It's just not accurate or tangible enough to be rewarding, handling with the same kind of wool as Sonic's 3D platformers. [Apr 2006, p.93]

Nucleus stands as a poorly executed game in a field where there are so many excellent others that it’s impossible to recommend. [Aug 2007, p.94]

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

Ingenious, experimental and entirely polarising, games like ColorZ show that WiiWare continues to take the road less travelled. In doing so, the platform’s most poignant offerings reveal something a little bit magical - a fleeting glimpse of the soul lurking within the machine.

WOTS2's intentionally short running time (most story paths can be finished in little over two hours), a steady stream of unlockable rewards, and the gradual appreciation of its combat system's depth can make replays strangely compelling. [July 2004, p.105]

It's yet another curiously half-hearted side project from Supermassive that, appropriately, won't linger long in the memory. [Apr 2018, p.120]

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]

This is revitalisation, a fresh surge of life for the long-serving warhorse. By any typical measure of gaming it's not grand advance, but for those whose fingers have long been drilled by the brawls of Koei's sprawling riots, it's as worthwhile and frenzied as it's ever been. [Mar 2008, p.96]

Yet despite these conveniences, Junkster never stops feeling awkward and clumsy to pilot. [Issue#411, p.122]

One of the most robust online community setups to grace Nintendo’s handheld, enabling users to link the DS game to a web profile, where they can browse and queue tracks for later download. [Dec 2008, p.99]

Die-hard roleplaying game fans might have shrugged off its technical flaws and turgid combat if only the story had a pay-off. But instead of a tragic hero, Jason’s a dud. [Feb 2009, p.86]

While Monster Madness does much to scratch the co-op itch, and offers some titillating online modes, it sullies it with patchy execution and a series of poor design choices. [Sept 2007, p.93]

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]

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.

It's difficult to recommend as a standalone purchase. [Christmas 2016, p.122]

If Headhunter's controls were as coherent as its looks, it could've made for one of the greatest action-adventure games of recent times. Instead, we're left with a clunky shooting gallery that is, in parts, a likeable gunfighting game. [Oct 2004, p.109]

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

A nice core bit of gameplay tarted up with unnecessary pretensions and stretched too thin, even over its short playtime. It feels like a minigame from a bigger title – specifically, those minigames from God of War and Dead Space 2 in which you guide a plummeting hero through falling debris. What it doesn’t feel like is a full a game – let alone the artsy indie hero Sony would like it to be.

If its creators can dig out the rot in its foundations, there is at least plenty to build upon here. [Issue#389, p.116]

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]

The lasting impression is of a game that, for all its charms and potential, simply wasn't quite ready for takeoff - and that what might have been won't arrive for a couple of years yet. [Issue#331, p.102]

Minus the combat, Benedict Fox is Metroidvania reduced to its most basic form, where all that matters are the platforms you can reach and the doors you can open. [Issue#385, p.116]

The game is at pains to highlight its lack of tutorials or explanations, but outside an intriguing opening, its conundrums are unlikely to leave you stumped for long, a result of the ship's compactness and the robot's inability to carry more than one item at once.

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

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]

At a base level, this is simply too forgettable to give players a good enough reason to return. Perhaps it would be different if Zombie had been more lenient with its economy, allowing you to try more before committing to buy.

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

A curious game about exploiting systems and psychology. The discussions surrounding it deal in politics and morality, because it’s a game about Rohrer’s response to a controversial real-world issue. Yet The Castle Doctrine’s notoriety ends up feeling like another fakeout – a disconnected conceptual commit gate at the entrance of an often-frustrating sandbox puzzler.

