Smarter, faster pacing could have made all the difference. When it isn't intentionally hobbled, the combat is spectacular and unique. [Feb 2010, p.88]

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]

For all its polish, Reflect Missile has managed to retain the loose energy of a quirky prototype: a 500 Nintendo Point exercise in pure mechanics that is lithe – and slight – enough to suggest that a talented designer may have knocked the whole thing up over an inspired series of lunch breaks.

Stray from the beaten track and Crystal Bearers is a different game...That it is so oddly buried is inexplicable, but you can't deny the fun of excavation. [Feb 2010, p.94]

Repetitive and simplistic, Alien Breed Evolution may remain true to its inspiration, but this first episode does no more than reinforce Team 17's reputation for serviceable but uninspiring updates of past glories. [Feb 2010, p.91]

Shooter feels accomplished and robust, a rounded and consistently enjoyable achievement. [Jan 2010, p.94]

The Saboteur is an awesome display of clichés, stereotypes, shortcuts and failures in logic. [Jan 2010, p.86]

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]

Spirit Tracks' aging tricks continue to carry you cack into the narcotic realms of pure ritual, until you're deep in the caverns yet again, holding the magic yellow boomerang once more, and wondering what quirky brilliance it will bring with it this time. [Christmas 2009, p.92]

Quietly competent to the very end, Avatar's certainly not the disaster you may have feared, but it can feel patronising, pompous and a little unnecessary. [Jan 2010, p.84]

Even if the DNA of its forebears is barely apparent, such a bold, brilliant transformation certainly involves something a little like magic. [Dec 2009, p.100]

A stern, if unspectacular, challenge. [Jan 2010, p.94]

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]

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]

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.

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

The root problem is that the board controller is poorly conceived. The notion of mimicking while stationary an activity entirely reliant on motion is deeply flawed. [Jan 2010, p.88]

If L4D2 is sometimes over-complicated by its glut of small innovations, then it also substantially rewards the player with its few large ideas: confusion gives way to depth and dynamism, grander thrills and starker dramas. We’re still interested in the fate of the original game’s heroes, but this sequel affirms that the way ahead is due south.

In the original, full-sized LBP, creating more than a few seconds of playable level was a significant and time-consuming effort. Here, with slightly reduced options and at a near microscopic scale, it's much, much harder. [Jan 2010, p.93]

If L4D2 is sometimes over-complicated by its glut of small innovations, then it also substantially rewards the player with its few large ideas: confusion gives way to depth and dynamism, grander thrills and starker dramas. We’re still interested in the fate of the original game’s heroes, but this sequel affirms that the way ahead is due south.

The sport's on-track jousting is potentially some of the fastest and most exhilarating source material around, but by default developers appear to struggle to present it in anything other than a dry and overly technical fashion. [Jan 2010, p.91]

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]

Despite the lack of ingenuity on display, NSMB Wii's thrash of four players does bring uproarious anarchy to the sofa for short periods of time. [Dec 2009, p.86]

A dazzling package. A singleplayer campaign crammed with set-pieces that pull the player through at breakneck speed sits alongside Spec Ops, 23 co-op missions and a MW greatest hits package, before that superlative multiplayer, which really needs no introduction. With such attractions on offer, this is a shooter that demands playing, and playing again. It is still Call Of Duty, but its execution is skilful, mostly thoughtful, and it boasts the highest of production values.

A dazzling package. A singleplayer campaign crammed with set-pieces that pull the player through at breakneck speed sits alongside Spec Ops, 23 co-op missions and a MW greatest hits package, before that superlative multiplayer, which really needs no introduction. With such attractions on offer, this is a shooter that demands playing, and playing again. It is still Call Of Duty, but its execution is skilful, mostly thoughtful, and it boasts the highest of production values.

Its sheer assuredness in mechanics, spectacle and often situation are unlikely to be surpassed for some time.

Ultimately, World Rally is not a bad game, just entirely unnecessary.

Robotic and methodical, and firmly in second place. [Dec 2009, p.97]

It is so often calamitous that its few charms are either squandered or obscured. [Christmas 2009, p.96]

Despite being all about the numbers, FM2010 rises above them to be unexpectedly cruel, kind, and even visceral at times. [Christmas 2009, p.104]

Turns out that Tekken's big new idea for online play is rather underwhelming: you can customise your outfit and fight with it on. [Dec 2009, p.103]

It's a shame to see what could have been. [Dec 2009, p.99]

All things considered, it’s about the best game called ‘DJ Hero’ we were ever likely to see. It deserves extended play.

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.

