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]

Black Sigil's big-picture rewards are too fleeting and familiar to justify the considerable effort. [Sept 2009, p.101]

Omega 6 has value as a curio and as part of Imamura's legacy, but only mildly as entertainment. [Issue#409, p.121]

The flash and gore are toned down, and the henchmen never get any smarter, but that bond with the protagonist – and that investment in his salvation – make the whole game worthwhile. [Apr 2009, p.117]

A hastily assembled three-in-one anachronism which proves just one thing: that terrifying and terrible are not mutually exclusive. [Apr 2010, p.93]

While the arcade version of the game (included here in its entirety) is not without serious flaws, this interpretation exacerbates those that exist and throws in significant new ones. [Jan 2008, p.87]

Alas, a little too often, Recompile only seems to prove we should be careful what we wish for. [Issue#363, p.118]

Star Wars: Galaxies does not offer fans of the franchise any heroics. There is nothing dramatic or cinematic about the MMRPG game model as defined by Everquest, and Galaxies does very little to break that mould. [Oct 2003, p.100]

Despite its lunges for the mainstream, in other words, The Act has forgotten one of the most important things about escapist cinema and cartoons: they generally don't require this much effort.

Well engineered and, while unexceptional in almost every fashion, it does boast a superb level of attention to detail. [June 2003, p.104]

A cynical, if predictable approach to monetisation also sours the experience.

Rather than gradually introduce the many plates you have to spin, it puts them all into action at once, starting with 20 near-identical walkover levels and then spiking brutally when it assumes you've worked everything out. [Dec 2010, p.101]

The Good Life makes for a charmingly eccentric getaway for the 12 hours its story lasts, though you'd hardly want to spend weeks, let along months, there. [Issue#365, p.116]

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.

It’s the refusal to broaden the series’ horizons, though, which will serve to damage Sony’s oft-forgotten franchise most in the long run. It leaves Confrontation feeling stale and lost among the recent crowd of tac-shooters. [Christmas 2008, p.100]

Sharper humour would have helped make these folk more endearing to us, too. [Issue#397, p.108]

Pleasantly meditative as it can be, it feels worn and ragged in places, that uncomfortable woolly itch coming just too often to ignore. [Issue#366, p.121]

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]

Heroes consistently relies on its cartoon charm to plaster over its messier elements. [Sept 2009, p.92]

That all-important momentum is absent: the physics of movement just feels wrong, and as such you cannot rely on it. [Issue#365, p.123]

Its basic form is a succession of things that you hit with little emotion or interest. Approaching such a task co-operatively can only distract you for so long. [June 2009, p.95]

Away from the restrictions enforced by the licence the game improves. Free Roam gives you unlimited access to the excellently designed LA streets and rooftops, while Stunt Mode also takes greater advantage of the exquisite physics engine. But why are there no added incentives such as stunt scoring or accumulators? A missed opportunity. [Oct 2003, p.101]

Nobody, nobody at all, walks into a game shop and thinks: "Hey, goblins are pretty cool. Today I want to be a goblin." When the goblins in question have been rendered with almost no character or charm, this merely compounds the lack of emotional connection. [Mar 2004, p.106]

Many titles are likened to "Devil May Cry," but Van Helsing appropriates that game's structure with such brazen thoroughness that it might be seen as this generation's Great Giana Sisters. [July 2004, p.108]

For all Tina's spirited efforts as dungeon master, every aspect of the Borderlands experience is showing its age. The next instalment needs more than dismal puns and wonky guns if it's to avoid being the butt of the joke. [Issue#371, p.112]

Despite its problems, and they're not insignificant, Ancestors has an unusual magnetism. [Issue#337, p.116]

If you take a player to the extremes of in-game power, giving them the equivalent of a god mode against standard enemies, how can that be turned into something more engaging than a temporary plaything? [Nov 2008, p.90]

Haze is a distinctly unflattering addition to Playstation 3's library, embarrassingly reminiscent of the previous generation. [July 2008, p.88]

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]

At launch, matchmaking can't even manage to find a single game. [Issue#348, p.94]

Every one of its features you will find in better games elsewhere - with a strong emphasis on the plural, since Rune Factory 5 tries to cram in so many different genres. [Issue#371, p.116]

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]

Commander Video needs to be the bigger rectangle and step aside for the two final planned installments. [July 2010, p.103]

It's easy to over-rate launch titles thanks to the shock of the new, doubly so when the control scheme is as interesting as this one, but at its heart Red Steel is just another lever-pulling trawl through big rooms and S-shaped corridors. [Christmas 2006, p.77]

Were spirits to play a game while they waited in Purgatory, surely it would be Mario Party. It can take an age to get to the end, and the minigames are interspersed with a turgid board game section that tests the patience to its limits. [Jan 2004, p.109]

It all adds up to an uneven brawler, a game with the resources and technology to break through the walls of the developer's lineage but one unprepared to fully let go and take a chance. [Dec 2010, p.90]

3DS was the perfect opportunity to take Super Monkey Ball back to its GameCube glory days. Instead we find a game that has spent so many years honouring various types of hardware, it has forgotten its own original aim. [May 2011, p.102]

It’s sure to be a more compelling experience online, albeit one that relies heavily on the honour of your opponents, and its rough-edged charm is compulsive. [Mar 2007, p.87]

If this were a physical card game, we suspect it's be the kind people buy booster packs for solely to admire the art within, and never to play with. [Issue#374, p.120]

Being among the first of the console MOBAs, Guardians Of Middle-Earth could've been a gentle introduction to an intimidating genre, providing a welcoming hand for players new to the MOBA, but a split focus between accessibility and complexity means neither genre greenhorns nor greybeards will end up feeling truly satisfied.

