Despite [North's] efforts, a couple of big laughs (the world's slowest lift; Drax's sincere literalism) and at least one genuine surprise, you're left with a gnawing sensation that Telltale's formula is becoming as creaky as its engine. And that's a feeling on which you're unlikely to get hooked. [July 2017, p.120]

A bigger problem still is the absence of a motivation to work with other players. Objectives are usually thinly disguised fetch quests or encounters where you must defend a character, usually Cass, against waves of enemies.

The Callisto Protocol's biggest misfire as a story is in failing to establish a similar rapport between player-character and world. Whatever concluding themes the plot may reach for, Lee is ultimately just a tourist here, clubbing and blasting his way through an edifice that only ever exists as an escape route. [Issue#380, p.104]

Ghosthunter is from the same studio that brought us "Primal," and it shows. With so many adventure games on the market, this is an interesting, but ultimately staid example. Like "Primal," Ghosthunter struggles to be fun. [Jan 2004, p.101]

Knack II improves on its predecessor in just about every department, which is to say it is merely flawed, rather than deeply so. Yet for all its foibles and frustrations, it's all pleasant enough. [Issue#311, p.112]

Once you let go (or are forced to), it all seems a little empty, like perhaps the only thing compelling you onward was the hypnotic effect of watching something go round and round. It doesn't take too many repeats before the theming rubs away, leaving only the exposed machine beneath. How much do we need to feel like we're on an adventure? A little more than this, it turns out. [Issue#357, p.120]

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]

The pace slows to exasperating levels as your nimble hunter trots around awkwardly solving a range of challenges. [Issue#353, p.114]

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.

"Will leave you wanting more at every turn," says Witch Strandings' Steam blurb; that's accurate, but not quite in the way intended. [Issue#375, p.121]

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]

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]

For an apparent passion project, this is a curiously listless affair. [Issue#375, p.122]

Ultimately, the momentum needed to truly get Generation Of Chaos in motion is an enormous commitment, and it's a game that just - only just, by the skin of those teeth that need to be pulled - manages to offer enough of a reward to make the investment worthwhile. [June 2006, p.96]

Rain’s core ideas remain frustratingly underdeveloped throughout, and it comes off more like a watercolour sketch than the oil painting that was promised.

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

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

Despite the aforementioned illusion of choice, there is really only one pre-determined way to conquer a given mission, each stealthy ability in reality a functional button-press to move the game along. [Apr 2007, p.87]

We emerge from Awakening's eight or so hours feeling as though we've spent much longer underground. [Issue#405, p.106]

The game’s sluggishness is all-pervasive, from Williams’ lethargic climb to the pauses between moving from third- to firstperson when you duck underwater... Death By Degrees progresses at such a sedate pace it’s almost relaxing. [March 2005, p.89]

Where there was charm and artistry in the old designs, choosing to detail those basic representations rather than reimagining them makes the look of the new game too generic by far. [Feb 2008, p.95]

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]

The concept may be a worthwhile shot in the dark, but its choppy execution is straight to video.

There's an abundance of character here, sure, but what Bleeding Edge needs most is a personality - preferably its own. [Issue#346, p.104]

The result is not a bad game, but Steelrising's beautiful and imaginative shell is wrapped around a workmanlike interior. [Issue#377, p.110]

The artwork goes some way to redeeming The Other Brothers; for all the detail to be found in the backgrounds and sprites, everything moves fluidly, but ultimately this is still a platforming game on the wrong platform.

The game requires very little of what its title suggests. (…) If you make a leap of deduction, the game won't proceed until your character, through exhaustive dialogue choices and object examinations, has caught up. [Feb 2011, p.98]

The game's major flaw, however, is its brevity. [July 2010, p.105]

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]

At worst, it feels like a hollow exercise in brand extension, a game where the brand itself is utilised to provide a recognisable veneer, and nothing more. It’s an amiable but unremarkable card-battling title, a robust but unspectacular game. [Feb 2006, p.93]

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

With the exception of the three bosses, there are no escalations or climaxes, no set-pieces, ambushes, chokepoints or challenges that involve anything more than the eradication of a roomful of enemies by way of laboured strafes and hops. [Sept 2005, p.98]

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]


In looking outside itself for inspiration, SSX has found a worthy infrastructure to establish an online community and culture. But this same approach has found the brand veering away from some of the fun and fireworks of yesteryear, leaving its more seductive silly side out in the cold.

