There's enough charm here for Little Inferno to get by, but sometimes you might consider taking its advice and stop feeding the flames.

That the game’s numerous niggles don’t ruin the experience sooner is testament to its unusual artistic coherence which creates a compelling world. But familiarity does eventually break the visual spell to reveal a mostly average and repetitive game underneath. [Sept 2007, p.91]

For the majority of Tintin's adventure you'll be happy to kill time hopping and skipping across its gorgeous stages, but unlike the contours of Hergé's timeless stories, there's no hidden treasure to be found beneath its dazzling veneer.

Like so many similar games, Zombie Road Trip makes you question why you’ve sunk two hours into it rather than BioShock Infinite, but you grudgingly admit to enjoying the ride nonetheless.

That initial feeling of being a tangible part of the inside of a videogame will forever be fantastic, even if much of the rest of the experience feels like it's been done before. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.112]

A charming adventure, and a lengthy one, but the overwhelming amount of rough edges rather spoil any indulgent feelings toward its foibles. [Aug 2009, p.99]

You'll find well-executed entertainment here, some moments worth fighting for, but without the glue of a good script or the polish of a blockbuster to hold its disparate parts together, Sleeping Dogs feels as trapped as its hero. It's incapable of committing fully to the action movie thrills it seems so enamoured of, perhaps due to the resources that have been siphoned away to fuel its open-world obligations and scale.

Memorable? Undoubtedly. But we'll have that drink now, thanks. [Issue#139, p.119]

Its most striking ideas don't fulfil their promise, and its successes are etched by pervasive minor flaws. The towering, terrifying city, and the lens through which it is shot, drag you onwards through the game's lesser parts, but you sense that the real crime in this whole bloody escapade is that it doesn't live up to its dark flashes of imagination.

When the curtain drops on Binary Domain, you're left with the sense that, while accomplished, this game is largely a rote exercise in genre. It adequately, but not outstandingly, mimics the nuts and bolts of the western cover shooter, while bringing little new of worth to the table.

Whereas Super Meat Boy accounted for its punishing difficulty by creating micro levels, most of which could be traversed successfully in just a minute or two, Wakfu frequently commits the cardinal sin of using extended sections of grind to raise the stakes during its seismic and vaguely arbitrary difficulty spikes.

It's not taxing or provocative, it will leave you neither upset nor elated; it simply wants to give you a good time. Sometimes that's enough. [June 2016, p.114]

But the lack of crispness in the controls undermines everything else here, and too often does the same to the player.

The Red Star is more of a red dwarf next to some of the more sharp-witted and unabashed action titles that have landed on PS2 in recent years, but one that's still capable of shininig. [May 2007, p.95]

Its most striking ideas don't fulfil their promise, and its successes are etched by pervasive minor flaws. The towering, terrifying city, and the lens through which it is shot, drag you onwards through the game's lesser parts, but you sense that the real crime in this whole bloody escapade is that it doesn't live up to its dark flashes of imagination.

With just one area to mess about with – and doubtless more to come – it currently feels more seed than flower. [Feb 2008, p.95]

In the end, it falls beneath our expectations as often as it stretches beyond them. [Issue#349, p.96]

There's a real earnestness to Ever Oasis's tale, as Ishii and team meditate on our relationship with nature and the value of coming together to build a better, more hopeful world. It's unfortunate that the actual substance of the game doesn't trouble itself to embody that reaching ambition, content to stay resting comfortably at the wellspring of other, better games' ideas. [Sept 2017, p.114]

There's something here: a glimmer of promise, the kind of idea that surely shone bright in the game's original conception. But the realities of development have resulted in a game that, like a misjudged Translocator leading only to a dead drop, falls well short of the imagined outcome. [Issue#385, p.102]

Once fluent in Hulk’s explosive vocabulary of lamppost-javelins, boulder-bowling balls and tank football, it becomes apparent how much there is to praise in this game. It’s hard to think of a superhero title that has come so close in delivering the spirit of the hero’s super-ness. [Sept 2005, p.95]

More consistent is the creeping sense of dread throughout, an atmosphere that's built on Robot Invader's preference for slow realisation over jump scares. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.118]

As much as Carrion's moment-to-moment feel might benefit from the uniquely wobbly shape it gives you, the game as a whole wears its own amorphousness a little less elegantly. [Issue#349, p.98]

Despite its name's implications, this is a better game when you're following Lucky's nose, rather than his tail. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.119]

Need For Speed seems like it would benefit from choosing a priority to stick to: be either a rowdy pursuit rampage or a lustrous street racer unbothered by traffic or law enforcement, as mixing both can leave it feeling much less than the sum of its generously many parts. [Christmas 2006, p.89]

Lego Harry Potter is a more focused experience than, say, Lego Indiana Jones 2, but proves ungainly in its own way. [Aug 2010, p.100]

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]

The final third of the game abandons grubby criminality for altogether more lurid, excessive and enjoyably silly climes, testifying to the fact that Saints Row is at its best when it rejects the expectations of the series and the strictures of the GTA format.

