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

It's not quite vintage Mario, but this long-awaited mobile debut demonstrates an ingenuity and a keen appreciation of format that is quintessentially Nintendo. [Feb 2017, p.123]

Direct comparisons don't do Ronin any favours. Its grappling is reminiscent of Sekiro, but the procedure never feels as urgent or dynamic as it does in From's game. Its combat follows rhythms previously explored in the Nioh series and also Wo Long, but it rarely feels any more refined, nor more satisfying... But it is consistently charming. [Issue#397, p.102]

Pikuniku's got legs, even if it lacks the stamina to fully get over the finish line. [March 2019, p.122]

As this game invites us to reconsider our relationships with loved ones while they're still around, the benefit of Hindsight couldn't be clearer. [Issue#376, p.118]

The GBA original invented a new way to tickle your brain, conceived by gamers for gamers and loaded with unabashed enthusiasm. And now you can play it with your friends. What better excuse for throwing a party? [JPN Import; Christmas 2003, p.118]

Sadly, any gains made here are squandered by woolly controls, a dearth of feedback and infuriating inaccuracy even with aiming assist dialed up to maximum.

Yet even with another cliffhanger to keep you on tenterhooks until Episode Three, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see audience interest starting to wane, particularly if Telltale continues to treat us more as viewers than as players.

A squad-based WarioWare? It's better than could have anticipated. [Issue#364, p.122]

Uprising may not break any new ground in a genre that is arguably an endangered species, but it does a good job of breathing life into the dying breed. It's a reminder that an artist's eye, when met by a designer's understanding of modern tastes, can revitalise a struggling brand and make the old feel new again.

It's testament to What The Car? that we're prepared to repeat the majority of challenges until we've earned a golden crown. [Issue#386, p.122]

Like the flesh-merging virus, which exponentially heaps meat onto meat onto meat, Bloober's better ideas can get lost in the pile. That it still feels worth playing to its conclusion is proof of the fundamental strengths at Cronos' core. [Issue#416, p.108]

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]

It's a masterfully constructed piece of tabletop theatre, whose spell is only broken once, as we were delayed for over an hour by some key loot that took over a dozen attempts to drop. Many won't make it past this preposterous roadblock, but those who persevere to the bitter end will be heartily glad they did.

Wild Hearts has inherited just enough from Monster Hunter to keep us on the hook - and when it does sporadically come together, it feels like a worthy rival. [Issue#383, p.106]

The portability that saw the game through its tour of every major format during the '90s has finally failed the test of time, and it's the trawl of the cursor between one lemming and the next that does this interpretation the most damage. [Mar 2006, p.92]

Here, though, each death is just another opportunity for a punchline. [Issue#385, p.121]

With a little more mechanical variety, this might've been a minor classic. [Issue#394, p.106]

It has flashes of brilliance, but then you get stuck on some cover and get killed because of it, and that moment is shattered.

As it stands, for all the words you cycle through, Until Then does its best work when it focuses on the visual and the novel. [Issue#400, p.123]

Ultimately, while the Mikado Maniax reworking of Raiden III may not be abundant in terms of new features or modes, it does provide access to one of the most exciting, distinct and dramatic genre works - which may, with luck, earn it the attention in the west it has long deserved. [Issue#384, p.122]

Light Trax continues to zip along the fine line between puzzler and racer neatly. [Aug 2010, p.98]

It's very easy to while away the time just terrorising the populace of each level in an increasingly destructive fashion, but to actually care enough to contribute anything to a completion percentage is another matter entirely. [July 2005, p.86]

If it doesn't always satisfy the more animal parts of our brain, En Garde! keeps the higher functions entertained, and provides some solid laughs. [Issue#389, p.114]

At launch, it feels neutered, and far too inconsistent to establish a lasting dominance on the multiplayer scene. [Apr 2015, p.110]

Like "GTA" there's more to this than shock and awe. Within its linear structure there is a lot of freedom within which to act, much more so than both "Splinter Cell" and "Metal Gear Solid 2," the titles which Manhunt most closely resembles. [Jan 2004, p.96]

