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

The game’s ambition reaches further than perhaps its budget could reach, thus failing to either deliver or explore its ideas as they were no doubt envisioned. [Nov 2008, p.95]

Acclaim's latest manages to tick all the required futuristic race sim boxes, except the one titled 'memorable'. There's one really good thing about XGRA - it's all over very quickly. [Nov 2003, p.109]

An impressively comprehensive, reasonably captivating though ultimately flawed experience. [June 2005, p.95]

As a portable title, Untold Legends knows that its payoff has to be immediate and frequent and it graciously complies, with even the briefest morning commute diversion yielding at least one quest completed, at least one level gained and frequently another full wardrobe change rounding off a constant feeling of accomplishment. [June 2005, p.86]

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]

A curiosity worth looking at. [Sept 2009, p.100]

With the game's over-reliance on backtracking and aimless overworld item hunts, another shooting segment is never more than ten seconds away, resulting in a jarring, disjointed flow... In the end, Sigma Star Saga does justice to neither of its two loosely conjoined games. [Oct 2005, p.95]

Reduced to its simplest terms and stripped of its highly aspiring overtones, Rising is essentially a competent shooter with its heart in the right place, and a ton of ideas that never gel into any cohesive whole. [Aug 2005, p.92]

But if you can ignore the plain looking game world and suspect AI and buy into the mercenary fantasy, there's enough fortune and glory here to give a warlord reason to make it a home.

By the time we reached the end of Outlast 2 we felt drained for all the wrong reasons. In leaving the confines of its predecessor's psychiatric hospital setting for the wilds of southern Arizona, Red Barrels' horror series has somehow become more linear and less pliable. And now, in the long shadow cast by Capcom's excellent Resident Evil VII, Red Barrels' macabre tricks are made to appear somewhat less dazzling. [June 2017, p.102]

A solid and intricate Armored Core with the best online offering yet, lacking only the visual sheen to make the energy and pace of its combat shine. It's still an acquired taste, but once you've whetted your appetite, it's hard to resist.

Fundamentally a little anaemic, lacking the kind of acute design which would either make its stages distinct or its basic operation continually engaging. [Sept 2008, p.94]

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

This is a game whose best moments are diluted by a torrent of filler, whose beauty is obscured by its technical shortcomings, and whose obvious potential is squandered by a lack of polish. That weird orange sky is, alas, the least of its problems. [Christmas 2016, p.110]

The waywardness of the physics and AI are easier to forgive in a game with such a taste for ludicrous knock-on effects. [Issue#328, p.104]

There's still much enjoyment to be found in the interim grinding between boss fights, but Lords Of The Fallen's greatest sin is that all feels rather soulless. [Christmas 2014, p.116]

Now, the optimal experience is restricted to the privileged few. [Issue#406, p.112]

Playing Gungrave OD, there's a nagging sensation that the design team experienced the original through a shop window...In attempting to meet criticisms of Gungrave's single-minded focus, that focus has been squandered. The result is unlikely to satisfy. [May 2004, p.110]

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]

The springy physics are almost perfect, giving you just enough control even as you hurtle through the air at speed. [Nov 2016, p.118]

What should be a straightforward tale of coming to terms with loss introduces a few too many complexities and characters, muddling its attempts to explain what happens when we shuffle off this mortal travelator. [Issue#379, p.123]

At its most intense, Exoprimal is aakin to playing an EDF game without the accompanying performance issues. [Issue#388, p.100]

Perhaps the saddest misunderstanding in Assault, though, is its pedestrian, linear structure. There's nothing wrong with it, but the multiple routes and secret branches of the earlier titles bound levels into a taut, short, player-directed adventure that was always seamless and could never be fully experienced in one sitting... Without it, Assault is a jumbled, disposable thrill. [Apr 2005, p.92]

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 potent and upsetting work that leaves a deep impression, spreading and darkening like a bruise. [Dec 2015, p.120]

As narrative adventures go, this is like the wonky piece of pottery we find after packing up Tess's things: handsomely rendered but misshapen and disappointingly empty. [Issue#397, p.110]

Once you get past the surface, the environments are lacking in engaging activities, largely consisting of requests to hunt a certain amount of monsters with gradually diminishing returns. [Issue#361, p.108]

All the games, even the good ones, outlast their welcome. [Jan 2008, p.90]

If the game is to flourish, Rare must develop the basic structures that compel modern players to return even on the days when nobody gets kidnapped by the Kraken. Sooner or later, we all have to grow up. [June 2018, p.108]

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]

Suda is an undisciplined designer. As with his comedy, he throws every idea at his game design, hoping something will stick. He's an artistic, if idiosyncratic, thinker, so invariably some ideas do succeed, but the assault of jokes, ideas and vignettes ends up as unwieldy as it is characterful. The result is a game in which there's as much to celebrate as to berate, as much to admire as there is to admonish.