If The Unfinished Swan didn't do such a marvellous job of tantalising players with its patiently evolving visual signature, it would be easier to sense the messy whiteboard of ideas churning beneath the surface. It's not that the game feels unfinished, just ungainly.

Salt & Sanctuary can be brilliant, but it's held back by undersized visual design, both in UI and open play, making playing it from distance a pain. [June 2016, p.122]

Though the stage design is carefully plotted to the last pixel, there’s little room for deviation – and none for the ultimate three-star prize. As such, it’s a case of brute-forcing the solution over dozens of repeated attempts, a process that feels less engaging here than in some of its peers.

The core racing is pleasingly intact for 16bit nostalgists, but that doesn't make Micro Machines a no-brainer for the new-school, season-based multiplayer model. [Sept 2017, p.119]

Smart Remote-pointer-based controls and Mason's nimble pace around the snowy locales ensure Shattered Memories is not a disagreeable six hours, but it is very rarely scary or spooky. [Feb 2010, p.93]

Sadly, the developer's good work is all but undone by its publisher's demanding IAP structure.

Elements such as marching onto an island, or talking to a governor, seem flat and underdeveloped. Islands are sparse and awkward experiences, while their governors are often illogical and nonsensical in their responses. [Jan 2005, p.88]

The title is just painfully apt: never has a free-roaming structure brought so little to improve the quality of a game's world. The mooted open-ended environments of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland feel like a fallacy, a bleak repackaging for hocking the game to a jaded audience. [Dec 2005, p.107]

Spider-Man 2 presents players with a city ripe for action and exploration, but once you swing down out of the clouds and take a closer look at the grubby streets and roads strewn with vehicles, you'll find little to pique your interest. [Sept 2004, p.100]

A curious game about exploiting systems and psychology. The discussions surrounding it deal in politics and morality, because it’s a game about Rohrer’s response to a controversial real-world issue. Yet The Castle Doctrine’s notoriety ends up feeling like another fakeout – a disconnected conceptual commit gate at the entrance of an often-frustrating sandbox puzzler.

In its current form, Payday 2 is a slog, and it’s no fault of the game itself but all the bloat that surrounds it.

Fable Heroes' appeal is all Fable, rather than its elaborations on the well-worn, side-scrolling brawler. Played in a group, there's a knockabout charm in vying to emerge the victor, but unlike those gold coins there's not quite enough longterm value beneath the outer sheen.

It’s a testimony to the rapid evolution of this once moribund genre that Rogue Galaxy has been left so far behind. But it’s also a testament to Level 5’s inherent instinct for charm and compulsion that this game manages – even in 2007 – to hold its head above the crowd. [Apr 2007, p.78]

Although inadequacies prove more memorable than the game's positive features, dig deep enough and there's and enjoyable game. It's just that finding it sometimes proves unnecessarily arduous. [Nov 2003, p.102]

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]

There’s a workmanlike simplicity to the core of Arcen’s game, one that lets down the powerful atmosphere suffusing it.

While there is scope for each skirmish to play out differently, it's simpler to respond in kind to cheap deaths by lobbing pre-emptive grenades into scripted entry points - and in doings so, you're not so much numbed to the shock of Killzone's war as anaesthetised. [Christmas 2004, p.84]

"quotation Forthcoming"

Raskulls is many things – racer, puzzler, platformer – but it struggles to be all these things at once, or to do them equally well. Beneath the charming, brightly coloured exterior, there's a fascinating twist on the block-based puzzler at Halfbrick's game's heart – but you might just miss it when blasting through at high speed.

A beautiful disappointment – a great look in search of a great game to go with it. The genre template may be rock solid, but the end result is an adventure that's been strung across a fault line.

