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]

It's in need of plenty more flair, not so much that it strains against what its buttoned-down framework is trying to achieve, but just to inject some feeling of variety into its skirmishes and sorties. [Sept 2006, p.88]

What it didn't factor into the design is that kleptomaniacs rarely bother collecting items without emotional gravitas, and this oversight becomes immediately obvious when you compare Rumble to its source material. [Jan 2010, p.98]

Soldier of Fortune’s damage model is probably its major selling point and, lamentably, the only thing that makes its combat entertaining. [Feb 2008, p.96]

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]

A dismally paced and hugely frustrating expansion of a fine core mechanic, and a badly missed opportunity. [Tested with Vive; June 2016, p.120]

Moops isn't a bad idea for a iOS title, then, but it's extremely poorly implemented. For a game about bug hunting, it's failed to catch enough of its own.

Yes, Beat Down revives the warped charisma of Capcom’s beat’em up heyday, but that’s the only area where it actually triumphs. [Oct 2005, p.90]

Playing it instils a completely neutral response, as though it were no more than a means of absorbing time. [Jan 2008, p.91]

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]

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.

Bad Day LA is the game people often say they want and then ignore when it arrives; it prizes ambition over execution and flair over finesse and both pays the price and reaps the rewards for daring to do so. [Sept 2006, p.82]

The last thing on Glory Days’ mind is fun: it instead angrily stomps forward to the beat of the ‘war is hell’ drum. [Oct 2007, p.99]

You can see things worth admiring here. The promise of sandbox combat emerging from the interplay between environment and gun-modes never comes good, instead devolving into a repetitive, gruelling bedlam - but that promise alone is more than many shooters offer. To make anything of it, however, Hard Reset would need to go right back to the drawing board.

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]

Voyeurs will be disappointed, since the sex portrayed is the very model of conventionality. The really shocking thing is how close Singles gets to being wholesome. [June 2004, p.111]

Alien worlds scarcely come more mundane than this. [Issue#424, p.102]

For such a costly flagship title to provide neither the promised statement of mainstream grown-up appeal nor even polished, lesser disposable thrills is a landmark failure. [May 2006, p.92]

Something of a departure, sure, but it's nothing new. Falling awkwardly between action and strategy, it's unlikely to satisfy anyone other than rabidly obsessive fans of the character.

Nasty, brutish and short - and that's once you've got past the interface problems. Temple of Elemental Evil is a huge disappointment by any measure. [Christmas 2003, p.124]

Much as it saddens us, given the promise of seeing a 3D Ghost Trick, we pronounce this dead on arrival.

The game is also lumbered with a tragic split personality. On one hand, there’s a lot to do, and if you like the look of one of the initial five heroes you can do all of it for free with a little grinding. On the other hand, Marvel Heroes is so eager for you to spend – and so keen to extract the most out of your wallet when you do – that the price tag of the game in real-world terms can soon become astonishingly disproportionate to its quality.

This miserable wallow in the psyche of a traumatised young woman isn't so much horrifying, then, as simply unpleasant. [Issue#370, p.112]

It's a pity, since there is the kernel of an engaging hack-and-slash here, but its best ideas are squandered, and eventually bludgeoned into submission by the relentless monotony of the action. With a campaign that barely stretches beyond six hours and minimal replay value here, there's only one person being robbed here, and it's not the Sheriff. [Issue#393, p.114]

With the episodic development cycle all but demanding that structure and form be locked down in the first instalment, with content added thereafter, the series' future looks precarious at best. [June 2008, p.90]

With that, a largely flat Metroid is further degraded, from disappointing to a little bit embarrassing. Nintendo games have tested our patience before, but rarely in so many ways at once, and not without a core brilliance that makes such transgressions forgivable. Whatever ideas swirled in your mind back in 2017, you can't have been dreaming of this. [Issue#419, p.100]

Instant deaths, glitchy combat, uninspiring boss encounters and twitchy controls conspire to make this a below-par experience. If it wasn't for the occasional flashes of imagination and the familiarity and richness conveyed through the license then The Emperor's Tomb would be utterly forgettable. [May 2003, p.99]

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.

