Not for the first time, a Miyazaki game has arrived and the landscape appears transformed. As you play, there is a sense of plates shifting beneath you, of the T&Cs of game development being hastily rewritten. We haven’t felt this way since “Breath of the Wild.” Here, as there, an open world means freedom and fresh air. [Issue#370, p.96]

Naughty Dog has delivered the most riveting, emotionally resonant story-driven epic of this console generation. At times it’s easy to feel like big-budget development has too much on the line to allow stubbornly artful ideas to flourish, but then a game like The Last Of Us emerges through the crumbled blacktop like a climbing vine, green as a burnished emerald.

No one makes worlds like Rockstar, but at last it has produced one without compromise. Everything works. It has mechanics good enough to anchor games of their own, and a story that is not only what GTA has always wanted to tell but also fits the way people have always played it. It’s a remarkable achievement, a peerless marriage of world design, storytelling and mechanics that pushes these ageing consoles to the limit and makes it all look easy.

Take away the branding and there remains a core of irrepressible imagination, the fuel of so many great games, that is anything but robotic. [Issue#403, p.92]

Yes, there's still the freedom to cause havoc, and inevitably you do; the difference is that you’re no longer impelled to toy with GTA IV's world in quite the same sadistic way - you live in it. [June 2008, p.82]

It all adds up to what is easily the best and most progressive rhythm-action game ever made, if that label even applies anymore. [Christmas 2010, p.76]

Like Breath of the Wild, Odyssey is a new entry in a long-running series that belies its age with sprightly invention, taking big risks with an established formula, and having all of them pay off handsomely. Mario might be getting on a bit, then, but a dinosaur? This astonishing adventure proves he's anything but. [Dec 2017, p.98]

Sega's loss is Nintendo's gain: Bayonetta, twirling away from a gigantic demon's maw and smacking the highest choir of angels on the nose, has just given Wii U its first true classic. [Nov 2014, p.100]

As a whole it is almost overwhelming in its depth, irresistible in value and certainly, unreservedly, brilliant. [Dec 2007, p.82]

A beautiful and graceful fighting game that lets imagination loose, and winks before slapping Dante, Kratos and every other hero back to the drawing board. [Christmas 2009, p.90]

It’s a multiplayer riot, a visual landmark, a feat of engineering, and one of the most charming games ever made. But even those accolades are dwarfed by its scope, its potential, and the apparent endlessness of them both. [Dec 2008, p.76]

Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter. But in action, storytelling, technical achievement, atmosphere and intensity it has far outdone its peers. Valve just hit the top note no other PC game developer could reach...The excuse that 'it's just a game' won't cut it anymore. [Dec 2004, p.102]

The result, for all the longevity of its series and the familiarity of the open-world genre, is a game that evokes feelings we haven’t known for 20 years. Not since Ocarina Of Time have we set foot in a world that seems so mind-bogglingly vast, that feels so unerringly magical, that proves so relentlessly intriguing. Plenty of games promise to let us go anywhere and do anything; few, if any, ever deliver on it so irresistibly. Nineteen years on, Ocarina is still held up as the high-water mark of one of gaming’s best-loved – and greatest – series. Now it may have to settle for second place. [April 2017, p.104]

How apt that this ultimate tale of hero-making should see Nintendo's hardware become the console it was always meant to be.

In substance it's nothing new, merely a magnificent, beautiful monster of an FPS sequel. In concept and execution, though, Halo 3 is the future. [Nov 2007, p.80]

Since the end of the N64 era, as Nintendo has explored new pastures and methodically tended old ones, it’s been easy to forget the times when every major release from the company felt like this. It’s a bravura piece of design that pulls off stunts no one else has even thought of. [Christmast 2007, p.76]

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]

As a whole it is almost overwhelming in its depth, irresistible in value and certainly, unreservedly, brilliant. [Dec 2007, p.82]

If an RPG is measured by the temptation to explore elsewhere before heading to the next objective, this is as great as any. We stall for hours finding and investigating one magical environment after another. It's bliss. [Issue#411, p.100]

We think about exactly what it means for a PS4 game to have cracked open sculpting, composing, coding, performing, curating, cinematography and game design for more players, more kinds of people, all at once to a nearly unlimited degree - alongside a philosophy that might encourage the most reluctant to consider what they might be capable of, and what it might mean to them. How does it all stack up? It feels almost silly to ask. [Issue#344, p.106]

A dazzling work of dank, abject horror that cements Miyazaki as one of the all-time greats. Sixteen months after PS4's launch, the new generation has finally begun. [May 2015, p.112]

Baldur's Gate 3 leaves you with as many ideas it it does memories. That, surely, is the soul of roleplaying. [Issue#389, p.98]

This isn't a game that redefines the genre: this is one that rolls it up and locks it away.