At first glance, this appears to be a game with a clear and confident vision, but playing it for a period of time reveals how much it's split between underdeveloped mechanics. [Issue#420, p.100]

As often as it threatens to break the shackles of convention, it's just as content to fall in line with JRPG custom. [Issue#296, p.116]

It's a shame to see what could have been. [Dec 2009, p.99]

Platforming only ever threatens to be acceptable, lacking both the freedom and finesse that further development time might have granted, while the lightcycle sections - well, there might not be any way of saving them. [Jan 2011, p.96]

Yet this game lingers somehow when you're not playing. [Issue#332, p.123]

APB has to learn how to play its obvious trump card, a brilliant customisation suite. With tools that give you power over every aspect of your persona – cars, clothes, tattoos, shape, logos, victory jingles and even the tunes pumped out of your stereo – the game really gets that people are the brands of the 21st century.

Its concept feels almost thrown together. [Sept 2010, p.103]

Hotel Barcelona's horror-film pastiche amounts to little more than references, and without the unifying sensibility that defines Swery's best work, the game is a series of mismatched parts, idea in want of a whole. [Issue#416, p.116]

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

Western is an old-fashioned game about an old-fashioned time, and although it may not possess the swaggering production values or wit of "Red Dead Revolver," it’s a thoroughly guilty pleasure. [March 2005, p.90]

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]

Without immediate course correction, Activision is likely to discover that even the most loyal playerbase can smell when it's being cheated. [Issue#392, p.104]

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]

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]

The breadth of Eden’s ambitions may have meant that there’s barely a feature that’s implemented more than satisfactorily, but there’s a generosity of vision here that few games can boast. [Aug 2008, p.88]

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]

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.

The super-soldier fantasy's lost beneath generic mechanisms for grinding. [Issue#139, p.108]

With juddering 3D that loses all of Altair's beautiful and intuitive movement, and inflicting a multitude of cheap deaths, this crude chapter neither comes close to emulating original's successes nor utilises the hardware's specific capabilities. [June 2008, p.95]

Feels like a proof of concept for a much more substantial, and refined, counterpart. [Apr 2015, p.120]

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]

Upgrades are disappointingly basic... [Issue#417, p.121]

As interesting as exploring the island can be, it's painfully hard to get anywhere without being forced to repeat chores that are just plain boring. [May 2007, p.93]

Despite a fair few moments of awe, the governing and familiar impression here is of compromise. The vivid aesthetic and precise audio of the console versions have respectively been mellowed and overplayed, the design beaten into handheld shape and accordingly bruised. [Apr 2006, p.93]

Frustratingly, the game’s on-rails sequences exacerbate its lack of invention, whipping up enemies that often inflict damage before their location is revealed. When a single rocket can end the game by killing you or your entourage, this tests the patience more than a prosaic shooter has the right to. [Aug 2005, p.97]

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.

Few games can capture the sense of being in the hunt so well, and by degrees few games can disappoint so much when this sense is lost to wrangling with the camera or gawkish, unpredictable controls shackling your weightlessness. [Oct 2004, p.108]

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.

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]

Energetic if simplistic, shallow yet enormously replayable, it's the kind of game you'll forget about for months, rediscover during a party, and within ten minutes everyone will be shouting, laughing and clamouring to join in. [May 2017, p.119]

It rarely becomes more than a pleasant distraction, rather than something that feels warm and real. [Issue#414, p.120]

With little to differentiate fighters beyond base levels of aggression, symmetrical faces and notions of characters they’re meant to represent, it doesn’t take too long for Balboa to flag, or indeed trudge to an unceremonious end. [Mar 2007, p.87]

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]

You'll trudge endlessly around the forest, cursing your protagonist's languid walk speed as you wander from one already visited landmark to the next in the vague hope of triggering the next bit of scripting in a narrative which goes out of its way to confuse the player.

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]

Even when driven in full race trim, every vehicle feels ponderous and with overly soft suspension often resulting in an unnecessarily laborious control method. It's not a bad game, by any means, but the enjoyment provided is limited. [Oct 2003, p.101]

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]

Unfortunately, creating such a smooth ride has resulted in a title you can race through in just under a single charge of the PSP battery. [July 2007, p.94]

While the original aimed to capture our hearts, the sequel only seems to be after our wallets.

