Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

On retreading the levels enemy attacks become predictable puppet shows, with mad-eyed soldiers lining up to get killed exactly where they did many times before. It's the kind of repetition more commonly associated with lightgun games these days. [Christmas 2003, p.109]

It's a great deal of fun for the first 20 minutes, but once you've mastered your ships and applied your favourite skull decals, there's little to keep you hooked. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.110]

While Monster Madness does much to scratch the co-op itch, and offers some titillating online modes, it sullies it with patchy execution and a series of poor design choices. [Sept 2007, p.93]

The only area in which the game satisfyingly realises the twisted ideas is in mental ailments. [July 2008, p.96]

It's an amusingly quirky notion, but it wears thin as you empty bullets into pile after pile of stationary stationery. [Issue#413, p.114]

By the second of third level you’ll feel that Get Even has shown you everything it has. The odd moment of redemption comes with an excellent boss here, a Taito in-joke there, and the invaders. [Feb 2009, p.95]

The laser-like focus on the personal side of management is to the exclusion of all else – the lack of a match engine is one thing, but there's no detail whatsoever to the football your team is playing.

The net result is a product that can't be faulted on its accessibility, but has less subtlety than ever with which to hide the inherently, and sometimes unrelentingly, mechanical process that caring for your sims represents. [Mar 2007, p.85]

Enormous potential. However, those moments where you feel justice being done are few, and a brave mess is still, after all, a mess. [Apr 2004, p.104]

It’s during its harder moments that Crimson Dragon pushes you away. A combination of heavy handling and poor communication make you feel hoodwinked rather than outmatched, and the ability to buy continues with Gems you’ve purchased with real money sullies the challenge. It’s a good job that the Zen gardens of those easier levels are always there to return to.

For the promising set-up, it collapses in the heat of battle. Nearly a full third of the PSP’s screen is filled by a clumsy status display, clipping the peripheral vision that would have been so useful in the chaos of a Dynasty scrum. [Feb 2005, p.79]

It's competent but insufficient and disparate, full of ideas that haven't been fleshed out or meaningfully linked, as if it's all stripped back from a broader original vision. [Issue#139, p.120]

With little to differentiate fighters beyond base levels of aggression, symmetrical faces and notions of characters they’re meant to represent, it doesn’t take too long for Balboa to flag, or indeed trudge to an unceremonious end. [Mar 2007, p.87]

In borrowing from stories that are so often about one kind of ambiguity, Empire of Sin creates another: the ambiguity of too many numbers and systems for any to feel significant. [Issue#354, p.114]

The game’s unique honour system (requiring you to tag and then kill enemies in exchange for upgrades) proves largely irrelevant, and in the heat of battle, toggling your firstperson view and wrestling with the analogue nub to track fast-moving targets proves frustrating and unwieldy. [Jan 2008, p.88]

Aeterna Noctis retains enough of the best parts of its inspiration that it should satisfy undemanding players with time on their hands. [Issue#368, p.122]

The game is its own worst enemy, as its fully featured hands-on action never quite sits comfortably with roleplaying combat. [July 2010, p.99]

Why roam freely (when the game lets you, which is by no means always) when all that’s out there to find is an empty trek between jarring episodes of production-line gaming? [Christmas 2005, p.105]

It's certainly got strong production in its favour, but needs better direction - what's been gained in grunt and intensity has been lost in terms of poise and refinement, resulting in an uncomfortable middle ground between truly outrageous action and the disciplined choreography of the original. [Jan 2007, p.74]

Getting monkey into position, and camera into position behind him, in time to make your desperate dash for a whirling mechanism has everything to do with the old-school frustrations of instant-death gaming and nothing to do with the effortless application of skill that the first game delivered so appealingly. [Feb 2006, p.91]

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]

It’s a perfectly serviceable adventure that you’ll play through with few frustrations, but will likely have forgotten by the following morning. Ratchet and Clank’s story ends, then, not with a bang, but with a half-hearted shrug.

Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

Power Tennis has depth only insofar as there's a great deal to do – medals to win, records to beat and tournament trophies to hold aloft – but all the frills and gimmicks overcomplicate something that wasn't broken in the first place. [Jan 2005, p.92]

It seems Buena Vista has gone from making lacklustre titles out of much-loved franchises to making a reasonable game from the coldest of franchises. [Mar 2007, p.82]

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

In practice, Tokobot offers so little to challenge either the reflexes or the mind that it boils down to one long, plodding, gentle ushering from one side of a large, mostly vacant level to the other, with nothing to reward self-determined exploration and an identical series of Pavlovian cues to let the player know that it’s time to switch to the next formation. [Feb 2006, p.89]

Ultimately, though, the derivative puzzling and repetitive grid of traversing Sker House at an absolutely snail's pace makes Maid of Sker more like a crawling simulation than a game that truly makes our skin crawl. [Issue#349, p.104]

Polish and beauty is the essence of ULALA, and while this conversion is superb, it's simply not made for the small screen. It's large, loud and beautiful, and that's how it should be. [Oct 2003, p.103]

Handling is the biggest setback here. In a sport where cars spend most of their time dancing on tarmac, gravel and snow there is very little feeling of cadence conveyed in Sega Rosso's game. Ultimately, your money could be better spent on something else. [March 2003, p.106]

While Monster Madness does much to scratch the co-op itch, and offers some titillating online modes, it sullies it with patchy execution and a series of poor design choices. [Sept 2007, p.93]

It feels as though Konami channelled Franz Kafka to produce a retelling of the myth of Sisyphus. [May 2018, p.116]

The thrills are just too short-lived, and it simply doesn't stand up as a more boisterous alternative to the razor-sharp focus and freshness of "Project 8" on 360. [Jan 2007, p.83]

It's too easy and basic for adults and likely too mellow for children drawn in by its bubbly aesthetic. It's a shame, because Okabu's is a quietly charismatic world, one destined to be overlooked thanks to its grind of an opener and failure to match its visual vigour with mechanics that haven't been used better elsewhere.

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]

Track & Field and its ilk have few pretensions beyond being disposable and frantic multiplayer diversions; Beijng 2008 has made its events marginally more taxing, but no more joyful. [Aug 2008, p.100]

It’s easy to admire the developer’s evident love for the NES game – it’s clearly been handled with the kind of care only a genuine fan would provide – but after a few repetitive hours bouncing around DuckTales’ pretty but unremarkable worlds you’ll begin to realise that some treasures aren’t worth the effort of unearthing.

A clever game, then, but not a particularly fulfilling one. [Sept 2009, p.99]

Rogue Agent is the result of design by committee: a safe, reasonably accomplished but uninspiring offering which neither excels nor progresses its genre in any way. [Christmas 2004, p.82]

It's a game whose very structure serves to undermine its often excellent writing; that, in the end, is what really stings. [May 2018, p.118]

The most dedicated of slash ‘em up fans may be willing to ride out the disparity between Nano Breaker’s furious highs and comatose lows, but this just doesn’t feel like an experiment made for the player’s benefit – unless it’s one borne out by the next Castlevania. [March 2005, p.91]

Thanks in no small part to the slavish love of motion capture over more manageable keyframe animation, the fights in Icon are sluggish, crude and practically underwater when it comes to control. [Apr 2007, p.79]

Series fans will know better than to expect an epic, but even by its own standards Kinda Funky News Flash is a short game...After 20 years in the shadows, Ulala's return to the spotlight involves a few too many missed beats to recommend. [Issue#344, p.120]

Balancing real-time action with tactical micro-management proves beyond Vanpool. With arbitrary limitations placed on an already meagre cash supply, and towers and fortifications proving equally flimsy, what little money is available is best poured into single-use items and permanent ability boosts for Dillon.

Despite the simplicity of the puzzles, it's an unnecessarily bewildering game for the first hour or so. There's an RPG's worth of menus, full of abilities and stats you just don't need to know about yet. [Mar 2004, p.109]

Its problem is what the missions ask of you: they are simply too tough. Trained soldiers would and should mutiny when asked to carry out the tasks AA routinely asks of you. [Mar 2007, p.84]

The detection of item-grabbing slashes is often fumbled, and since moving your finger can leave you prone to missing punches, it ruins a promising risk-reward system.

