Beyond its technical excellence, then, Gran Turismo 7 feels deeply, idiosyncratically personal in ways firstparty games rarely do. [Issue#370, p.100]

Even more than in Returnal, the Roguelike elements here seem to exist more for flavour than systematic depth. And in that they complement the unmatched action, and the incredible visual, audio, haptic experience. It will be hard for Housemarque to come back stronger than this. [Issue#424, p.92]

The frenetic, bite-sized missions are perfect for PSP, bursting with combat and highly detailed. Not before time, Sony has proved that PSP can run and gun with the big boys. [May 2006, p.96]

A fine effort, then, but a new Chrono Trigger it is not - and directly inviting such a comparison only highlights the areas in which it falls short. [Issue#390, p.133]

All in all, the setting is perfect for a puzzle game built around existential despair...Its clever, creepy and macabre.

One of the most distinctive, exciting and fully realised puzzle games we've played in years. [Issue#332, p.122]

Despite the criticisms, though, The Great Circle isn't so much defective as in tension with itself. [Issue#406, p.102]

As we wait for the first of the promised updates, then, there's plenty of reason to hope that this is the beginning, after all –the beginning of something rather special.

A brilliant fighting game for newcomers, and a wonderful one for genre fans, that somehow still manages to feel like a disappointment for so comprehensively failing to bring its two demographics together. [Apr 2018, p.112]

Its biggest adventure to date isn't flawless, but the Dark Knight is far from one to underestimate. [Aug 2015, p.106]

Despite what Naughty Dog's crack programmers might think, you can't encode fun-ness into a videogame. Yes, there's lots of 'fun' to be had here, but is it really more fun than the original? Probably not. [Nov 2003, p.96]

The game starts slow, a feeling exacerbated - or perhaps caused - by the easiness of the battles. But you'll play it and play it. Every time you try to stop you're just one battle away from mastering that skill, for earning that new job. [Dec 2003, p.105]

For all the delicious brain food it serves up, this astonishing game - a new high bar for creator and genre - never stops reminding you of the human beings at the heart of the moviemaking process, and the very real cost of their art. [Issue#375, p.106]

It is at its core a forgettably designed, cookie-cutter open-world game, that is elevated by its traversal, its combat and stealth, by the eventually irresistible pull of its story. It may not have legs, but while it lasts it is delightful. The Amazing Spider-Man? Not quite. But it is frequently spectacular, and given Parker's rather chequered videogame past, that feels like some achievement. [Issue#324, p.104]

Despite the lack of ingenuity on display, NSMB Wii's thrash of four players does bring uproarious anarchy to the sofa for short periods of time. [Dec 2009, p.86]

It promotes a message of kindness and understanding that's never felt more vital. [Jan 2017, p.121]

It's the music that's important here, and Elite Beat Agents delivers. [Jan 2007, p.86]

It's an 'experience' as much as a game, meaning that it will leave as many people cold as it grabs by the right half of the brain. Beyond good, then, but not quite excellent. [Christmas 2003, p.104]

The strength of the Mario RPG series has always been the convincing lunacy with which it depicts the 'ordinary' life of the mushroom kingdom. You may have steered Mario through some strange odd-jobs in your time, but Paper Mario 2 is your best chance to actually be him. [Christmas 2004, p.86]

This may be the age of the single-screen brawler, but TowerFall is among the most feature-rich of its kind.

Mario Kart isn't a racing game any more. It is a party game, and anyone buying it for anything more than frantic, foolish, social fun will grow tired of being cheated very quickly indeed. [Christmas 2003, p.98]

Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better, but OlliOlli World pulls off that rarest of tricks: it's a sequel that loses none of its capacity for challenge, while lowering the barrier to entry sufficiently to welcome in a new audience. [Issue#369, p.116]

In every respect Forza 6 is an improvement over Forza 5, and yet the game feels oddly torn between two eras, its stodgy insistence on piecemeal progression undercutting a handful of fresh ideas. The series may have found a clear route back to its Maple Valley Raceway glory days, but Forza 6 is a shift in the right direction as it rediscovers the playful soul and personality it first introduced to the sim racer. [Nov 2015, p.118]

