This month alone, we have far better alternatives. [Issue#359, p.123]

There’s a nugget of brilliance at the heart of Micro Machines that’s too simple and solid to crush, it’s true, but the laughable track editor, fussy interface and baffling load times certainly don’t justify this release. [Aug 2006, p.93]

It never hits Neversoft's golden-age standard, but it comes much closer than such a daft premise would lead you to suspect. [Dec 2010, p.95]

It's simple, enjoyable, and in wisely steering clear of trying anything grand or complex, is an enjoyable if self-contained success. [May 2010, p.97]

A stunt-filled shooter in the vein (but not the league) of Stranglehold, it's a game that takes control away, reverts to how things used to be done, and judders between debilitating combat and haywire presentation. [May 2009, p.92]

While moments of genuine beauty exist, they occur in the context of a game that otherwise simply cannot compete with its contemporaries when it comes to visual presentation - a symptom, perhaps, of the seven-year development cycle. [Feb 2015, p.104]

Occasionally, the glow of sheer ambition nudges polish-related problems away from the light, allowing a few glorious moments to gaze upon what EYE could've been. But un-met ambition isn't enough.

So much of Aqua, though, feels merely like the crude payoff to a tank rush, your fire moving from one stubborn target to the next until victory is declared. [Aug 2010, p.99]

Sorrows is a hollow experience, misinterpreting the original as a sheer numbers game rather than one of constant risk and reward. It's an issue made more glaring by an unsatisfying combat system, paying lip service to counters, juggles and combo strikes even though endlessly repeating the same moves is just as effective. [Feb 2006, p.88]

With its Ikea backdrops and clipart objects, Bright Light has perhaps paid too much attention to functionality and not enough to form. [Christmas 2010, p.90]

Even with just an additional pair of buttons for camera movement, a broad switch of irritations could have been avoided, but as it is, Death Jr is recommended only for forgiving platformer enthusiasts. [Nov 2005, p.113]

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]

The components here function and rarely frustrate, but the machine they comprise only manufactures mediocrity. [Sept 2009, p.95]

It demolishes PC gaming’s dubious tradition of applauding technical ambition above all else with all the grace of a narcoleptic piling face first through a coffee table... A cold and flawed sandbox shooter, a rudimentary RPG and, for most, an almost unplayable experience. [July 2005, p.93]

Where Black Hawk Down bombards you with exasperating shootouts and tedious escort missions set against a background of jingoism, its competitive modes struggle for the refinements of a game made a decade ago. [Issue#409, p.112]

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.

Objects that can be interacted with are circled with an icon, but this only appears if you are looking at exactly the right spot. Indeed, much of Rogue Ops is spent trying to make this cursed cursor appear. It's not a pleasant way to spend an evening. [Feb 2004, p.108]

Were it not for the driving model, which against all odds remains a pleasure, and desperately rare moments of imaginative mission design, this would be an abject failure. As it stands, it's simply a serious one. [Issue#314, p.114]

With all the weaknesses of its beloved inspiration and precious few of its strengths, Praey For The Gods- much like its protagonist - consistently struggles to retain its grip. [Issue#368, p.114]

While some poorly designed systems and mechanics chip away at your patience, the feeling of flying seamlessly from space down to a peninsula you spotted from orbit never fails to enthrall. [Nov 2016, p.106]

A more joined-up package than many games of its type. Unfortunately, it's just a rather limited one. [Christmas 2010]

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]

Evoland’s short length means the conceit never tires, and it does provide a rather brilliant excuse for the game beneath being rather unoriginal. Sadly, Evoland’s barebones take on turn-based battles leads to some other unnecessary padding – but this is still a pleasant walk down memory lane.

It’s a clean game, at least, texturally crisp and evocatively lit, but the feeling of playing an interactive 3D Mark demo is discouragingly strong. [Apr 2007, p.88]

Fatal Inertia promised so much in its early showings (which claimed to represent in-game footage), but has turned out as a decent but thoroughly predictable racer. [Oct 2007, p.95]

None of this is very entertaining at all. The game offers some of the most slender, inconsequential, and ultimately, boring distractions to be found on the GameCube. [Sept 2003]

The dozens of pre-prepared puzzles can be fiendish enough in themselves, but the option of dragging modifier icons on to tiles, changing the pattern with which they flip, enables high scores just as surely as it does enormous headaches. [June 2007, p.92]

It's a game that makes you desperately want to feel like a Jedi, arcing your lightsaber across the screen, ducking under attacks, parrying counters and going in for the kill, but the subtlety just isn't there. [July 2005, p.94]

This is a game built with Kinect's limits in mind, and one that never risks defying them. The result is a modest, mechanically simple on-rails shooter, but it's one that offers a voyage with epic sweep for those looking to re-immerse themselves in Fable's world.