It's a game of restraint, but with some brutal sucker punches; the tale of a one-man cowboy army who is nothing without the people around him. It's a game about the fear of the future that reaches astounding new technical heights, and makes Rockstar's previous games look and feel like ancient history. It's a resounding triumph to which there is only one reasonable response - and an appropriate one, too. Hats off. [Christmas 2018, p.104]

Yes, there's still the freedom to cause havoc, and inevitably you do; the difference is that you're no longer impelled to toy with GTA IV's world in quite the same sadistic way - you live in it. [June 2008, p.82]

While certainly being Treasure's most fragmented game, there’s a sense that the lack of narrative, character and even proper framework makes this its most raw, pure and delightful. [June 2008, p.95]

Crazy as they may seem, it's these musical dreamers that ensure Kine makes your heart skip as your head rings - wrong notes and all. [Issue#139, p.114]

Windjammers 2 also cements Dotemu's position as the premier upholder of exquisite and sympathetic sequels to discarded classics. A triumph. [Issue#368, p.118]

Though you might not see it at first, Nex Machina steadily becomes a more layered, complex experience the more you play it. [Sept 2017, p.104]

Into the Breach balances its action on a knife-edge while giving you extraordinary latitude to make choices, an astonishing feat of focused game design with the capacity to enthral as few tactics games have ever managed. [May 2018, p.108]

This is a remarkably assured game for such a young studio, the work of a small team that knows exactly what it wants to do and executes it almost without error.

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]

As with previous GTA games there's lots to criticise, but San Andreas survives, scathed but still walking tall, buoyed by the kind of ambition that sees most games crumble under the weight of it all. It's a multi-faceted, multi-achieving experience, a rough-edged but massively substantial landmark. [Christmas 2004, p.78]

Every single moment of Four Swords is magically familiar and every single moment is dazzlingly fresh...Whether being experienced in the competitive, co-operative cackle of multiplay, or the captivating atmosphere of singleplayer, the extraordinary virtues of the game itself remain the same. [May 2004, p.96]

The best platformer on iPhone just got better, and there's still no sign of any meaningful competition. [Sept 2009, p.93]

Even without the luminous pixel art to continue, there's always an impetus to investigate further. [June 2016, p.116]

No other beat 'em up developer is quite as willing to experiment with the form in a bid to stave off the moribundity that's gradually subsuming the genre. [Import - June 2003, p.88]

It's a puzzle game and a strategy game as much as an action game, then, and like Rockstar's Manhunt, it will sicken you even as it provides its murky thrills.

It can be a little basic in places, and it isn’t a ‘paradigm shift’ in any sense, but it is proof that games can love their roots and use the quality of being a ‘game’ to give form to their stories – and excel at it. [Feb 2008, p.90]

Dozens of hours later, we're still not sure how we feel about it. It's a game of contradictions, open and flexible in its level design, yet resolutely strict in its combat... It is a brilliant game, that is certain. but it is often a difficult one to truly love. Naturally, we can't put it down. [Issue#332, p.104]

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

The only thing that's hard to adjust, in fact, is the tension in your muscles. GTR 2 is hugely better than its predecessor in exactly the area that matters. [Oct 2006, p.89]

Zelda virgins might well play The Wind Waker and deem it the best game they've ever encountered. To those of us who already have an idea of what to expect, though, it's 'merely' brilliant. [May 2003, p.88]

Provides you with plenty of stealth mechanics but leagues of ground to cover, and that tension is deadly. [Issue#344, p.116]

Sokobond introduces complexity via level furniture that breaks bonds or lets you adjust the position of bonded atoms, but even the basic chambers provide ingenious challenges. Forget chemistry: it takes alchemy to produce a puzzle game as refined and smart as this.