It all adds up to a mesmerisingly unpleasant atmosphere that somewhat offsets the gun-ho nihilism of the plot. [Issue#353, p.112]

It’s a great idea but a flawed execution, and will need a sequel to achieve its potential. [Aug 2007, p.92]

As a game, Battalion Wars is good; as an experiment in genre cross-breeding and subtle, hand-free franchising, it's very nearly a triumph. [Dec 2005, p.96]

Mario can still throw a mean pitch and has a solid swing, but it's his lazy ambition that catches him out.

As a whole, Mercenary Kings is a case study in the perils of Early Access. The need to provide a steady flow of content to early buyers has birthed a glut of superfluous systems and a swollen set of missions – the wrong sort of substance to accompany Robertson’s style.

There is a tremendous amount going on, to the point that it's all too easy to miss a mission-critical SOS. [Nov 2014, p.108]

All too often you’re baffled as to how your slick 180° spin failed to satisfy the marking criteria, only to pass on the next attempt with a clunking three-point turn. [Oct 2007, p.94]

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]

Things pick up considerably in the game's final third, when the excessive exposition has at last been laid to rest and you've learned how to best work with the disobliging visual language. [Issue#424, p.104]

In all likelihood, we'll remember its delightful world for some time. In future years, we may even enjoy the few fuzzy memories of Forgotton Anne that linger. For now, however, they're tinged with disappointment. [July 2018, p.114]

Look at it one way, and it's a choking journey with unprecedented attention to unease and psychological horror, a game framed with unparalleled sophistication. From another angle, it's just a clunky PSone throwback, with all the design wit of a dodo. [Aug 2004, p.92]

This is a generous game in both deed and spirit, and, as such, one it's tremendously difficult to dislike. [Issue#343, p.106]

Perfect? No. Indispensable? Yes. Wii Sports more than earns its bundled place as an essential component of the hardware. [Christmas 2006, p.76]

Did a purse-holder at Activision one day grapple fruitlessly with the last game's control system and scrawl in their subsequent notes "Make the next one so that I can play it"? Speculation aside, someone sure messed-up Spider-Man. [Dec 2005, p.108]

The enticing depths of strategy coupled with the affectionate, colourful realisation of the various characters you control ignites curiosity - and their abilities in battle are well-realised, gratifyingly powerful and many. [June 2009, p.90]

It's a tribute to Me Monstar that, despite lasting a good few hours, you want more.

It remains an early PS Move highlight, but one that can't boast the charm or accessibility of its Wii rivals, despite the improved tech. [Nov 2010, p.92]

It sounds as if the cast are having more fun than we are. [Issue#388, p.122]

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

While it’s occasionally fiddly, it has pace and spectacle and style to spare. Underworld is that rare game that manages to provide a real adventure to go along with its action. [Christmas 2008, p.95]

Fundamentally a curiously lovable game - one of long, lonely roads, of painstaking parking manoeuvres, and slapstick write-offs when simple turns are misjudged. There's nothing else quite like SCS's brand of cargo-hauling action. [April 2016, p.119]

If this is the series' swansong, it goes out in the luxuirous manner in which the series was born – in a well-produced, moderately thoughful and firmly enjoyable instalment of an established genre – a manner that won't go unappreciated but will just as likely go unremembered. [Dec 2005, p.110]

Mediatonic's experimental blend of tower defence, scrolling shooter and invincibility doesn't always gel, but approached as a survival score-attack in the vein of Canabalt, Who's That Flying?! becomes an uncommonly moreish Mini.