Six 'f*cks' in the opening cut-scene set the tone for a game that's desperate to appear edgy, uniquely British and grown up... Ironically, the script is so desperate to be adult that it ends up sounding as mature as a teenager rebelling against school uniform. [Christmas 2004, p.85]

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.

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]

Die-hard roleplaying game fans might have shrugged off its technical flaws and turgid combat if only the story had a pay-off. But instead of a tragic hero, Jason’s a dud. [Feb 2009, p.86]

From its questionable (albeit largely ignorable) microtransactions to its inconsistent lore, Foamstars feels about as sturdy and enduring as the substance that powers it. [Issue#396, p.118]

It still has much to do. But for the first time in a while, Destiny 2 players have finally been given something to be positive about. [Issue#315, p.116]

Not sensing the damage you're imparting and receiving makes skirmishes seem arbitrary (you'll rely on the HUD reporting your XP wins to know you've taken out enemies at long range), while explosions - in a game based on destruction - pack no punch. [Mar 2011, p.97]

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

Even ignoring all those failings – something at which Dead Island fans will have had plenty of practice – Riptide’s biggest flaw is that it never justifies its existence in terms of plot or new ideas. It’s not simply yesterday’s game, but a time capsule from 2011, a time when zombies weren’t as overplayed and games such as Far Cry 3 and Borderlands 2 weren’t around to cast their long shadows over the action.

GORE might have worked had it followed the remit of the original PS2 Gungrave to deliver an intense couple of hours, before focusing on polish and score-chasing replay value. As it is, the moments when you gorge on the excesses of Grave's ordnance are spread thinly between slabs of frustration and tedium. [Issue#380, p.116]

This game did not need to be a bad one: the premise remains ripe with extraordinary possibilities. This, however, simply squanders them, showing a determination to prioritise style over substance which cripples the game and damages gaming as a whole. [Aug 2004, p.94]

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

Little Deviants' real problem is simple: it's not moreish, and its challenges fail to reveal the kinds of nuance on the second and third tries that will have you refining strategies and aiming to better scores. Without that incentive to return, you're unlikely to.

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

On balance, its lack of ambition is supported only by a very basic underlying solidity in its execution: too weak to tackle bigger monsters, but strong enough to soldier on with some perseverance. [Nov 2006, p.89]

It collapses entirely when it comes to combat. [Feb 2015, p.122]

It shows that this most predictable of genres is still capable of throwing out interesting surprises. [Mar 2010, p.97]

Nevermind the sluggish movement, repetitive phrases from trainers, or ability to trap AI in combination patterns: at the most basic level, Prizefighter has suspicious collision detection and a great many gloves that clip through arms and heads. [Aug 2008, p.101]

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]

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]

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]

Lacking the tools to really upset her enemies or cope with them when she does, Summer relies on a wafer-thin playbook of obvious traps and distractions. [July 2009, p.96]

Gotcha Force has all the requisite cute and vibrant stylings of another Japanese phenomenon, but it's let down by a pallid game dynamic. [Jan 2004, p.99]

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]

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

Large-scale, new IP RPGs have been something of a rarity on this handheld, but as higher quality titles start to emerge, conformist and mediocre efforts like this become even less attractive and viable. [Feb 2008, p.97]

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 one example of too much going on in a game that is crammed with ideas, borrowed and new, all fighting for attention. [Issue#347, p.92]

A host of inchoate ideas served with a helping of self-importance, Submerged threatens to plumb the emotional depths, but there's little of value beneath its surface. [Oct 2015, p.121]

It's just not accurate or tangible enough to be rewarding, handling with the same kind of wool as Sonic's 3D platformers. [Apr 2006, p.93]

Bet On Soldier’s non-linearity of progression, its riot-shield combat and internationally ranging scenarios suggest a game that might well have looked exciting on the drawing board. The final production, however, will leave anyone better off putting their money on the dogs. [Nov 2005, p.112]