Retro Studios has done a fine job with the Donkey Kong Country concept, ably translating its appeal for a modern platform, but it doesn't push it much further. [Christmas 2010, p.92]

It’s utterly relentless in its provision of new activities and distractions to the point that it’s hard not to become absorbed, a feeling backed up by the fact that most plot missions introduce a new location or interior environment to revisit and explore. [Dec 2006, p.80]

It feels more like a yearly update than a sequel, a new campaign with old multiplayer. The game isn't distinct from its predecessors in any important way, and fatigue sets in quicker than before. [Jan 2011, p.94]

After that initial sugar rush, Shredder's Revenge inevitably feels a little thin. [Issue#374, p.121]

At six to seven hours, Tearaway isn’t the longest game in Vita’s library, but it packs in more joyfully realised ideas than many games manage in three or four times the runtime. It’s a beautiful, brilliant game, but it’s more than that: it’s the first great Vita game.

Extravagant and uncompromising, with its head high in the clouds and feed deep in the mud, Portable Ops manages to be both a true original and quintessential Metal Gear. [Feb 2007, p.74]

From simple lever cranks to rotational unscrewing, Zack & Wiki finally puts to use the myriad Remote possibilities touched on in WarioWare: Smooth Moves. [Christmas 2007, p.93]

Long before this smart, sweet story has come to a satisfying close, it has taught us to treasure others for their flaws as well as their strengths. "We all deserve a second chance," one character says. Schafer and company have grasped theirs. [Issue#363, p.102]

Plenty of games have flourished around the slaughter, scale and destruction of war, but few have managed to realise a soldier’s role and worth - disposable, vulnerable, pivotal - as well as this. [Apr 2005, p.100]

Spirit Tracks' aging tricks continue to carry you cack into the narcotic realms of pure ritual, until you're deep in the caverns yet again, holding the magic yellow boomerang once more, and wondering what quirky brilliance it will bring with it this time. [Christmas 2009, p.92]

There aren't playstyles in modern Doom so much as players who use absolutely everything, and players who die. [Issue#346, p.84]

It's an 'experience' as much as a game, meaning that it will leave as many people cold as it grabs by the right half of the brain. Beyond good, then, but not quite excellent. [Christmas 2003, p.104]

Every moment feels like it's been lavished with attention; Little King's Story is as rich as it is long, and it's a very lengthy game indeed. [May 2009, p.90]

A labour of love. The core of the game might be a remake, but the features and polish applied move it beyond the realm of simple cash-ins to one of the finest games to grace PSN or XBLA yet. [Sept 2008, p.92]

Where next for Pokemon? Black and White don't suggest any answers, but they do remind us why we'd care in the first place. [Mar 2011, p.103]

Like its predecessor, The New Colossus is a stunning technical achievement and an unusually stylish act of videogame cinematography. Yet where the first game gleefully took a scalpel to what had come before, there's no old order for The New Colossus to overthrow: just a New Order that it struggles to live up to. [Christmas 2017, p.104]

It’s resplendent with detail and vibrancy: each of WHD’s eight tracks is a shimmering, 1080p rhapsody, played at an unwavering 60fps. [Dec 2008, p.93]

In a word, unbeatable. [Issue#417, p.106]

A colourfully written and often funny game, but one that doesn't deviate much from the fantasy rulebook, an area where a more substantial break from the past would have been welcome. [Sept 2014, p.108]

More striking are the zero-gravity sections. [Issue#382, p.108]

It isn’t any kind of reinvention, but a revitalisation, with a style so rich that it becomes an integral part of the game’s substance; Psychonauts breathes imagination and individuality as effortlessly as most games steal from one another. [July 2005, p.84]

Codemasters is as attuned to track-building and racecraft as it has ever been. [Oct 2009, p.92]

In a world whose sales charts are regularly topped by ever-more-homogenised military shooters and action games, playing Origins feels like stepping into an alternate reality in which the 16bit era evolved by increasing in fidelity, not dimensions.

In both its puzzle design and its storytelling, Return to Monkey Island plays it safe. [Issue#377, p.114]

Sin And Punishment 2's real value lies in the (now online-enabled) hi-score tables and a brilliant risk/reward scoring system. [Christmas 2009, p.94]

Despite its hectic invention, then, Velocity retains a rare kind of focus. Vita owners finally have something tart to see them through the drought, and the Minis just got a new standard bearer.