All good clean fun, then, but it's not really anything we haven't seen before. [Nov 2010, p.95]

The sad fact is that this combat mostly fails to ignite interest, and combined with its cruel difficulty spikes, occasional glitches and a severe differential in graphical quality between 360 and PS3 versions (the latter losing out), Turok's strong contextualisation and smattering of brave ideas get buried. [Mar 2008, p.92]

A nice core bit of gameplay tarted up with unnecessary pretensions and stretched too thin, even over its short playtime. It feels like a minigame from a bigger title – specifically, those minigames from God of War and Dead Space 2 in which you guide a plummeting hero through falling debris. What it doesn’t feel like is a full a game – let alone the artsy indie hero Sony would like it to be.

A reminder of both what you adore and abhor in a series that's had its simple joys diluted by flash-in-the-plan iterations and ideas.

The weapon animations remain gorgeous to the last drop, but what about the other two-thirds? [Issue#424, p.108]

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 resounding impression is of a game that has not emerged from early access because it was finished, but simply because its developer needed it to. Wolcen's early success may suggest that was a wise decision. We do not expect it to last for long. [Issue#344, p.122]

"Quotation Forthcoming"

Remarkably compelling. But there's only so much joy to be found in repetition, particularly when dogfighting interludes are so mannered. Ultimately, it's difficult to recall what all the fuss was ever about. [May 2003, p.100]

Tomodachi Life proves beguiling and boring in equal measure. [Issue#424, p.110]

As gorgeous as it is, though, even a pair of 3D glasses wouldn't make the action any more entertaining to sit through. [Issue#393, p.106]

Platforming only ever threatens to be acceptable, lacking both the freedom and finesse that further development time might have granted, while the lightcycle sections - well, there might not be any way of saving them. [Jan 2011, p.96]

With all the colour and oddness Date Everything musters, it can't overcome the fact that it treats its characters like objects. [Issue#413, p.122]

This is a far more systemically diverse game than Heavy Rain, and its story is certainly more believably told through Holmes, Dafoe and a fine supporting cast. Yet this is a game almost entirely bereft of tension, one in which failure goes largely unpunished and is almost always inconsequential. There is emotion here, but it’s felt passively, as spectator instead of player.

In its wake, Dosa Divas can often only muster the kind of anti-capitalist polemic we've heard many times before. [Issue#424, p.112]

The Anacrusis simply feels like "Left 4 Dead" - its formula almost unchanged in 15 years - in a sequinned disco jumpsuit. [Issue#393, p.110]

What we're left with is an update that is out of date, a reimagining without enough imagination. To be this simplistic, the game needed a masterful melee system and a range of inspiring enemies; it tries, but it doesn't fully deliver on either count. [Jan 2011, p.98]

It’s all personality and no muscle, a prime victim for getting sand kicked in its face by the numerous RPG beefcakes currently swaggering around on PS2. [July 2006, p.92]

While it's initially exciting to explore Wheel World with just a pair of wheels and an agenda of your own making, that summer-afternoon aimlessness soon begins to go flat. [Issue#414, p.112]

Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

What we're left with is an update that is out of date, a reimagining without enough imagination. To be this simplistic, the game needed a masterful melee system and a range of inspiring enemies; it tries, but it doesn't fully deliver on either count. [Jan 2011, p.98]

Housemarque has certainly put in the effort, but the twin-stick shooter might simply be more rewarding when you're skidding over the smooth-scrolling surface of one of Super Stardust's wraparound arenas than stumbling through darkened alleyways with a tangle of undead shambling after you. [Jan 2011, p.100]

Ultimately, there's a good Pac-Man game buried beneath the hours of Shadow Labyrinth's trend-chasing mediocrity. [Issue#414, p.116]

You've seen most of what it has to offer before you've even unlocked all of the sculpting tools. [Issue#424, p.118]

But while it might be unreasonable to expect EVERY VR title to advance the medium, surely it's not too much to ask that a game develops an idea or two beyond its own first hour? [Issue#393, p.118]

It’s a game that, for all the intricacy of its systems and the charm of its painterly world, feels oddly empty.