Criticism has often been aimed at Hudson’s perpetual shrug of the shoulders as to how to milk new games from the same old buttons and analogue stick setup, yet here we find all-new motion controls and still no freshness. [Aug 2007, p.95]

It’s a promising set-up, but one that’s flawed at nearly every level... You’re left with the overwhelming sensation of a Christmas present with no batteries to go in it. [Nov 2004, p.111]

Access Games' take on the Monster Hunter formula attempts little beyond a straightforward recreation of that series' structure. [Mar 2011, p.107]

Ultimately what was intended as a thoughtful depiction of a terrible mental illness has ended up casting it as something of an asset: a helpful superpower that can give you the strength to soldier on through the darkness, so long as you can put up with the odd breakdown here and there. That, we suspect, was not what Ninja Theory intended. It's certainly not what we had hoped for. [Issue#310, p.112]

It's true, they don't make 'em like this any more. Unfortunately, Wanted: Dead only demonstrates why not. [Issue#382, p.104]

Even at its best, when using the AV8R stick, Damage Inc feels clumsy, badly implemented and lacking in imagination. Mad Catz is unlikely to drive sales of its peripherals with a game in which every flight feels like work and every kill is, at best, a Pyrrhic victory in a tedious war.

The pretty basic minigames are bland, and the worst, such as Pot Luck, are based on blind, dumb chance. So are the best, sadly. They’re fun with four people, but what isn’t? [June 2007, p.92]

It's the cutest game we've seen in a while, but not nearly as good as it looks. [July 2010, p.105]

There are bold ideas floating around Unbeatable's ether, but for the most part it feels like an underpowered B-side. [Issue#420, p.102]

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]

Supernauts is both too limited to succeed as a town-builder and frustratingly restrictive as a creative tool, while its superhero interludes are disempowering and dull. [Sept 2014, p.116]

The irony is that in mining some unforgettable games, Curve has delivered a forgettable hodgepodge. [Mar 2011, p.105]

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

In action the game is undeniably pretty, as long as you can stomach the monstrous camera. But beyond ther anime-inspired visuals, the action turgidly limps along without ever really engaging or entertaining. [May 2003, p.94]

Holy disappointment, Batman. [March 2017, p.107]

If we're at a point where one way to make COD feel "new" is to revive ideas from more than a decade ago, that is perhaps a sign that the series needs a break, or at least a hard reset. [Issue#419, p.112]

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]

Fights descend into muddled brawls, as blobs of mobs smack into each other until one side keels over. [Issue#385, p.118]

A Witch's Tale is the teacher who says 'look, but don't touch.' [Sept 2009, p.97]

A remake that's peculiarly of its time: a western-style, casual gaming aping of the Japanese shoot 'em up that's less homage than banal dilution, and the game sucks the life and vibrancy from its rich lineage. [July 2008, p.99]

In-app purchases require delicate balancing, but with T-Coin bundles costing up to £69.99, and annual T-Club subscriptions available for £20.99 a year, EA could hardly be more obvious in letting you know that, as far as it's concerned, the 69p you paid to download the game was only the beginning.

In the areas money can't buy, it stumbles; its driving model, AI, and repetitive mission structure all cry out for more elegant design, and combine to leave Wildlands in the strange position of looking expensive but feeling cheap. Its blithely misjudged tone and directionless structure suggests design on autopilot, and empty bigness is no longer enough to carry an open-world game on its own. The game's premise may come straight from Trump's paranoid playbook, but its hollow extravagance is arguably the more damaging point of comparison. [May 2017, p.106]

Nintendo's most boring smartphone outing so far. [Issue#336, p.120]

Its particular set of ideas and adornments prove unable to elevate the basic structural charms of this mode of game design. [Issue#402, p.110]

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]

This is a cheap game with an expensive price tag, and there's nothing remotely super about it. [May 2017, p.123]

There are some interesting ideas here, but in practice the game is overloaded with cut corners and blunting repetition. [Mar 2010, p.97]

It's a long, repetitive grind that fails to reward your efforts. [Sept 2012, p.100]

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]

To an industrious, moralising serial killer, Saw would seem an apt punishment for a life wasted on videogames. [Christmas 2009, p.99]

In music, bad tribute acts play pubs and weddings: in games, they sit at the top of the charts.

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

Approached free of any expectations higher than endless, mindless single-button mashing, the kenpu collecting and scenery spotting can provide some limited enjoyment in smaller doses, but approached as an epic quest, Key Of Heaven is one better left untaken. [Mar 2006, p.94]

Behemoth seems frozen in time, unable to leave nearly as strong an impression as its predecessor by dint of scale alone, resulting in what feels like a colossal waste of potential. [Issue#406, p.114]

Beyond the odd jolt of panic as your wrench breaks mid-fight, or when the piercing shriek of a spindly screamer attracts a ravening pack, there's little here to quicken the pulse. For a zombie game, that might be the most damning criticism of all. [Aug 2018, p.100]

There's no style in LowRider's low-riding - it's all about robotic timing, brute force and repetition over elegance. [March 2003, p.99]

Firefights become more surreal than menacing when the worst-case scenario is of your fellow GIs having to catch their breath for a few seconds after being riddled with bullets. [Aug 2004, p.96]