It never quite feels natural, and you'll quickly find yourself pining for another recent Housemarque release, Nex Machina. [Issue#311, p.120]

There's no fluidity or smoothness to combos and combat, so matches are garbled and verge even closer to feeling arbitrary than fight games usually threaten to do. Limited entertainment. [June 2003, p.106]

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]

It’s too fantastical, its violence occurring anywhere and everywhere to ever-decreasing effect. [Apr 2008, p.88]

Without a clear motivating engine to drive your actions, it can feel like you're constantly playing just the top layer - that strategy wrapper of base-building, resource management and upgrade trees you might expect in an XCOM or Total War - without ever getting to play the actual game bit buried underneath. [March 2019, p.118]

There's no development to be found in the details of Paradise Lost's development to be found in the details of Paradise Lost's carefully crafted props - that's all saved for cutscenes and diary entries. [Issue#358, p.112]

Perhaps it's time to rebuild from scratch. [Issue#405, p.122]

All but shorn of their narrative context, the missions can feel rather inconsequential, disconnected from the truncated plot and lacking the variety and invention of some of the 3DS game’s later missions.

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]

There’s a fine-line between rote-learning frustration and seat-of-the-pants glee in on-rails arcade games, and Secret Rings wobbles either side of it perceptibly, but seldom stays on the wrong side for too long. [Apr 2007, p.81]

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]

Much has been sacrificed in service of making a brilliant central concept work, then - and yet it's the very thing robbing Legion of any star quality. [Issue#353, p.118]

This is not a modern game, no. Nor is it a particularly good one. But nor is it quite the disaster it often threatens to turn into. So, yes, faint praise indeed. We'll ensure such mistakes aren't repeated when they appoint us CEO. [Issue#358, p.116]

There's little variety in the 400-square-kilometre American midwestern locale where everything takes place, and roads rarely feel optimised to test your handling skills. [Issue#418, p.112]

If we seem grumpy about the third act, that's largely because the first two promise so much. [Issue#358, p.118]

Octodad: Dadliest Catch asks you to overlook an awful lot more than plot holes.

This is a freemium game, masquerading as a paid download.

This is the fundamental flaw in Bloodlines 2. Troika's original game was not only about being a vampire but living as one, it's balmy LA nights riddled with chances to fulfill that fantasy. Bloodlines 2, in comparison, has no inner life. [Issue#418, p.114]

With the exception of fleeting moments, the game's milquetoast mechanics don't cut it - watching a superspy and being one are very different things. [Christmas 2010, p.88]

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

Much of the drive spurring players onwards to completion depends on the game’s cutscenes, and in this respect it’s a backwards step, relying on the crutch of a strong licence to hide fundamental shortcomings. [Christmas 2007, p.92]

As a whole, Mercenary Kings is a case study in the perils of Early Access. The need to provide a steady flow of content to early buyers has birthed a glut of superfluous systems and a swollen set of missions – the wrong sort of substance to accompany Robertson’s style.

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]

Warrior Kings: Battles mixes and matches familiar mechanisms in interesting ways, but it proves that balancing real wargaming with resource-based empire building is as precarious a task as ever. [June 2003, p.105]

While Once Upon A Katamari is too similar to its predecessors, then, a lot of the new ideas simultaneously also work against the classic sensations of fun and flow. [Issue#418, p.123]

Cleverest when at its most minimal, It's Mr Pants is a little too convoluted and coy a brain-tease, destined to live in the shadow of purer designs. [March 2005, p.93]

The combat missions are where The Falconeer falters, the controls for quickturns and dives never as responsive as they need to be. [Issue#353, p.120]

Rare’s late-‘90s obsession with currencies and unlockables, combined with the new additions to adventure mode, make Diddy Kong Racing feel at times like a maze of conditions and transactions in search of an actual game, and put many of its attractive new features behind bars with no word of how to free them. [Apr 2007, p.87]

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]

As dating-centered RPGs go, we know a spot, and it's not here. [Issue#390, p.136]

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]

The game fumbles its potential with unanticipated incompetence. [Christmas 2007, p.94]

The pacing, thanks to a combination of necessary haste and the weakness of your divided squad members, feels more akin to a corridor shooter; there’s a constant sensation of feeling harried and hemmed in. [Oct 2004, p.107]

What used to be a decent fighting game with comical breast physics is now a pervier DOA Xtreme with punches instead of presents. Honestly, we're getting a bit old for it, and so is the industry around it. [Issue#331, p.116]

Many of the new additions do not work. [May 2015, p.116]

The inadequacies of the PSP camera shatter what little illusion is conjured. At one point, Brian Blessed whispers. All is not right in the world. [Jan 2010, p.96]

Proves that what works as a prototype does not necessarily translate to a final product. [May 2015, p.123]