It takes the best and worst of Resident Evils past and present, and spot welds them together unevenly. If the designers had committed wholeheartedly to either polarity of action or horror, Revelations may have been a headshot, but what we're left with is more like a glancing blow. [Feb 2012, p.112]

For a reinvention, it has an almost parodical lack of surprises: You’ve seen every abandoned village, sacked castle and anachronistic laboratory before, with the more striking imagery suggested by the game’s plague of tainted cherry blossoms all but ignored until the final stage. [Apr 2006, p.80]

This inability to decide where World Tour lies among the many paths the series has taken previously is the game’s true problem. It demonstrates both why Camelot is so trusted by Nintendo, and why it has been stuck making sporting spinoffs for so long. Camelot seems unsure of whether it would prefer to be held by the hand or simply set free, and ends up putting the player in that same awkward middle ground.

Ironically, it’s people who haven’t played Champions rather than veterans who could find the most to like, given that it’s a year’s worth of tweaks and polish on that game’s largely positive foundation. [Apr 2005, p.105]

It offers one of the most beautiful worlds ever created on a console, heavy with atmosphere and wonder, laden with the treasures of the Final Fantasy heritage. However, it asks too much expense and hassle and it inflicts too many setbacks, frustrations and restrictions to come close to being a fair exchange.

It helps, too, that the story is surprisingly engaging. [Issue#413, p.116]

Gearbox has made a game that is stable and complete, if hugely unrefined in places, with an under-exploited but sound core of tactical squad combat. [Nov 2008, p.93]

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]

Unlike PSP competitors Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea, this game lacks the colour and complication to really drag players into the depths of its strategy. [Jan 2008, p.89]

As a platformer it's not Ravenous' best, and as a puzzle game Infestor doesn't quite provide enough material for its parasitic premise to build on.

A collection of ideas executed with variable success, which at times coalesce to form an effective whole, and at others feel like flashy distractions from an otherwise unambitious central formula. [Christmas 2010]

True, there is little here that should deter the Souls veteran in search of a new challenge to add to the ever-growing pile. And while we may never be quite as interested in uncovering the backstory of our mute amnesiac as in retailoring her skillset or wardrobe, Wuchang does a commendable job of draping the Soulslike in eastern garments - provided the red mist doesn't have you tearing them asunder. [Issue#414, p.104]

Its rudimentary puzzles may not satisfy point-and-click fans, but those who enjoy interactive drama will be happy to tune in for Episode Two after this solid season premiere.

At its best it's an engaging spectacle, but when it falters Lost Planet 2 is a gamble that doesn't pay off. [June 2010, p.94]

That player-considerate attitude is offset by less reverential treatment of its inspiration, however. Ittle Dew isn’t really a parody, more a loving pastiche, but its gently sassy mockery of Zelda’s conventions ties with the beautiful, vibrant art to ensure that while this really is mostly block puzzles, they’re some of the best presented ones you’ve ever played.

A curiosity. An inferior imitation of a two-decade-old series, it's nevertheless delivered with obvious affection for its inspiration and considerable charm of its own. [June 2010, p.105]

Proving Ground is, at best, a functional sequel. It gives the fans what they want, throws in a handful of awkward or undeveloped ideas, and leaves it there. At worst, it’s a poor entry to the Tony Hawk’s lineage. [Christmas 2007, p.91]

True, Splitgate 2 does a decent job implementing the fundamentals of a firstperson shooter, and occasionally makes a deeper impression with flourishes that can't be found elsewhere. But in moving too far towards established tastes, it more closely resembles what its creators profess to fight against. [Issue#413, p.120]

Don’t Starve is by no means a bad trial run for Klei’s new way of working, but it’s a pursuit for those with a wealth of patience and an appetite for pain. Klei may have modelled Hell brilliantly, but that doesn’t mean we want to live there.

Throw in a few low-level technical glitches - occasional stuttering, the rare enemy frozen in a T-pose in a doorway - and it's hard not to feel underwhelmed. [Issue#414, p.108]

A slick production, but its rewards can feel outstripped by the effort required to play it. [Christmas 2016, p.118]

Taken in isolation, there’s no denying Cold Fear’s panache - RenderWare has rarely been used to such strong visual effect - and there is a fair helping of survival horror entertainment to be had here, it’s just that you have to dig through several layers of frustration to get at it. [Apr 2005, p.96]

This is a sensitive employment of free-to-play, but despite its presentation and name, Real Racing 3 remains an arcade game in sim clothing, and one hamstrung by its host format. Limitations that keep it firmly in the tail-lights of deeper console experiences.