Peering through these layers of disguise, then, what we're left with is a hotchpotch of conflicting ideas, a rickety, if not entirely charmless, hack'n'slash that feels plucked from an alternate timeline. [Issue#406, p.118]

All the interaction it requires could be better executed, with equal intuition and far greater reliability, on a joypad with an analogue stick. [Nov 2010, p.94]

For all its wit and swagger, Truckers is inescapably safety-conscious, rewarding the maintenance of a planned route and steady trajectory while more arresting notions - spontaneous risk, for example - fall from the back like poorly fastened cases of moonshine. [Sept 2005, p.99]

This is a perfectly awful conversion with poor controls, cumbersome combat, an antiquarian save system, inadequate maps and clumsy menu design. [Jan 2004, p.111]

Perhaps EA would have done better to port a previous Wing Commander game in its totality rather than staple the name to a somewhat anaemic effort of an awkwardly inauthentic shape. [Oct 2007, p.99]

As a novelty, this is fine and will provide the odd fun moment. But unlike its endlessly replayable older brothers, you won’t be coming back. [Sept 2008, p.90]

The Great Escape is saved by a few good set-pieces and the licence, but it's hard not to feel hard done by. Those willing to endure yet another stealth game could find their morale ebbing away by the end of this. [Sept 2003]

Nintendo is claiming that The Conduit might attract Halo fans to its console, but this game isn’t fit to wait Master Chief’s table.

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]

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]

Once guns are acquired you feel less helpless, but the combat is awkward with enemies reacting poorly to hits and a compulsory manual reload that is ponderous beyond belief. In trying to make the game realistic, Headfirst has grievously shot itself in the foot. [Dec 2005, p.112]

With the exceptions of deplorably bad cutscenes and haphazard signposting, there are few significant flaws here that a steadier gestation couldn't have resolved. [Aug 2006, p.90]

The majority of insights are lost in a flood of banal dialogue and sluggish, shallow puzzles. [Aug 2009, p.107]

That it feels so leaden despite its busyness, and fails to ignite despite all its gunpowder, is impossible to ignore. [May 2008, p.99]

Need for Speed is a disappointing follow-up to the flawed but big-hearted Rivals, and while it's billed as a fresh start for the series, it feels more like a false one. [Christmas 2015, p.118]

Sure, Platinum has made flawed games before, but nothing nearly so bland or as uninspiring as this. [Christmas 2014, p.120]

Whatever its merits as a brawler, it's safe to say that in years to come no one will be ringing up game shops to preorder this one. [Issue#350, p.104]

During a late cutscene, we detect a certain wistfulness in the eyes of both fawn and pup - as if both are silently wishing their talents had been employed in a better game. [Issue#383, p.122]

Instant deaths, glitchy combat, uninspiring boss encounters and twitchy controls conspire to make this a below-par experience. If it wasn't for the occasional flashes of imagination and the familiarity and richness conveyed through the license then The Emperor's Tomb would be utterly forgettable. [May 2003, p.99]

Watson, the game is a muddle. [Issue#367, p.119]

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 rare to play a Nintendo game that feels so fundamentally misguided. [Issue#361, p.118]

Bodycount's lack of consistent game design, flitting between arcadey action and a sub-par story-driven campaign, ultimately causes the game to misfire. The lesser parts of Bodycount's gameplay ultimately shout the loudest, drowning out its charms and distracting from the flourishes of inspired ideas.

There's a fine line between graphic artistry and immaturity, and while Alter Echo makes an attempt at the former, it probably falls into the latter. The hues are creative enough, and the faux-naturelle structures suitably curled and alien but perhaps the real problem is that a world made from plastic would look as dull as it sounds. [Nov 2003, p.109]

As an interim project, it's good to see Criterion still interested in its most beloved IP, but it's just a shame there's so little of interest in the game itself.

It’s a high-profile demonstration of the fact that those who created this much-loved universe have lost their understanding of what originally made it so engaging. [Apr 2006, p.91]

You get the impression the only person who cares about Kain's legacy any more is the writer. The turgid battling lets an average game down. [Jan 2004, p.107]

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.

While the basic mechanic shows promise, the game itself is purely mechanical, and predictably joyless as a result. [July 2006, p.92]

The first Flipper wasn't a great piece of work, necessarily, but it had its own agenda and was powered by some pleasantly esoteric coding. The sequel, wonky and compromised, can't even claim that honour.

We could have coped with technical issues, curious UI choices and unsophisticated mission design had Saints Row given us even half as many memorable moments as previous entries "The Third" and "IV". We could even forgive a Portal joke that would have felt old hat a decade ago. But this whole enterprise feels misbegotten, even before the story goes wildly off the rails, belatedly introducing a new threat, before wrapping up with an ending that almost feels algorithmically generated. [Issue#376, p.100]

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]

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