It purports to be a cross between pinball and puzzle game, but lacks the bells and whistles or tactile joy of the former, while the conundrums are nothing more than busywork.

Given his rich history, Wario deserves better than this. [July 2013, p.116]

With its extravagant art direction, Samurai Warriors was the obvious franchise for Koei to debut on Nintendo's new platform. The surprise is how well the simple combat and new ideas work as a portable experience. [May 2011, p.105]

It's a shame, but LifeLine is just poorly implemented. With the laborious pacing complicated by the dodgy voice-recognition, flaws in the gimmicky technology negate what satisfying moments are on offer here. [May 2004, p.106]

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]

Rivals’ biggest problem is that its chances of success are inexorably bound to the performance of the device around which it is designed.

Like a horse swishing its tail with futile persistence, Hunted never manages to rid itself of bugs.

As diverting as it can be, this is a slim offering, a paucity of customisation options, game modes and progress markers providing no higher-level hook. [Issue#415, p.106]

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

There’s a workmanlike simplicity to the core of Arcen’s game, one that lets down the powerful atmosphere suffusing it.

By keeping it real, the game retains many of the things that make navigating the real city more of a pain than a pleasure: countless faceless skyscrapers don't make for memorable landmarks, and facing the wrong way down a jammed one-way street when you're in a hurry to get somewhere is the sort of challenge few will relish. [Jan 2005, p.91]

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]

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]

As the credits roll, and we once again consider what Fort Solis is, the Steam blurb reminds us of another thing it isn't. A "riveting thriller", after all, requires thrills - and those, like the station's employees, are conspicuous by their absence. [Issue#389, p.110]

Like the first Gears, Ryse is a simple game loaded with small-scale encounters and rudimentary set-pieces with the intention of hustling you towards something beautiful. Both have their own ‘horror’ stage, both have sieges, both have stationary guns of sorts, and Ryse, like Gears, has room to grow if given the chance.

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]

To be fair to The Shoot, it gets the basics right. It just attempts very little beyond them. [Christmas 2010, p.101]

There’s a desperate lack of innovation on display here; nondescript levels based around ice caves, pyramids and inevitable Mayan temples. The boring locations exacerbate the sneaking feeling that the levels, which can easily take an hour or longer to finish, are simply too large. [JPN Import; Mar 2007, p.81]

It's simple, enjoyable, and in wisely steering clear of trying anything grand or complex, is an enjoyable if self-contained success. [May 2010, p.97]

Sonic Unleashed isn’t quite the spectacular return to form promised, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than Sega’s other recent efforts. [Jan 2009, p.89]

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]

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

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]

By keeping it real, the game retains many of the things that make navigating the real city more of a pain than a pleasure: countless faceless skyscrapers don’t make for memorable landmarks, and facing the wrong way down a jammed one-way street when you’re in a hurry to get somewhere is the sort of challenge few will relish. [Jan 2005, p.91]

Cheap bosses and stingy save points ensure that it's a drag as well as a bore, while a handful of crash bugs do very little to improve proceedings. My Little Hero's greatest charm is its air of sweet innocence, perhaps, but in truth this adventure is primitive rather than childlike.

Something it achieves more successfully is the frustration of sensory impairment. [Oct 2015, p.120]

It’s a game that makes you desperately want to feel like a Jedi, arcing your lightsaber across the screen, ducking under attacks, parrying counters and going in for the kill, but the subtlety just isn’t there. [July 2005, p.94]

Anyone prepared to look beyond the candy colourings and initially floaty controls will discover a game of real depth and precision. [July 2007, p.90]

There are flashes of what might have been, but otherwise Brawlout doesn't feel so much a plucky underdog as a no-hoper, entering a fight it knows it can't win in the hope of a big payday just for showing up. A first-round stoppage to the champion, then, with the challenger being booed out of the ring. [March 2018, p.122]

A wholly unoriginal creation burdened by memories attached to the good ideas it’s imitating, and made worse by the sloppy execution of basic mechanics. [Oct 2008, p.100]

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]

Every element of I Hate This Place is perfectly functional but nothing stands out, and it ends up feeling like a slasher with no blood, a haunted house with no ghosts, a zombie with no teeth. [Issue#421, p.122]

What Level-5 has created is a Frankenstein's monster. It's half singleplayer and half multiplayer, and both of them are half good: a compromise that leaves much of this game feeling soulless. To give WKC2 its due, it certainly improves on the original. But in trying to fix a poor template rather than start anew, it was probably doomed from the beginning.