Mario Kart isn't a racing game any more. It is a party game, and anyone buying it for anything more than frantic, foolish, social fun will grow tired of being cheated very quickly indeed. [Christmas 2003, p.98]

The puzzles are generic. [Issue#348, p.104]

Put simply, it regularly betrays the cyber-ninja fantasy it's peddling. The speedruns will doubtless be dazzling, and Ghostrunner certainly LOOKS every bit the blockbuster it isn't. How unfortunate, then, that a game about a deadly assassin should suffer from so many critical failures in execution. [Issue#352, p.114]

Like any good zombie fiction, the real enemy in AZMD! isn't the walking dead, but the humans who created them.

By its publisher's standards, this is lower-division fodder. [Issue#374, p.123]

The game's failure to monopolise on its squad dynamic relegates it to a shooter-by-numbers, and its appeal is then further undercut by the fact that, while Barker clearly has a sense for the grotesque, it is the only note that Jericho plays. [Dec 2007, p.91]

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.

There are points of interest here, but they're scattered too far and wide to make this a worthwhile excursion. [Issue#398, p.118]

Solitaire is supposed to be an exercise in patience; we weren't expecting ours to be tested between levels, too. [Issue#352, p.121]

You may technically be present in this world, but you'll rarely feel truly connected to it. [Issue#322, p.106]

Even the most dedicated player’s are likely to fall out of love with the game more frequently than its promise of unstoppable motion and a world outside slate-grey corridors (which becomes more distant as the game progresses) can entice them back. [May 2005, p.83]

If there isn't a great deal of sophistication, there also isn't much in the way of mucking around. Flying up the screen making things go pop has been reliably entertaining for decades. [Oct 2005, p.95]

Evolution's successes entertain your mind's-eye view of what running a dinosaur theme park might be like, but its failures encourage you to imagine the game that could be made with this premise. [Issue#322, p.110]

It's essentially the slowest side-scrolling shoot 'em up you'll ever play, demanding you laboriously guide a submarine to the end of each level while avoiding damage and destroying evil submarines whose perfidy knows no bounds and warrants no backstory. [June 2011, p.97]

A frustrating port of an above-average game. Rather than attempting to significantly tweak Mafia's structure and narrative … the developer has attempted to replicate the PC experience to the letter. It has been only partially successful. [Mar 2004, p.109]

Often dwarfing the key action, these minigames are a manifestation of a series that’s been unrecognisably perverted from its original purpose, flashes of brilliance or speed only serving as a reminder of what has been lost. [Nov 2007, p.99]

A less accomplished but more immediate Ninja Gaiden, then, one that will temporarily distract newcomers and disappoint dedicated followers. Yet it feels destined to be forgotten by both audiences, chalked up as another casualty in the east's drive to conquer the west with bravado rather than its sought-after, ever-rarer Japanese steel.

Despite its numerous missteps, it's clear that this is a labour of love for its creators, whose fondness for the original is well know. [Aug 2016, p.118]

Constantine's narrative is compelling enough, and some excellent puzzles save it from the ignominy of being yet another average third-person movie tie-in, but only just... Yes it's uncomplicated, but still an engaging realisation of the source material. [Apr 2005, p.99]

The inheritance of wearisome combat, embarrassing characterisation and impoverished audio now joins a bevy of PSP-specific issues... Revelations does succeed in living up to its name, but we’d hoped that such disappointments weren’t the surprise it had in store. [Feb 2006, p.93]

Accentuat[es] Suda's often over-indulgent scriptwriting and accelerat[es] Mikami's brand of horror into a hyper-gothic, shock-free world of bright lights. With a little more restraint and focus on the core experience, Shadows Of The Damned could have been the action thrill ride Garcia Hotspur thinks it is. Instead the game – like Hotspur himself – is all talk.