More diversion than challenge, and never leads to stress. [Aug 2009, p.107]

Thanks to this astonishing overhaul, it's now quite impossible to ignore. [Feb 2012, p.120]

Wideload has placed a welcome knee in the groin of the status quo, but by taking its subject too lightly it's also failed to turn an adventurous prototype into a durable production. [Christmas 2005, p.102]

For such a costly flagship title to provide neither the promised statement of mainstream grown-up appeal nor even polished, lesser disposable thrills is a landmark failure. [May 2006, p.92]

Rematch, especially with friends, is an immediate, exhilarating caricature of football. Its pared-down mechanics inject joy back into a sport that's been hollowed out, both in real life through surrender to capital and geopolitics, and as simulation, in the gears of service-game profit-making machines. [Issue#413, p.118]

The most satisfying stages give you a generous toolset with which to experiment, but one too many involves painstaking repositioning of a few items.

A tiny game with some big ideas. [Sept 2012, p.106]

This is a game that prizes style above all else, and emerges a mess because of it. [Issue#331, p.118]

While the overall blandness means Galactrix is unlikely to truly thrill many people, it also means that it won’t exclude anyone either, and the ever-reliable pattern-spotting blends with the steady trickle of meaningless rewards to exert a pull on its audience that is truly Pavlovian. [Apr 2009, p.125]

Modern Warfare II's problems are old ones, then, as are its strengths. But there are fewer of the latter than in 2019's reboot, and that should concern fans. [Issue#379, p.112]

Simply for the harrowing elegance of this risk-reward proposition, Impossible Road’s lone developer Kevin Ng deserves to have his pockets paved with gold.

Production values are high, with iPad providing the best canvas yet for Level-5′s animation and colouring. And though the puzzles and narrative take on a different rhythm to the core series, the delicate balance in their concoction and the demands of their solution – requiring equal amounts of logical and lateral thought – echo those of father Layton’s finest.

The Umbrella Chronicles will inevitably attract attention for its roots above all other considerations, but it's a good game on its own terms, bringing together distinct genres and making it all work. [Jan 2008, p.86]

For some, Yakuza will feel dangerously dumb, due to its unrefined and relentless combat, but it's just as dangerous to risk overlooking its capacity to be fiercely capable and loveably playful in plenty of other ways, always aiming to provide captivating entertainment. [Oct 2006, p.84]

Area 51 is entirely without inspiration, an exercise in slick, crowd-pleasing cookie-cutter cliché from the Jerry Bruckheimer school of entertainment manufacture. It is absolutely not bad, almost never broken, and usually a good deal of fun. [July 2005, p.92]

Disjointed and directionless, Croft's descent into darkness is, shockingly, one hell of a mess. [December 2018, p.106]

Developer PAM has reinvented a game that no longer strives to be a thinking man’s alternative to Virtua, but something altogether superior. [May 2006, p.94]

Aside from the occasional hiccup with collision detection, and some uninspired boss battles, Nanostray 2 does enough to gain an honourable mention in the genre. [May 2008, p.98]

It's a game that wants to take games apart piece by piece - and is happy to use you as a screwdriver of sorts. [Issue#409, p.122]

As it stands, you can only cast your actors and dress your sets, so Unlimited doesn't quite live up to its name, but for those willing to span the game's structural deficiencies with their imagination, it's intensely rewarding.

BW2 is a strategy game that doesn't demand much strategy. That doesn't mean it's not sometimes enjoyable, but it's nothing more than an occasional diversion. [Jan 2008, p.84]

Add the odd cruelly-placed save point, and you've got an adventure that occasionally explores the agonies, as well as the ecstasies, of gaming's past. At least it's honest.

Reus is a god game, but not one that makes you feel particularly omnipotent. That’s partly because all the divine heavy lifting and occasional smiting is performed indirectly, by a set of elemental colossi, but also because Reus’ complex simulation can be rather daunting. God is in the details, it’s true, but he didn’t have to think quite so hard about them.