Spelunky digs its way so deeply into your brain and often pops up when you're busy playing something else. You'll flashback when another game's arsenal reminds you of just how powerful Yu's simple toolset is, or when another level designer tries and fails to encourage a different approach and reward convoluted strategies.

Few focused action-adventure games spin a yarn as well as CD Projekt does here, likely keeping you uncertain about your choices to the end. [Issue#390, p.120]

It is a breath of fresh air to play a game that doesn't merely use its science-fiction setting as attractive window dressing, its outstanding writing and voice acting more than compensating for its visual shortcomings. [Issue#399, p.116]

Essential. [June 2015, p.114]

Resistance 2 is every bit the product of Resistance: Fall Of Man’s mentality: it’s OK to do things by the numbers so long as those numbers are bigger than everyone else’s. [Christmas 2008, p.91]

If it is slight, then Flower compensates by being a very rare experience, both in terms of subject matter and the visual splendour with which it has been executed. [Mar 2009, p.94]

Europa Universalis IV is the game you graduate to when you’re tired of Civilization. That’s ultimately also why all those numbers are there, beneath the surface: because you never graduate away from Europa Universalis IV. It drops you in the deep end before you’re ready, but if you can swim back towards the shallows during those first five hours, you’ll unlock a game so rich, it’ll be helping you tell stories for years.

A great marriage of presentation and design, spun with ravishing verve.

So why, despite jokes about this not being the golden age of comics any more, does Dispatch feel like a retrograde step? [Issue#419, p.118]

Familiarity is both the worst and best thing about Pikmin 3. Twelve years after the original and nine after the sequel, little has changed – but little really needed to. It may not sell systems on its own, but it’s a fine addition to a sparse software library that brings one of Nintendo’s most vibrantly characterful series into the HD era and, critically, makes convincing use of the GamePad.

This is a game about stories that has a knack of producing really good ones - when you're doing well, and especially when you're doing badly. [March 2019, p.120]

One of the most memorable JRPGs in recent years. [Issue#364, p.114]

Settling into Hi-Fi Rush's groove might require a recalibration - in your head, if not the latency settings - and the rewards are more intermittent than we'd like, but when they come, they're considerably greater than the occasional cheer from a non-existent audience. [Issue#382, p.98]

With a superior control system and a raft of incisive upgrades, this year's update is a connoisseur of the boxing arts. [Apr 2005, p.103]

It’s a game that leads by example, never keeping still while making sure you do likewise, and is every bit as essential now as it was 12 months ago.

Despite the odd misstep, Infinity Field is a great dual-stick shooter that moves into essential territory with its controls.

In the original, full-sized LBP, creating more than a few seconds of playable level was a significant and time-consuming effort. Here, with slightly reduced options and at a near microscopic scale, it's much, much harder. [Jan 2010, p.93]

Often we're reminded of one of the oldest, simplest examples of Halo's sandbox: what happens when one grenade is applied to an unexploded stack of its peers. A cascade of possibilities, all these tiny moments of pleasure bouncing off of one another in a way that could never be fully scripted in advance. [Issue#367, p.98]

Shooter feels accomplished and robust, a rounded and consistently enjoyable achievement. [Jan 2010, p.94]

Arise has embedded itself deep in our skull. [Issue#418, p.110]

When the game eventually gets going, it's almost as much fun as it's predecessor. It's just that it takes several hours to kick off. Dark Cloud 2 still has merit, but it's simply not as enjoyable as the first game. [May 2003, p.95]

It's disappointing that basic irritants are still evident in the singleplayer game. But it's the online version - which takes the hunter/hunted metaphor to chilling extremes - which ends up being one of the most nerve-racking gaming experiences of all time. [Apr 2004, p.98]

Were it not for the rich, recognisable and beloved settings that fall over themselves to get to the player, this would be a desperately bland game. But the power of those settings simply cannot be brushed aside. [June 2006, p.88]

The puzzles themselves can feel gimmicky and detached, as though inclusion was more important than integration. [Dec 2009, p.92]