At once expanded yet stripped back (or focused, if you're feeling generous), Luminous might not quite be Endless Ocean as we knew it, but it retains enough of the series' distinctive signature that it's worth taking the plunge. [Issue#398, p.120]

For all those who gun Reign down for toying with its own rules and essentially cheating on the player at times it feels are appropriate, there'll hopefully be as many who recognise that such times are appropriate and and that even the dirtiest of its tricks can be bested. [Dec 2005, p.104]

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]

Blacksite is a thoroughly unexceptional title for which unrealistic promises were made, and one that is further let down by a wide assortment of bugs and design issues. [Jan 2008, p.83]

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

This recurrent rehash is branding to serve the genre, and of little benefit to Poke-fans. [Sept 2008, p.96]

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]

The series' modest ambitions are here scaled back to a glum inventory of FPS conventions, its spectacle dampened by hardware limitations and dormant art direction, and its platform-specific novelties largely revealed as fussy irritations, presumably born of a need to promote the struggling Vita's features.

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]

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 an example of unabashed, often exuberant Britsoft that pulls out the SRPG's staples and rebinds it in approachable ease, Future Tactics is remarkable, deserving of cult status. [Aug 2004, p.99]

MicroBot is a technically accomplished but sterile experience. As the game settles into a rut, its stylistic strengths lose more and more ground to the sluggish combat, uninspiring upgrades and repetitive stages.

Technologically something of an embarrassment and devoid of any vitality or personality, Undercover seems a sharp downturn for one of EA’s traditional bastions of seasonal sales. [Christmas 2008, p.101]

By keeping it real, the game retains many of the things that make navigating the real city more of a pain than a pleasure: countless faceless skyscrapers don't make for memorable landmarks, and facing the wrong way down a jammed one-way street when you're in a hurry to get somewhere is the sort of challenge few will relish. [Jan 2005, p.91]

Maybe, after all, Ubisoft has managed to simulate the existence of the average pirate. Perhaps that's what the fourth 'A' stands for. [Issue#396, p.112]

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.

There’s a vibrancy that ensures progress is a pleasure and backtracking is seldom a chore – in fact, the game is often at its best when you’re free from the demands of unlocking the next section and simply revelling in your buoyant weightlessness. [Nov 2004, p.110]

Age of Resistance Tactics would merely be tolerably mundane, were it not brought low by a UI as cumbersome as the game's title. [Issue#343, p.116]

Somehow, Dark Void just about rises above its faults, but it's hardly at rick of flying too close to the sun. [Feb 2010, p.86]

The Power Of Two may have fewer technical issues than its predecessor, but it's a less adventurous, less courageous, and overall less interesting game. It struggles to make you care about its world, and as a result its one big idea – that of the Wasteland reacting to your choices – feels decidedly flaccid.

When it comes to paper, Tearaway has the aesthetic edge and Paper Trail boasts smarter puzzles, while for inventive transformations, Mario remains the origami king. Next to those three, Hirogami feels flimsy and flyaway. [Issue#416, p.120]

You could also call it derivative and crudely executed, and no transmedia offering can compensate for that. [Issue#404, p.112]

Seemingly conflicted between delivering next-gen graphical impact and providing immediately recognisable objectives, Killer Game errs on the side of form over function, and in turn stumbles though a laundry list of poor design decisions. [Dec 2005, p.114]

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.

The core racing is pleasingly intact for 16bit nostalgists, but that doesn't make Micro Machines a no-brainer for the new-school, season-based multiplayer model. [Sept 2017, p.119]

Sorrows is a hollow experience, misinterpreting the original as a sheer numbers game rather than one of constant risk and reward. It’s an issue made more glaring by an unsatisfying combat system, paying lip service to counters, juggles and combo strikes even though endlessly repeating the same moves is just as effective. [Feb 2006, p.88]

It’s just a murky brew of meaningless, exploitative dysfunction filling an empty game, and it leaves a bitter taste. [Dec 2006, p.90]

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 a game of light and shade, sure, but there’s a little too much of the former seeping through the cracks.

"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]

An experience lacking flavour, with a transparent design, the game shares many qualities with its elemental subject matter. It is entering a super-competitive environment, and its premium DLC will need to be something special to turn things around.

With Dust, CCP promised something that had never even been attempted before, and it delivered. Dust takes place in Eve. The setting is the same, the currency is the same, and the corporations can hold players from both universes. It’s just not enough. Because without Eve, there’s no point to Dust, a bland free-to-play FPS that can’t even capture the continent-spanning scale of PlanetSide 2, despite having a whole galaxy to play with.

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]

The only black mark is for the controls: the on-screen buttons feel reasonably responsive most of the time, but you'll experience a definite stickiness when things heat up.

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]

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