Somehow, Dark Void just about rises above its faults, but it's hardly at rick of flying too close to the sun. [Feb 2010, p.86]

As the platformer has been slowly bent into a sort of adventure game, it's a pleasant shock to be taken back to a time when missing that jump really did mean you had to start again. Collecting things is kept to a minimum and your quest is tightly packed and varied. [Apr 2004, p.109]

Had the level design have been a touch more ingenious, and the creatures exhibited more guile, this could have been memorable. [June 2004, p.106]

Ultimately, Urban Chaos doesn't have the reach to deliver what it promises, and ends up retreating into cliché. A few months more, a few dollars more and this could have made a much more defiant stand. [June 2006, p.93]

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

But if it feels rather like a rough draft (moreso, even, than the original Assassin's Creed), then we'll be fascinated to see if this VR incarnation gets any fraction of the iterative treatment long enjoyed by its predecessors. [Issue#393, p.112]

Ragebound sparkles when it doesn't over-egg the pudding, confusing additional layers for mechanical depth. And we remain convinced that, whichever clan they're from, the best ninjas work alone. [Issue#414, p.114]

The Terror Twins don't get the platform they deserve, but they put on quite a show with what they're given. [Issue#336, p.106]

Sports Resort is controlling, and even solemn, about just how much fun you should be having with it. And that’s a development that should chill every Wii owner to the bone.

It's difficult to recommend as a standalone purchase. [Christmas 2016, p.122]

Right now, there's enough here to capture the imagination for a handful of playthroughs, but for The Wandering Village to go the distance, Onbu may have to shoulder additional burdens. [Issue#414, p.118]

The most contagious thing about Echoes Of Time is its humour, and there's no shortage of intrigue and mishap in the quests to come. Nor, however, is there a surplus. [May 2009, p.96]

Shorn of its accoutrements and sumptuous presentation, Flock's basic appeal remains a little woolly. [June 2009, p.96]

Trek To Yomi's combat fails to match its visual swagger. [Issue#372, p.118]

When The Cosmic Abyss plays more like a walking sim or a first-person horror, it's excellent story really shines through, but its overdesigned systems tend to get in the way of its otherworldly ambitions. [Issue#424, p.119]

Too erratic for its own good. [Issue#393, p.119]

Southend's spatial puzzler is clever enough to survive such a heavy-handed dose of focus-grouped fancy: you won't need to love it in order to appreciate some of its better tricks. [Jan 2011, p.103]

There may be better ways to relive Resident Evil than Deadly Silence, but no version could demote it from its status as a creaky but compelling classic. [Apr 2006, p.94]

It rarely becomes more than a pleasant distraction, rather than something that feels warm and real. [Issue#414, p.120]

Away from its story missions, Forspoken feels short of ideas, and even the narrative runs out of steam. [Issue#382, p.102]

The short levels, played to a time limit that rarely exceeds five minutes, may be ideal for speed runners, but this lightweight arcadey romp lacks the substance that many might need to keep returning to it. [Issue#420, p.98]

It may lack the elegant simplicity and playfulness of Engare, but Tandis succeeds as a meditative plaything that once again encourages us to see the beauty in geometry. [Issue#372, p.119]

There was never any doubt that Total Overdose would fall foul of one of its genre's various pitfalls, but it's unfortunate that it ultimately had to be one as irksome as excessive length... At its best, the game still shakes up a loud and spicy Mexican cocktail, but what it's added to the mix has been more than enough to weaken the taste. [Nov 2005, p.103]

Those looking for a rigorous score-attack challenge should look elsewhere. [Nov 2008, p.103]

But at least there's less of the narrative mush to wade through this time, and if we start to flag late on, much is forgiven when Unfinished Business grants us control of an ED-209. [Issue#414, p.122]

Even if the overall package is less than the sum of its parts, an arcade-perfect port of Vampire Saviour is impressive enough alone, and the PSP’s screen definition infuses the visuals with their original, unmistakable vibrancy. [Feb 2005, p.82]

An unpretentious blast of good-humoured bedlam – well-pitched towards the five-minute attention spans served by fellow PSN title Calling All Cars. [Jan 2009, p.94]

It’s the kind of concept you suspect was conceived more by the desire to ‘leverage brand synergy’ than to create a classic videogame. [Jan 2008, p.90]