The puzzles themselves can feel gimmicky and detached, as though inclusion was more important than integration. [Dec 2009, p.92]

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]

Alluringly lurid, but ultimately disposable. [Dec 2009, p.92]

Tropico is as vibrant and capricious as the setting, and never dry or formulaic in the way that other management games can tend to be. [Christmas 2009, p.106]

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

Partial blame can be laid on the less-than-stellar CG film Astro Boy adapts, but considering High Voltage so vocally invoked Omega Factor during development, it is not unfair to hold the game to a higher standard. It doesn't come close. [Jan 2010, p.96]

It's a dazzling experience, combining carefree spectacle with careful score attack, a game that's as concerned with its looks as the precision of its underlying mathematical systems. [JPN Import; June 2009, p.94]

The perfect candidate for the 100th WiiWare game, LostWinds is on the verge of outgrowing the service it almost single-handedly redeems. [Dec 2009, p.101]

The game’s depth is matched by a generous breadth of modes and options.

But the puzzles themselves are nearly an unmitigated joy.

Brutal Legend has the looks and the attitude, and a hefty chunk of original and engaging content to go with it. Whenever it goes near a stage, though, it begins to fall apart. [Dec 2009, p.94]

Ultimately, no one will disagree that Uncharted 2 is one hell of a ride, and the best PS3 action game to date.

But what of the gamers who have paid WayForward’s bills, the Contra lovers and Shantae fan clubs? They're rewarded with extreme difficulty spikes, enacted by the amorphous lovelies of a Miyazaki film. A Boy and his Blob panders to the Wii’s unique audience all too well, dividing itself, and its impact, in the process.

Sparsely scattered save points, un-skippable animations and cutscenes, and repeated locations and boss fights are anachronisms that will frustrate and alienate all but the most ardent traditionalist.

A frustrating experience, though thankfully not a long one. [Dec 2009, p.103]

A Witch's Tale is the teacher who says 'look, but don't touch.' [Sept 2009, p.97]

It's certainly fun, but at times it's more than that: around the parody of leveling orbits a whole universe of bigger and better systems to lose yourself within. [Feb 2010, p.92]

It refreshes with its purity of purpose and ambition, even if, as a mechanising of the grieving process, it’s a game few will wish to return to once completed.

It refreshes with its purity of purpose and ambition, even if, as a mechanising of the grieving process, it’s a game few will wish to return to once completed.

But it’s hard not to be disappointed that one of gaming’s true visions – of life’s multiplicity and constantly changing nature – should end up broadening itself by slumping into a worn groove of genre pieces and business dogma.

Demon's Souls is the antithesis of the fashionable approach to gaming. It encourages mastery over mere perseverance and every reward is so hard won as to make it almost unattainable. But if gaming's ultimate appeal lies in the learning and mastering of new skills, then surely the medium's keenest thrills are to be found in its hardest lessons. For those who flourish under Demon's Souls' strict examination, there's no greater sense of virtual achievement.

To an industrious, moralising serial killer, Saw would seem an apt punishment for a life wasted on videogames. [Christmas 2009, p.99]

Extraction is not just a gun game that happens to work on Wii; it's a gun game that couldn't work on anything else. [Nov 2009, p.90]

When you're playing a Ninja Gaiden game and not dying until the eighth chapter, it doesn't bode well for the future of the series as we know it. Oh, and the camera's still rubbish. [Nov 2009, p.100]

There are some interesting ideas here, but in practice the game is overloaded with cut corners and blunting repetition. [Mar 2010, p.97]

Despite the game's uncluttered arenas, the camera regularly manages to find a way to flip out and point you in the wrong direction. [Dec 2009, p.101]

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]

ODST doesn’t quite take Halo into unfamiliar territory, but it does show how robust and adaptable the core of the game is – and, more importantly, stands on its own two feet as a spin-off that’s better than the vast majority of original games.

Some cool things happen to crazy people in A2M's Wet, but unfortunately there are times in between where you're actually expected to play it. [Nov 2009, p.99]

For a game that covers everything from drift events to time trials and eliminators, not to mention bumper-to-bumper tuning options, a top-tier physics model and authentic handling, Shift has enough precision and purpose to give anyone pause. [Nov 2009, p.98]

It delivers on 5th Cell's unlikely conceit far more capably than expected, and fulfills a blueprint so bizarrely ambitious almost nobody believed it was possible. [Nov 2009, p.92]

Zuma's simple ingredients have once again brewed up a surprisingly powerful brand of magic. [Nov 2009, p.104]

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

The early promise is blunted, however, when too many cooks arrive and you're left relying on potshots and memory games. [Christmas 2009, p.106]

It's accomplished in its execution, but threatens to segregate the platform just as Harmonix seemed to be opening it up to all-comers. [Nov 2009, p.103]

Is Muramasa a luscious concept art gallery rudely interrupted by swordplay, or just a ponderous Ninja Gaiden clone. Whatever the case, it doesn't wholly succeed. [July 2009, p.99]

Mini Ninjas offers an assortment of simple pleasures and its tooth-rottingly sweet presentation wholly endears – but it isn’t sustained, and in places falls disastrously below the watermark.