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]

A largely muddled package. [Nov 2010, p.95]

Prince Of Persia’s overalls structure never quite compels, it offers too few distractions to qualify as a sandbox, nor does it possess the quick narrative impetus of more linear games, ultimately feeling a little shallow and repetitious. [Jan 2009, p.84]

Given the power at the player's fingertips to rewind, pause, fast forward and even record time, the scope for creating some genuinely engaging and ingenious situations is still as immense as it ever was. But, in actuality, everything is blandly obvious and ironically one-dimensional, and the use of the rewind function is still as chronological as it ever was. [Jan 2005, p.91]

No characters stand out to give the game verve, and Dracogenics does nothing to inspire efforts to take it down. [Oct 2015, p.118]

Embracing and supporting a community project like this is still a commendable move, and one that Mega Man's passionate fans may see as encouraging. But only his most die-hard followers will be willing to overlook such unwelcome, avoidable flaws.

Headstrong's effort shows a developer of some calibre, with a clutch of decent ideas, bowed beneath the weight of a multimedia franchise and hobbled by family friendly obligations. Its execution is uneven besides, but the challenge is so light that its flaws are largely irrelevant - and, unfortunately, that applies to the game's few triumphs too.

For all its luxurious visuals, it knows little about how to marry them to gameplay, or how to end the suffering of artists who 
see their work butchered to meet gameplay's demands.

Repetition is the point. [Issue#401, p.116]

There’s no sense of strength or weight to your actions despite how extravagant the carnage becomes.

Just as Double Dash's random nature levels newcomers and experts but means the game will never be as satisfying in the long term, so Gacha Mecha Athlete's flaws are initially forgivably amusing, but ultimately wearing. [Sept 2004, p.103]

Like Borderlands, the promise of fresh guns, equipment and powered-up skills offers an incentive to press on. But unlike its parent series, the combat in Legends means it's not worth doing so.

Unlike iOS title The Room, here intricacy proves a weakness, and Open Me doesn’t have the rich atmosphere of Fireproof Games’ award-winning puzzler to compensate for its mechanical awkwardness.

With no meaningful equivalent to the communal goals and tactical layovers that gave Planes a stay of execution, once the paywall stalls your progress like leaves on the line, there’s little reason to continue. Even for those who’ve ‘supported’ NimbleBit with regular IAP donations, you suspect the Bux stop here.

Mission design feels particularly lazy this time round, Locomotive seemingly jotting down amusing cutscene scenarios before finding tenuous ways of tying ‘destroy this’ or ‘abduct that’ tasks to the constant stream of ooh-er references to ‘big willies’ and ‘meat’ in the dialogue. [May 2008, p.97]

Gratifying though it is to see your decisions produce such tangible results, Where The Heart Leads is consistently let down by its storytelling. [Issue#362, p.120]

Where B-Boy crucially disappoints is in the execution of its gameplay. The turn-based nature of its stages is interminably frustrating. [Oct 2006, p.94]

Given that its bland combat is little enhanced by the ability to create cover, you suspect that the promises made for the technology have simply dug its own grave. [Dec 2008, p.90]

At its best, Orgarhythm's disparate ingredients coalesce into scenes of thrilling tribal warfare, a winningly eclectic soundtrack stirring your men to march into battle. Too often, however, you end up feeling like your fragmented cabal: disorientated, frustrated and battered into submission by an unforgiving enemy, with little reason to keep on fighting.

The overall impression is of a game that’s both bravely and badly designed, and weighted towards the latter. [July 2006, p.84]

It’s a solid concept, but Honeyslug struggles to develop it in any meaningful way.

The plot may be filled with sub-Lynchian fumbles, but it weaves an intriguing story, while the charismatic muddle of awards that accompanies each solution goes some way to wiping away the grey memory of what you're actually being congratulated for.

This simply has the air of a development team biting off more than it could chew. [Issue#139, p.118]

If the Old West is anything, it's a giant myth, and one that the Call Of Juarez games have always embodied. What The Cartel replaces this with – a mishmash of 
The Shield and conspiracy theories – is a much less substantial vision, played out within a world with no real resonance to it.

Feels cheeky to be criticising a scrolling beat 'em up for being too shallow, but TMNT is possibly one of the most tedious ever. Repetition is only acceptable when you're repeating something gratifying. [Jan 2004, p.109]

This less ambitious, full-priced follow-up is a lesser experience in every sense. [Issue#349, p.92]

This may not suffer the indignity of being delisted, but it's highly unlikely anyone will remember it in a decade's time. [Issue#395, p.122]