But for parents and adults, Undercover is a less inviting prospect, even with its satirical undertone. It’s a plastic facsimile of GTA – a game that was hardly humourless to begin with, and one that has already spawned a genre’s worth of more sophisticated rivals and clones.

Call Of Juarez has mined its source material well, collecting a wealth of imagery that it then squanders on lacklustre and dysfunctional gameplay. [Aug 2007, p.93]

At first glance, this appears to be a game with a clear and confident vision, but playing it for a period of time reveals how much it's split between underdeveloped mechanics. [Issue#420, p.100]

Beating the near-infallible AI to the line is a challenge best described as punitive, and periodically maddeningly unbalanced. [Mar 2008, p.103]

What a shame. Days Gone is ripe with potential, but it's always in those moments before something actually happens: when you hear the rumbling of thunder heralding an impending downpour, or a distant engine letting you know tourble's on the way. But when it all kicks off, the spell is broken. This is "State of Decay" without the stakes, "The Last of Us" without Naughty Dog's storytelling chops, and the most generic, overlong open-world game around. [Issue#333, p.106]

Jumping damages the delicate balance of mechanics that makes the series so distinctive and pushes Rearmed 2 into the wider genre bracket of run-and-gun platforming. [Mar 2011, p.105]

As chaotic and unrefined as it is, however, it motors on with a definite sense of purpose and provides a solid sense of fulfilment, if not necessarily one of accomplishment. [Christmas 2005, p.110]

Aptly, Outbreak is an experiment gone wrong; it indicates the possibilities of an online horror title, but also that Resident Evil's traditional structure can't achieve them. [June 2004, p.102]

A more novel addition is a crafting system lets you convert items you find into items and potions, but it functions more like a secondary currency than an alchemical minigame. There’s nothing egregiously wrong with Mini Ninjas, but nor is there a reason to give up on genre highlights like Punch Quest and Jetpack Joyride.

With only the blocky aesthetic and familiar monsters to show for its heritage, whether you're here for the Minecraft or the Dungeons, you'll feel that much more could have been excavated from both. [Issue#347, p.96]

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]

Why roam freely (when the game lets you, which is by no means always) when all that’s out there to find is an empty trek between jarring episodes of production-line gaming? [Christmas 2005, p.105]

Not sensing the damage you're imparting and receiving makes skirmishes seem arbitrary (you'll rely on the HUD reporting your XP wins to know you've taken out enemies at long range), while explosions - in a game based on destruction - pack no punch. [Mar 2011, p.97]

To put it in gastronomic terms surely familiar to Air Riders' star, we're left with the feeling of having visited an all-you-can-eat buffet. There's an array of options available, but tucking in to any one of them is unlikely to satisfy, because at the game's core is a soggy souffle that collapses almost before we can get the fork in. After two decades in the kitchen, was it too much to hope that this otherwise talented chef might have come up with something a little less...lightweight? [Issue#419, p.110]

Nimble Quest is cute and compelling, but it’s also a cynical complication of a classic design.

As a piece of world-building as assured as this feels like it deserves something more dynamic - something like a BioShock or a Deathloop, with you cast as an agent of chaos in an alien ecosystem. [Issue#378, p.110]

Between a legacy it can't quite shake and a jumble of borrowed mechanics that fit neither the format nor the fantasy, Gotham Knights simply isn't it. [Issue#379, p.114]

Minus the combat, Benedict Fox is Metroidvania reduced to its most basic form, where all that matters are the platforms you can reach and the doors you can open. [Issue#385, p.116]

So why, despite jokes about this not being the golden age of comics any more, does Dispatch feel like a retrograde step? [Issue#419, p.118]

Imagine building one of the most visually arresting games in recent memory, infusing the track design with genuine ingenuity, then having your work cruelly undermined by a learning curve shallower than a hill in Holland. RE is simply not challenging enough. [March 2003, p94]

The Vault is best left to its long and drifting exile. [Issue#388, p.114]

Plenty to sink your teeth into, then, but for a game where you play as a shark, we expected more bite. [Issue#347, p.107]

The game simply folds in extra complications. [Issue#379, p.121]

It's perhaps because the title benefits from such a high production spend … that the average design and execution becomes more pronounced. [Mar 2004, p.101]