From the patchwork fields of the Dover coastline to the unforgettable sight of Berlin burning in the pouring rain, the carefully characterised locations are as integral to the experience as its encyclopedic line-up of planes. [Oct 2009, p.97]

Codemasters is as attuned to track-building and racecraft as it has ever been. [Oct 2009, p.92]

Ingenious, experimental and entirely polarising, games like ColorZ show that WiiWare continues to take the road less travelled. In doing so, the platform’s most poignant offerings reveal something a little bit magical - a fleeting glimpse of the soul lurking within the machine.

Under the topsoil its functions are often ingenious, improving genre weaknesses with more success than its over-familiar form might suggest. [Nov 2009, p.95]

An accomplished effort that is every inch the Soul Calibur of the home consoles, just squeezed on to a smaller screen. [Oct 2009, p.98]

Guitar Hero 5 does stand as the most accessible version of the game concept to date, presenting a significantly tidier, more intuitive menu to get you playing sooner. [Nov 2009, p.103]

At least building the game around a mountain ascent avoids survival horror cliché. Instead of stepping bravely into the murk you are motivated forwards by the peak's promise. [Oct 2009, p.98]

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

It revitalises both old and recent characters and, despite the basic environments having the odd clunky element in their geography, triumphantly succeeds as a new breed of fighting game. [Oct 2009, p.90]

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.

No other game catches the exhilaration of mental exercises, while doing just enough to smooth over their occasional frustrations, in quite the same way as Layton. [Nov 2009, p.104]

Proportionally, far more casual players will finish this than ever finished Super Metroid or Contra III, and their enjoyment might even compare. Sat nobly between emulated coin-ops and overpriced turkeys on high street shelves, Shadow Complex is something of a Live Arcade landmark.

For all its foibles, Raven's brand of brazen, aimless carnage is a gruesome thrill with just enough dynamism in each battle to keep its anachronistic heart beating. [Oct 2009, p.88]

Even when you disregard the charmless character, ignore the relentless music and eventually manage to tame the handling, something comes along to spoil the party - an odiously placed bump on the road that causes an unnecessary spin, the sudden inability to respawn even when off the track, resulting in a lost race... the list goes on. [Jan 2010, p.90]

Over the Top has tempered its obvious ambition with skill and understanding, and the result is a game that’s refreshingly quick to take flight.

If there's a benefit to the game's focus on local co-op multiplayer, it's that players can stand suicide watch over each other for when the awfulness of it all finally overwhelms them. [Oct 2009, p.97]

Design flaws include a bizarre decision to cordon off most of the ship after completion, locking away any unique items you previously overlooked. Much of the game commendably favours stealth players but the rest can feel shambolic.

While you won't necessarily win without some loyal subjects from your friends list, there's a deceptive amount of fun you can have while trying. [Oct 2009, p.94]

That teetering battle between pride and strategy than ensues every time you decide whether to comprehensively flatten a villain with an unnecessary monosyllabic flourish or gamble on saving it for your next target, hoping the board doesn’t get scrambled before you get a chance to show off.

Puzzle Bobble's hardly become a bad game, it just doesn't seem interested in getting any better. [Oct 2009, p.99]

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.

‘Splosion Man lives up to his name, providing a burst of exciting, arresting fresh IP that significantly changes the landscape around.

Every moment feels like it's been lavished with attention; Little King's Story is as rich as it is long, and it's a very lengthy game indeed. [May 2009, p.90]

What felt greedy before is on yet more dubious ground here - the feeling of tactical scope missing from the singleplayer campaign is largely due to Square Enix cutting out the goods to sell at a later date. [Oct 2009, p.99]

A simple, finely tuned and comprehensive shooter that only rarely wobbles. [Sept 2009, p.100]

A perfectly sized, expertly-crafted romp, Pacific gives other download games their marching orders. [Aug 2009, p.97]

ArmA 2 isn’t just dogmatic and unforgiving – it’s also very awkward in its construction and the weight of its ambition frequently proves too much for the sometimes-brilliant main campaign to pull off. Nonetheless, its vast, detailed world and unapologetic dynamism turn the game from sandbox to snowglobe – something you can’t resist shaking up just to see how it looks.