It may not re-invent the wheel, but MotoGP2 is a shiny new alloy among racing games, and builds upon the series' excellent reputation. And that should be enough to stir up Xbox live all over again. [June 2003, p.100]

If you want to know what unites all players, though, it's the sheer glory of the wide-open world that is brought into being here. [Issue#408, p.114]

Games with distinct souls are rare things, but Persona 3 succeeds in displaying a mesmerising personality that touches the many well-crafted aspects of its curious and singular approach. [Nov 2007, p.94]

But that's what Arco does, playing on your sense of riding into the unknown, taking risks that might kill for the sake of curiosity. [Issue#401, p.120]

Irrespective of talent, taste, spare time or even online connectivity, it has something for anyone with even a tingle in their trigger finger. [Jan 2008, p.78]

The perfect candidate for the 100th WiiWare game, LostWinds is on the verge of outgrowing the service it almost single-handedly redeems. [Dec 2009, p.101]

Perhaps Gone Home’s greatest surprise lies in the apparent ease with which The Fullbright Company has joined the game’s subject and its medium: it’s a domestic tale of girl-to-womanhood told with the tools of an action game. As a statement that games can express emotionally resonant stories, Gone Home is a triumph. But that’s not why you should play it. Engrossing, touching and rewarding, it’s well worth the experience on its own terms, too.

Not since Yoshi's Island's designers broke out the crayons has a Nintendo platformer looked so much like a work of craft, but it's a pity that, for the most part, the levels don't feel as fresh as they look - a platform made of butterfly stitching is still just a platform. [Christmas 2010, p.93]

It's a smart iOS game that reduces a sport to its basic elements like this - and an even smarter one that can then turn those elements into something that feels entirely new. Three points.

This is a game with great characters, and of great character. [Issue#362, p.106]

Supreme Commander is the polar opposite of lazy Sunday afternoon strategy: the anti-"Civilization." With a name as apt as the infinite slaughter of "Total Annihilation," it really is a supreme commander’s job. [Mar 2007, p.78]

This is a story about finding your voice, but it also grapples with an uncertain time, when some outcomes are beyond our control or experience. [Issue#420, p.104]

While it is a little hampered by it’s scale and scope, Kirby remains imaginative, detailed and demanding... It’s exactly the kind of game that Nintendo promised the DS would deliver. [June 2005, p.90]

But what GDS ends up proving about game development is this: making simple, fun and, yes, casual games that can keep rewarding players after that first flush of fun is so much harder than it looks.

There’s nothing here to keep you away from the bigger brother versions, unless you’re always playing away from home. In such environments, however, it’s a solid tribute to a storming series. [Nov 2005, p.111]

It may not take the genre into uncharted waters, and occasionally stumbles into cliche, but Gemini Rue is an accomplished homage that rivals the very titles that influenced it.

Genre-defining as it is, the drama of Fight Night remains squarely within the ropes. [Aug 2009, p.103]

For those who can tolerate having their brain beaten numb by it, the game entails often enthralling, occasionally awe-inspiring sights and sounds. But little is there that’s new compared to much that needs renewal. [Christmas 2005, p.96]

Simple and elegant, it takes influences such as Konami’s Ring Of Red and even Pandemic’s Full Spectrum Warrior and elaborates on them to create something unique and interesting. [Christmas 2008, p.100]

As a launch title, Resistance proves itself to be a crisp and powerful piece of software, but not quite as robust a videogame. [Jan 2007, p.68]

While the fattened numbers - levels, game types, building tools - are the products of mere evolution, the lean, focused fun is new to the mix. [July 2009, p.94]

By the final cut to black, we're looking forward to making more connections like the ones we find here, before we take our final turn off Interstate 65 and fall into the Zero's dark, enveloping embrace. [Issue#342, p.102]

This game has not so much been created to advance the beloved series but to prepare the ground for its next generation. As sequels go, think more civil disturbance than raising hell. [Issue #386, p.104]

Even if the DNA of its forebears is barely apparent, such a bold, brilliant transformation certainly involves something a little like magic. [Dec 2009, p.100]

With a wealth of weapons, unlockable characters, hidden relics and buff-providing cards, Galante has adopted the kitchen-sink approach to fleshing out his game. [Issue#378, p.121]