough to carry you through the slower stretches, but even when you're lopping heads off dragons it can feel like what you're really killing is time. [Issue#379, p.100]

Blood Money feels only slightly closer to the series' ideal of a gameworld that's both complex and cogent, and is more accessible and entertaining with it. [July 2006, p.80]

Kids are often underestimated, but that doesn’t mean their games should be. Lego Star Wars has an appeal that goes beyond age, even if it’s one that rarely goes beyond 20 minutes at a time. [May 2005, p.84]

Cliffhanger endings are fine when the next episode of a TV show is days away, but less so when the wait is likely to last a couple of months. Yet Telltale has already achieved something remarkable, proving – to both Clem and to you – that there’s life after Lee.

Despite a multitude of improvements and a much larger offering than its predecessor, Dirt 4 somehow feels less spirited. Had "Rally" not existed, this latest game would've felt like more of an event, but in its current form it doesn't quite achieve the potency of its more focused forebear. [Aug 2017, p.106]

Nintendogs + Cats is a near match for the DS original. Were it not for the visual pampering it would be entirely possible to replace the old game with the new without the kids noticing. [Apr 2011, p.91]

Were Inscription half as long, it would probably be twice the game. [Issue#365, p.114]

Metro Exodus is a mood piece, and it hits the mark brilliantly by building detailed environments and laying set-pieces within them for you to find, as if by chance. However, in its efforts to emphasize that it's a long-form experience, its storytelling comes across as plodding, and every time a glitch or framedrop appears you're pulled out of a 4A's rare, and beautiful, post-apocalyptic vision. [Issue#330, p.106]

Quibbles aside, the good news is that the frantic swiping and tapping to negotiate track obstacles while squeezing in showboating tricks for extra points remains as ebullient as ever. Sitting down to play five minutes of Infinity and losing an entire evening: that’s the real danger.

The game occasionally gets lost in the cleverness of its own layouts. [Issue#363, p.120]

Children of the Sun wears that rawness like a badge of honour, its rough edges not sanded down but rather made so jagged as to draw blood. [Issue#397, p.106]

Nintendogs + Cats is a near match for the DS original. Were it not for the visual pampering it would be entirely possible to replace the old game with the new without the kids noticing. [Apr 2011, p.91]

Only intermittently better than its predecessor, if still every bit as frenetic. [Aug 2015, p.120]

A victim of its own success. By creating a story and an atmosphere so far in advance of what we have come to expect from a videogame, it throws harsh light on the conventions we accept without question in lesser titles. It maps out just how far there is to go in marrying sophisticated narrative and meaningful interactivity. [Feb 2004, p.96]

Blood Money feels only slightly closer to the series’ ideal of a gameworld that’s both complex and cogent, and is more accessible and entertaining with it. [July 2006, p.80]

If its unpredictability is a double-edged sword, though, we can imagine ourselves returning to this as we would a beloved horror novel or film, albeit one whose macabre myths are capable of wrongfooting us even on the umpteenth revisit. [Issue#391, p.120]

The end result is a rather cold and uninvolving game. Too subtle to be a Tetris replacement, too plain to be an engaging puzzler, Chokkan Hitofude adds up to something a little greyer than its crisp black-and-white stylings might suggest. [JPN Import; Jan 2005, p.95]

Thief is far from the disaster that many feared it would be, and fans who take the time to customise their settings ahead of their first playthrough will find a rewarding world here to pick clean. Nevertheless, it’s still difficult to shake the feeling that, for all his dexterity, Garrett has stumbled in his attempt to gain access to a new generation.

Nintendogs + Cats is a near match for the DS original. Were it not for the visual pampering it would be entirely possible to replace the old game with the new without the kids noticing. [Apr 2011, p.91]

The amount of material here, familiar though some of it is, and the consummate presentation means that this is the most exhaustive Katamari to date, if not the finest. [Nov 2009, p.97]

Bad Company’s multiplayer happily checks off the expectations the series has created. [Aug 2008, p.90]

Underneath the mundane masculinity and grimy gun-toting clichés lies a heavily structured and well-considered score-attack game – one that’s worth excavating for all the short-lived interest it holds. [Feb 2008, p.88]

There’s no way to sell unused cars back to the AI or to other players, no bespoke onscreen speedometers, no test driving a car before purchase, no kid-friendly Kinect steering or Kinect support in Forzavista, no opportunity to load a circuit-specific tuning setup before a career race, no exiting from a race series without loading up the next track, no unicorn cars, no ‘reasonably priced car’, no auction house, no storefront, and no surprise, really.

This pulpy provocation has more than enough ideas to take root in your own monkey brain. [Issue#391, p.121]

It’s a game about picking dialogue options that are metaphorically represented as potential moves on the board, but it’s that which goes unsaid that makes its semi-improvised conversations so intriguing.

A delightfully strange and often surprising piece of work; it’s more plaything than game, perhaps, but the smiles it generates will be broad and frequent.

Battles account for around half the game, and unless you're a fan of the TV series, it's much the better one. [March 2018, p.110]

It's derivative, gratuitous and needlessly profane, but beneath the gruesome veneer lies a tale of – believe it or not – genuine tenderness.

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]

For all its quirks, the overriding impression of Just Cause is favourable. There’s an almost childish enthusiasm at work here – and an unparalleled sense of freedom that can be enjoyed just as easily as it can be criticised. [Nov 2006, p.82]

It’s a feeling that never quite dissipates over the game’s core 15 missions, a sense of lean and focused game design which prizes the exhilarating tussle of conflict over long, drawn-out army building. [Mar 2009, p.86]

A Disney game that finally lives up to the name.