Give OFK half a chance, and just as their tunes will burrow into your brain, their stylishly documented journey may yet see them sneak under your skin, too. [Issue#375, p.116]

Sure, at times it's a little messy, but isn't that just part of the business of being human? Would that we could all create havoc with such irresistible style. [Issue#392, p.121]

There are too many caveats, too many pieces that have to fall into place to experience Aces at its very best. And yet a game between two evenly-matched characters and similarly-skilled human players is an unfettered joy. [Issue#322, p.122]

Capcom might not have crafted the kind of world in which players will invest, but it understands the powerful draw of party building and gear tweaking, the immediate thrills of slashing and spellcasting, and the spirit of adventure in sallying forth on a dragon hunt. [June 2012, p.106]

Crisp of cut-scene, blessed with a refreshingly light touch and low-key compared to the po-faced chest-beating of its peers, Second Sight could well be a high water mark in storytelling through games (as opposed to storytelling around them). [Oct 2004, p.104]

Intelligent Systems takes great care to shape its RPG for portable play. The world is divided into Super Mario Bros-style levels that each pack a tidy little narrative. Levelling is removed in order to keep these vignettes grind-free. And it's all wrapped up in Nintendo's typically hilarious localisation.

Balancing discipline and freedom, and showcasing creativity within constraints, it demonstrates that you can shape your own path through life, while suggesting ways you might build upon everything you learn along the way. [Issue#399, p.118]

It's simple, accessible and ultimately disposable stuff. Not the sprawling adventure you were hoping for, but fun nonetheless. [Apr 2004, p.108]

A genre piece with rare ambition, a mobile game that feels at once tailored to the format yet unusually expansive in its scope. [Issue#338, p.112]

As easy to misunderstand as it is to break, it again turns the best and worse of PC gaming into something extraordinary. [Oct 2008, p.94]

No characters stand out to give the game verve, and Dracogenics does nothing to inspire efforts to take it down. [Oct 2015, p.118]

A Disney game that finally lives up to the name.

Combined with the weight of nostalgia, Visions is thus a strangely conservative game. While not lacking the conveniences of modern design (the fast-travel system balances speed with a sense of scale), it's merely evolutionary. [Issue#402, p.112]

Its game may rarely do anything you haven't seen done better elsewhere, but the developer knots a slew of disparate elements together with no little skill, leaving the whole feeling irresistibly fresh. [March 2013, p.102]

It's easy to assume that Gyromancer is a clone of Puzzle Quest...The truth, perhaps, is that it's simply an improvement on the formula. [Jan 2010, p.98]

After the interesting and confident debut of The Suffering last year, Ties That Bind remains a straightforward action game, and one with a coherent story that feels well paced, if too full of schlocky cliché for some. But that is, ultimately, all it does: remains. [Dec 2005, p.106]

Fun fan fodder, but hardly revelatory. [Christmas 2009, p.102]

There's a certain amount of wit and flair evident throughout Hoodlum Havoc's cut-scenes, and there are certainly some very slick production values. The problem is that, in terms of raw enjoyment, the game is somehow underwhelming. [May 2003, p.104]

Homeworld 3 isn't quite the homecoming we had hoped for. At worst competent, at best exceptional, it has been crafted with evident care, though the originals still cast a shadow as dense as a black hole's event horizon. [Issue#399, p.108]

If you share director Ragnar Tornquist's view that being engaged in dialogue is a form of gameplay, then there's a richness here that few other titles have the ability or luxury to create. [June 2006, p.86]

The most remarkable thing is how smoothly it runs: a flawless 60 frames a second that makes any caveats about the slightly pixellated visuals disappear in the wind. [Dec 2008, p.99]

If it’s a demo, Ground Zeroes is the best demo ever; if it’s a prologue, it sets up the story so well you’ll spend the next year thirsting for revenge; and if it’s a tutorial, the systems it teaches are so intriguing that the prospect of spending an entire game with them is irresistible. Ground Zeroes is a resounding success in every respect bar its price tag, but value is relative. Fourteen hours in, we’re still learning.

Ferociously compulsive.

Dante’s Inferno fails to rise above its peers, the punishment for which is not damnation, merely a place in limbo.

It's hard not to forgive such contrivances when the mask-making process itself is such a joy. [Issue#359, p.119]

Fat with content, melodrama and fun, few DS games can match its ambitions. [Apr 2010, p.98]