Fundamentally, combat feels feeble and insubstantial - partly out of aesthetic failure to convey power, but mostly out of a design choice to limit the effectivness of your weaponry (see 'Gun Damn'). [Mar 2008, p.95]

Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

This nonsensical sequel in Capcom's mediocre survival horror spin-off fails in practically every sense, from fine detail to basic tenets. A catastrophe. [Sept 2003]

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]

HTTC’s easy relationship with the subject matter results in some of the finest political animals you’ll see and, what is perhaps even more remarkable, a videogame that is genuinely funny. [Sept 2008, p.97]

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]

Inspired moments, such as the vehicles' mulitple weapons systems, are forced from the mind by the relentless slogs across the levels... In the end, you're likely to discover that the real battle is to continue playing. [May 2004, p.100]

By even the lowest expectations Superman Returns is a staggering shortfall. [Jan 2007, p.86]

We’ve a right to enjoy this kind of brainless, murderous throwback, but we’ve also a right to expect it to be made to the standards of videogames of five years ago, never mind those of today. [July 2005, p.91]

Sadly, too often your powers feel anything but godly.

A bitter reminder that pedigree is no guarantee of quality.

It's just too hard, the physics too capricious, and the tasks too frustrating for words. [Aug 2006, p.85]

A fairly standard game in a genre overflowing with quality. [Christmas 2007, p.99]

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]

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]

Baffling design decisions and over-reliance on the same tricks further mar this already unpleasant journey.

The most dedicated of slash ‘em up fans may be willing to ride out the disparity between Nano Breaker’s furious highs and comatose lows, but this just doesn’t feel like an experiment made for the player’s benefit – unless it’s one borne out by the next Castlevania. [March 2005, p.91]

Extinction is mindless, soulless stuff, and a huge disappointment from a reputable studio. [June 2018, p.116]

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]

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

Where Escape From Butcher Bay and Assault On Dark Athena showed how games can complement and expand a film franchise in unique and interesting ways, The Merc Files feels like a rushed, irrelevant addition to David Twohy’s B-movie universe; one that would have been best left on the cutting room floor.

Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

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]

Exploration feels clumsy and laboured, and it’s all too easy to be overwhelmed by a swarm, bumped from wasp to ant and back, stun lock preventing you from firing again as your health bar steadily depletes. We didn’t expect high art, but criminally, Bugs vs. Tanks doesn’t even offer low-budget thrills.

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

Two Worlds has a lot of content for anyone willing to slog through it, but its buggy failure to take Oblivion’s crown, its troubled development and unfinished feel are testament to ideas beyond its makers’ capabilities. [Nov 2007, p.96]

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]

The tactical elements are actually quite clever – grabbing enemies will bait the police into cowering submission – but it soon transpires that this is the game's one good idea. [Nov 2006, p.87]

The only area in which the game satisfyingly realises the twisted ideas is in mental ailments. [July 2008, p.96]

The calibre of game you might well produce having been shot three times and then stabbed. [Jan 2005, p.91]

Had The Official Game provided a consistent overall challenge, it would have been bearable, if unexciting. But it hasn't, and it isn't. [July 2006, p.88]

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]

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]

Given the state of Knights Contract, the famously hellish result of Dr Faust's own little deal seems comparatively sweet. [Mar 2011, p.101]

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]

Vane is unfinished, its few ideas undermined by its shoddy foundations. If it really were a painting, you'd get Banksy to frame it. [March 2019, p.108]

In a world where games such as Hades, Slay The Spire and Into The Breach have found ways to elevate the Roguelike to new heights, PixelJunk Raiders sadly fails to make a mark. [Issue#357, p.118]

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]

A few hairy moments in, and any attempt to get back under your skin is redundant. Mostly this is because the game's resident evil is largely incapable of harming you, and any sense of jeopardy is lost. [Apr 2010, p.97]

Its foundations aren't sturdy enough to hold any longterm weight. [Feb 2013, p.110]

We at least have a chance to marvel at the hectic cost of ambition, and to be mystified, once more, at the strange, stupid, painful things that some of us will do for love.

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 game’s unique honour system (requiring you to tag and then kill enemies in exchange for upgrades) proves largely irrelevant, and in the heat of battle, toggling your firstperson view and wrestling with the analogue nub to track fast-moving targets proves frustrating and unwieldy. [Jan 2008, p.88]

It's a pity that it has exited development before it was fully evolved. [June 2015, p.118]

A messy jumble of broken parts. [Aug 2016, p.112]

Astonishia ultimately proves to be little more than a charming catalogue of decade-old foibles and cliché. [Aug 2006, p.93]

It’s tempting to believe that Microsoft and Twisted Pixel set out to create some kind of meta-joke here, but the line between a successful and unsuccessful parody can be a fine one. All Lococycle achieves is falling on its face, while no one laughs.

Certainly, releasing it so close to Halo Wars suggests deliberate commercial suicide - that it’s genuinely progressive ideas will be ignored and lost as a result is a minor tragedy. [Apr 2009, p.118]

There are minor things for which The Fight can take credit. The progression of skills is well-paced, its 'street' aesthetic pioneers a delightful new direction for extreme cheese, and your flailing proves quite the workout. [Christmas 2010, p.101]

Sadly, encounters with enemy AI - particularly in combat - are by far the weakest link in an otherwise enjoyable effort. [Apr 2005, p.98]

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]

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.

Ultimately, Gamelion's lacklustre effort serves as a helpful case study for anybody interested in investigating why no-one's ever made a successful platform game about a character with almost no body weight before.

Hexodius’ dungeon sections aren’t involved enough to offer interesting choices or exploration, but last just long enough to qualify as clunky menu screens.