Occasionally gripping but frequently unfulfilling, Sniper Elite V2 comes in at a heavy price for a package that's all gore and little reward.

After some hit-and-miss experimentation, SOCOM needs refreshing, and this more aggressive approach is aiming in the right direction, even if it isn't a direct hit. [June 2011, p.93]

It's the kind of scrappy contender you want to root for, but while its battle camera keeping you at a distance proves a smart move, the same can't be said for its story. [Issue#378, p.119]

You can call it feature creep or over-ambition, but it's the surfeit of content that almost buries the game's achievements. [June 2010, p.100]

"quotation Forthcoming"

If you're still wondering whether to give it a go, we politely refer you to the title. [Issue#358, p.120]

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]

Once you’ve wiped away the layer of gore, you’re left with an experience that, expectedly, offers limited entertainment. [March 2005, p.85]

A consuming, flowing and sparky fighting game that, like Rocky himself, is as defiant as it is aged. Yet it smacks of trying to draw out the dying moments of a well-flogged horse.

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]

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]

Ends up feeling like it’s been built by PC game developers obsessed with quick saves. There’s absolutely no creative latitude; it’s a case of remembering where enemies appear and getting them before they get you. [May 2005, p.86]

Shadowrun has too many cooks: it’s a heady broth initially, and the possibilities might seem unmatched, but ultimately it turns out to be limited fun. [Aug 2007, p.88]

But content is no substitute for quality, and while Sniper Elite III might have made for an engaging design document, it isn’t much of a game.

Naturally, it isn’t as attractive as its console cousin, though zoom down to eye level during its majestic sunsets and the shanties belted out by your crew make for a reasonable facsimile of the console game.

To see it submit to mobile gaming's worst tendencies, rather than make any effort to be different, to be better, is galling. It may be flashy and efficient as both a Diablo game and a mobile game, but Immortal offers little that is bold, ambitious or innovative. Instead, its structure and pacing is designed with one goal in mind: to squeeze as much cash out of every player as it can. [Issue#374, p.110]

There’s a satisfying Shadow Complex-meets-Smash-Bros. style romp somewhere in The Showdown Effect, but it’s buried beneath gameplay mechanics that interfere with the joys its premise suggests, and there are currently stability issues with the servers that demand some urgent attention.

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]

Sega Superstars Tennis is well-crafted, lovingly garish, and it plays a solid game. [Apr 2008, p.97]

This is a sorely flawed game, but also a truly majestic one... a beautiful and ambitious manifesto for what games can give you that nothing else can. [June 2004, p.98]

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]

Even if some of the fundamental stuff has been sacrificed to the creation of this huge world, Fuel still makes it across the finish line on a far-from-empty tank. [July 2009, p.97]

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]

The overriding sensation is that, 18 years of waiting later, this is not the game we had dreamed of... And despite the areas in which it clearly struggles, Shenmue III does ultimately leave us wanting to see how those plot developments are resolved, and to take our virtual tourism to a new frontier. Whether we, and Hazuki, will get that opportunity... we'll see. [Issue#341, p.98]

The relentless thrill of one half of it dragged down by the barren, boring needless sprawl of the other. [Issue#334, p.110]

Some elements of story and gameplay are left disappointingly underdeveloped, and the grand environmental puzzles of the opening section become all but absent in the later locations - but when Belli's running for her life, you won't stop to notice.

Suda has a punk attitude to amking games, so at this point we decide to adopt a punk attitude to playing them. We put down the controller, and walk away. [March 2019, p.114]

It's certainly going out with a bang. [Sept 2010, p.97]

Infuriatingly, Dissidia NT's focus on 3V3, its limited modes and lack of beginner-friendly packaging means that, as the online well of competition runs dry, we're repeatedly matched with a single opponent with the remaining four slots filled by incompetent AI. [Apr 2018, p.116]

There's tactical depth, then, but it's squandered on a game that doesn't understand the importance of balance.

Tycoon City’s desire to create a believable Big Apple has become an obsession, focusing on that end rather than the means of getting there. Where its peers extol freedom, this game calls the shots. [Mar 2006, p.90]

Unlike a good spy, however, it flubs its final execution. [Nov 2014, p.116]

It's a bloated, often incoherent game, but the most frustrating thing about Resident Evil 6 is that (Chris's focus on cover shooting aside) it's not an unimaginative one. It might feel padded at times, but Capcom always has something new to show you after the filler, such as a fresh campaign, another repellent boss form, a surprising enemy type, a co-op vehicle section, or an odd location to explore.