Repetitive and crude, this is a game that is often let down by the rough edges of a development team that didn't seem to have the time or the money to realise its ambitions. [June 2003, p.102]

For all its potential, Infected delivers precious little in either world: a singleplayer that blooms too late, and an underdeveloped online experience that withers too soon. [Jan 2005, p.85]

The game could do with a more flexible camera. When the tentacle outgrows the screen in Snake you find yourself failing for collisions you can't even see. [Aug 2010, p.98]

Vampyr is a set of ideas that cohere on paper but not in practice, coupled with a dreary setting that becomes less atmospheric the longer you spend with it. [Issue#322, p.114]

This is more of an evolutionary vestige than a healthy new growth. Bloober might have done better to let it die. [Issue#356, p.92]

It'll be happier on PSP, where competitors and attention spans are in short supply, and the more energetic interaction offered by the Wii should play to its drop-in simplicity and haphazard dogfights, but on PS2 it's too obviously anachronistic and quickly exhausted. [May 2007, p.93]

As a free download, Frobisher Says may not be a waste of your money, but there are many better diversions on Vita to occupy your time.

Away from the restrictions enforced by the licence the game improves. Free Roam gives you unlimited access to the excellently designed LA streets and rooftops, while Stunt Mode also takes greater advantage of the exquisite physics engine. But why are there no added incentives such as stunt scoring or accumulators? A missed opportunity. [Oct 2003, p.101]

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]

The Gunstringer's biggest problem, however, is that it's a score-based shooter with little incentive to return. With only one weapon type available at any given time, there's none of the tactical interplay between attacks that makes aiming for high scores in Child Of Eden so tempting.

There are a lot of interesting ideas in here. Roaming in smellovision mode is the game's greatest tool for making you feel like you're piloting an animal. It makes exploring a dull path feel way more exciting than it should be. [Jan 2004, p.102]

While Heritage Of Kings has taken the series in a new direction without completely uprooting itself from the settlement-crafting past, it’s not been a successful evolution. Even the most lethargic and undemanding of gamers will quickly become bored of the gambolling wildlife and labouring peasants. [March 2005, p.87]

Tales’ traditionally creative dungeon design comes to the rescue, giving each chapter a genuine sense of adventure as you anticipate what organic shimmers or high-tech gloss might be in store. [Apr 2006, p.90]

The fifth Tony Hawk's title doesn't just suffer because of its embarrassing attempts to be edgy and urban, it's poorer because it lacks the verve and imagination so prevalent in previous iterations. [Christmas 2003, p.122]

Had Climax been able to condense the best parts of all three games - China's pared-down and accessible design, India's looks, Russia's two-character dynamic - into one, we might've had a valuable offshoot, but ultimately this is another Assassin's Creed that succumbs to inconsistency and bloat. [April 2016, p.110]

It's disappointing mostly because its strongest elements, from its dialogue to its excellent soundtrack (see "Radio ga ga"), are packaged within a limp rerun of its superior predecessor, providing scant few reasons to face the ghosts of the past a second time. [Issue#387, p.112]

The joy of Pirates of the Caribbean is to be found in the variety of the elements delivered - sword fights and canon battles happily sit alongside contraband trade route management. But ultimately none offer a tremendous amount of depth. [Nov 2003, p.107]

Beyond breaking a set challenge score for each level, the prospect feels more like an endurance challenge than a great deal of fun. Strange Scaffold thus shows once again that it has no shortage of slick ideas. With this hook, though, we need a little more to keep us on the line. [Issue#412, p.123]

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

For a while, Arca's Path promises to be a new kind of VR game, but in the end its problems are all too familiar. [Jan 2019, p.121]

Away from the restrictions enforced by the licence the game improves. Free Roam gives you unlimited access to the excellently designed LA streets and rooftops, while Stunt Mode also takes greater advantage of the exquisite physics engine. But why are there no added incentives such as stunt scoring or accumulators? A missed opportunity. [Oct 2003, p.101]

It's not lazy and unworkable, then, merely pleasant, compromised, and irrelevant. [Mar 2010, p.98]

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]

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]

Rarely does dying feel like the player's fault and, in typical "Sonic Adventure" fashion, the best bits are when you find that the majority of control has been taken away from you, and you're flung around the world at escape velocity. [Mar 2004, p.105]

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]

Little Nightmares III is partially redeemed by its final third, as it picks up considerably both in terms of imagination and construction. [Issue#417, p.108]

On a console where tried and tested ideas continue to dominate, it would be wrong to entirely dismiss an experiment like this, even if the result is only fleetingly worthwhile.

Your main objective is the bane of the modern FPS: follow a little blue arrow while shooting things, with the odd escort or protect responsibility thrown in to make you turn around occasionally. It's average justice dished out to the licence, but nothing more. [Christmas 2003, p.121]

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]

Crytek's landed on the App Store, then, but it's only half of the company: the wrong half.

The Full Metal Furies experience is as patchy in the hands as its attempts at humour. [Apr 2018, p.118]

Nobody, nobody at all, walks into a game shop and thinks: "Hey, goblins are pretty cool. Today I want to be a goblin." When the goblins in question have been rendered with almost no character or charm, this merely compounds the lack of emotional connection. [Mar 2004, p.106]

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]

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]

In miring the action in a crayon-written plot and applying the brakes to anything going too fast, the screaming thrills it does provide are the exception, not the norm. [Oct 2010, p.97]

Miyazaki, Sakamoto and Igarashi, you suspect, would be resolutely unimpressed. [Apr 2018, p.122]