The dev team has an eye for spectacle – a towering golem comprised of cars and other metallic detritus is a visual highlight – but these moments mostly serve to illustrate how dull your actual actions are by contrast. [Dec 2008, p.98]

The root problem is that the board controller is poorly conceived. The notion of mimicking while stationary an activity entirely reliant on motion is deeply flawed. [Jan 2010, p.88]

If you find its imperfections endearing there’s much to position Apocalypse as one of the bolder attempts to further the art of the click-fest. [Dec 2006, p.85]

Comparisons with "Halo" are inevitable. Unfortunately, Fire Warrior shows how developers can steal elements from superior games, while fundamentally misunderstanding why they worked so well in the first place. [Nov 2003, p.101]

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]

It's the first game we can recall, for instance, to feature a them tune comprising a single note. [Sept 2009, p.96]

The calibre of game you might well produce having been shot three times and then stabbed. [Jan 2005, p.91]

It's astonishing that Shiver couldn't conjure up a decent party game from such great source material. [June 2018, 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 is, at least, a pleasing weight to impacts as you thump enemies into walls or slam them into the floor. Good job, too, since there's precious little else to enjoy here. [Issue#391, p.123]

Where we once observed burgers grilled with the power of rap, we now meet a policeman who doesn't like littering. All very toothless. [June 2009, p.93]

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]

A game that, while dripping in style, is miserably lacking in substance. [Issue#328, p.118]

A stab at innovation would usually constitute an excuse for an otherwise diabolical title, but in Kakuto Chojin there are no puncture wounds, just lots of internal bleeding. [March 2003, p.104]

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]

The consistently poor controls of Sonic’s 3D outings make it seem like Sonic Team has convinced itself that this is how this aspect of the franchise should rightly be, and everyone else should just learn to deal with it. [Christmas 2006, p.82]

By any standards that have existed during the last ten, Without Warning is a work of stultifying incompetence that seems to hate its own players. [Dec 2005, p.108]

New skills are simply triggered randomly during battles, resulting in the confusing hit and miss levelling up that so infuriates attention deficient westerners... Indeed, the manner of the execution makes for tough gaming but, paradoxically, it's the exclusivity of the gameplay that will attract a few. [Nov 2003, p.108]

By any standards that have existed during the last ten, Without Warning is a work of stultifying incompetence that seems to hate its own players. [Dec 2005, p.108]

ToL's only saving graces are the hammy acting and daft moves. [Sept 2010, p.102]

It's a numbing piece of design. [July 2008, p.97]

Glitchy. [Sept 2010, p.99]

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]

The fun is spread far too thin. [Sept 2010, p.94]

So sparse is the experience that it takes about four or five bewildered hours for the reality to sink in that yes, this is all there is. [Issue#332, p.114]

Unforgivably unresponsive controls and a series of poor structural choices quickly reveal themselves and deeply undercut every positive point the game provides. [July 2005, p.95]

Like a fledgling with two broken wings, it would surely have been more humane to put the thing out of its misery than let it limp out in this pathetic state. [Christmas 2015, p.123]

Plays unbearably clumsily. [June 2010, p.104]

Platinum needs to take a little more care when it comes to picking its battles. [Aug 2016, p.110]

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]

Natsume's anaemic offering is a bit of a Halloween zombie, in other words. It's shambling, it's barely animated, and you really ought to avoid it.

So wasteful of its source material that it should be held up as an example of how not to handle this kind of production. [July 2009, p.101]

Itagaki has brought a knife to a gunfight, and the result is a bloody mess. [Oct 2015, p.116]

Basic combat is dismal, turgid stuff, yet accounts for almost all the action.

The representation of the xenomorphs is the game’s most damaging failure. They’re just not dangerous enough, reduced by a first mission deluge into a swarm of targets bearing the shape of a familiar, once-horrific symbol of death. But they have none of that pop icon’s grace or deadliness.

It's almost a relief that the game struggling to break free from these severe technical shortcomings is mundane. [May 2011, p.104]

The cinematic videogame thriller depends on budget and craft. Remove these ingredients and the thinness of the underlying design is shown up. The Farm 51 has neither the money nor the talent to compete on this well-furrowed ground. Deadfall Adventures is a poor man’s imitation, a thoroughly bad videogame and one which, most frustratingly, is bad in uninteresting ways.

Its idea of merging solo, co-op and deathmatch combat into a single mode is as noncommittal as its story, which merges decades-old cyberpunk cliches into one appalling mess. [Mar 2011, p.92]

There are just 20 team leaders in the game; the 500 subs available from the gacha can only bring so much variety, and pale in comparison to the almost 6,000 available in Puzzle & Dragons itself. We've been playing that game for seven years, and it still finds new ways to excite us. That this barren, boring work should share its name is an outrage. [Issue#343, p.122]

Star Trek has more bugs crawling on it than a Fear Factor contestant. Sometimes the results are amusing, as in the turbolift example, but frequently they just make life a drag.

If there's a benefit to the game's focus on local co-op multiplayer, it's that players can stand suicide watch over each other for when the awfulness of it all finally overwhelms them. [Oct 2009, p.97]

Clash Of The Titans' many failings are all the more surprising given that the movie is just one of many CGI-heavy offerings accused of feeling more like a game than a movie.

While the likes of Call Of Duty 4 and Halo have made console joypads feel snappy and responsive enough to challenge the PC mouse and keyboard, Turning Point has sloppily regressed the cause by a few years. [May 2008, p.93]

When compared to its rivals, Rock Revolution is an embarrassment regarding content, presentation and playability. [Jan 2009, p.96]