In isolation, it's a little thin. [Issue#400, p.122]

This sense of unevenness doesn't stop with the characters, and spreads to the design of the combat spaces. [Issue#400, p.118]

It can be hard to separate what is ironically bad and what is just, well, bad. [Issue#381, p.100]

Coupling this mostly successful strategic management to a realtime 3D world is unconvincing. More than that, the places where the RTS bits meet the shooting bits exist on some weird fringe of reality, where the symbolic shorthand of tactical games clashes absurdly with the pavement-pounding veracity we've learnt to expect from open-world crime. [May 2009, p.91]

For a title trying hard to inject personality into the genre, the experience feels irreparably mechanical. There's plenty of variety in terms of racing categories and machinery, but the overall lack of involvement is inexcusable. [Feb 2004, p.102]

While that means Soulstorm works - accidentally or otherwise - as a metaphor for the struggle of the working classes, all that toil rarely makes for a particularly engaging game. [Issue#359, p.112]

Those seeking a healthy eating plan are advised to look elsewhere: this is more likely to encourage consumption of hallucinogens than fruit and vegetables.

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.

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]

And while it's really more a snack than a buffet, it's one that will leave you full and contented, the acidic tang of competition cutting through all that sugar. [Issue#376, p.120]

Fun concepts brought low by crummy execution. Hand-to-hand combat can benefit from skill-based flourishes, but rarely goes beyond crude whomping. Large plains hide crannies galore, though you navigate them atop a horse with the handling of a bus.

While suspension of disbelief can stretch to accommodate the odd genuine flaw – inconsistencies between what objects you can and can’t punch through, for example – the sequel has too many to hide. [Feb 2007, p.80]

The stakes are raised in the closing stretch, but the drama is undercut by the story's brevity. [March 2017, p.106]

Even if some of the fundamental stuff has been sacrificed to the creation of this huge world, Fuel still makes it across the finish line on a far-from-empty tank. [July 2009, p.97]

There are scores of tiny, surprising, memorable reasons to like Blood Will Tell, and one big reason not to: the game can’t do them all justice. It’s as likely to aggravate as to amaze, and even if you appreciate its peculiar magic there are sections where that magic is spread so thin that it’s impossible not to fall out of its spell. [Dec 2005, p.109]

We can only guess that Possessor(s) needed more time than Heart Machine had left to give. Hopefully it hasn't run out altogether. [Issue#418, p.120]

As Ellis crushes his umpteenth fistful of twigs, you're merely reminded of a far superior, far more disturbing journey through the woods near Burkittsville. [Issue#338, p.110]

The meat of the game remains enjoyable yet underwhelming. [Dec 2007, p.96]

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]

It's an attractive game, too, its painterly art style and creative enemy design sullied only by the occasional drop in performance and that persistently unhelpful camera. If wrestling with the right analogue stick is no one's idea of a good time, such frustrations are worth enduring for a daring and sometimes exhilarating boss rush.

It is its maker's most successful free-to-play endeavour to date, even if that is to damn it with faint praise. [Sept 2015, p.118]

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]

There's practically no aspect that doesn't appear half-hearted. Black Isle's drawn-out death has undoubtedly poisoned Brotherhood, but it's hard to tell if there was ever a good game here to begin with. [May 2004, p.109]

Unaided solo players at the moment will either have to grind through normal to upgrade specials and stances to overcome the higher difficulties, or just take their chances alone. That aside, this is a smart, funny and faithful update to a game that hasn't aged well, and another feather in WayForward's retro cap.

Here's hoping we have bigger and deeper globe-trotting adventures with them in the future (provided we live to see it). [Issue#371, p.118]

The Precinct may boil policing down to a numbers game, but they never add up to much. [Issue#412, p.116]

It is especially abhorrent that this should happen in a game with almost unrivalled massmarket appeal...No doubt EA and its trio of development studios will fix this mess eventually, but the fact they deemed it fit for purpose in the first place is unavoidable, and damning in the extreme. Whatever happens next, we're afraid we don't patch review scores. [Issue#314, p.104]

The revelatory finale will leave you winded, but also heartened by Krillbite’s assertion that firstperson horror needn’t be confined by crumbling walls and straitjackets.

Where the game really succeeds, however, beyond providing a robust and solid, if unassuming model of explorative stealth and attack, is in fulfilling that old and oft-forgotten criterion - putting the gamer inside the movie. [Aug 2005, p.95]

Unfortunately, no sooner does Geist suggest it can blossom into something fresh and exciting that it's undermined at every turn by a frustrating insistence on being nothing more than a mundane firstperson shooter. [Oct 2005, p.88]

Every now and then, there's a flash of ingenuity. [Issue#373, p.122]

For anyone who hasn’t played a thirdperson platforming adventure game in the last five years, this might well serve as perfectly engaging and adequate entertainment. To everyone else, it serves as a very clear reference point for just how many evolutions the rest of the genre has undergone since the PS1’s heyday. [Oct 2005, p.96]

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]