Valve has taken something unscripted and dynamic, and seeded it with the right amount of narrative flavour, pacing and spectacle. [Christmas 2008, p.82]

It uses preexisting flaws as the foundations for something that is better in just about every single way: bigger, more coherent and, best of all, immeasurably more generous. With that comes, appropriately, a puzzle for Bungie to solve. How do you continue to build on a game that has so few chinks in its lustrous, gleaming exotic armour? [Dec 2015, p.106]

It arrives fully formed, with a challenge and aesthetic that's beautifully intertwined and finely crafted. Joyous.

Mario Kart 8 is yet another overwhelmingly powerful argument in favour of the company’s idiosyncratic approach to design.

This is a jewel of a response, one that catches the firelight in different ways depending on how you approach it, but always dazzles. [Issue#400, p.102]

A game that's more than the sum of its parts. [Dec 2009, p.98]

GTAIV’s modern weapons spit bullets like angry hornets until a health circle depletes; here, lives end in uncompromising fashion. For the western aficionado, it is viciously accurate; for the fan of wanton sandbox carnage, it is comically frank.

Super Smash Bros is a series that has often been unfairly derided as button-mashing, largely thanks to its surface sheen of cutesy characters, but it has one of the most enduringly innovative and deep systems of any fighter. [Apr 2008, p.84]

The freedom of movement requires a new level of spatial imagination. Before Prince of Persia, platform games were like playing Tetris with only the blocks and bars. [Christmas 2003, p.100]

If L4D2 is sometimes over-complicated by its glut of small innovations, then it also substantially rewards the player with its few large ideas: confusion gives way to depth and dynamism, grander thrills and starker dramas. We’re still interested in the fate of the original game’s heroes, but this sequel affirms that the way ahead is due south.

This is not only a kinetic, exciting and gloriously refined interpretation of the most storied fighting game series, but also the most generous and expansive offering yet. Here is a game that pays tearful tribute to its past, while determinedly seeking out a new and young audience - mindful, no doubt, that its future resides in their hands, be they practised or otherwise. [Issue #386, p.100]

While it's unlikely to win as many hearts as Resident Evil 4 did, it's an equally important and remarkable entry in the series' tumultuous timeline. [March 2017, p.94]

A work of progressive genius that hauls its staid genre up by the bootstraps and takes its place alongside the WOWs and Oblivions of this world. It's altogether too good to be true. [Christmas 2006, p.74]

All these transgressions against convention add up to the most engrossing deck-builder of the past couple of years. [Issue#420, p.96]

An ambitious and largely successful attempt to meld the accuracy of traditional firstperson battling with the extra spatial agility and awareness afforded by thirdperson movement. It does feel slightly overdone, but not to the point of obscuring its offering of intensity and flighty action. [May 2005, p.90]

Amid those undeniable influences, this emerges as a bona fide original: one that fully merits a place alongside the other gems in Enhance's gold-tier catalogue. [Issue#385, p.110]

"Unbearable" is definitely one word for Pathologic 2, but that hides a few others: engulfing, ingenious, profound, invigorating. [Issue#341, p.106]

Despite a handful of minor issues, then, and occasionally patchy framerates in particularly busy areas, Dishonored 2 is consistently remarkable. [Jan 2017, p.102]

You can't argue that Naughty Dog hasn't thrown everything at this, and though its tendency towards maximalism doesn't always work, the results are frequently astonishing. This is the kind of game you get when you have unlimited budget and manpower and no one to say when - even if you wish sometimes that someone had. As a big-budget action game, then, The Last of Us Part II is almost without peer. As a sequel to that story, it is deeply, daringly, fascinatingly flawed. [Issue#347, p.88]

TR-49 is may things simultaneously, to the extent that it can be overwhelming, causing the brain and heart to race - a remarkable feat for something so apparently simple. [Issue#420, p.103]

Charting a course through Earth's imminent destruction is as unashamedly difficult as it was in 1994's X-COM. It's possible, through bad planning and bad management, to doom the planet early on, making the game feel unfair. Get it right, however – survive the stresses of management, and the strains of aliens – and you'll feel like world's greatest hero.

As paradoxical as the thing itself, this single-storey mansion is a towering achievement. [Issue#410, p.106]

Like the very best narratives, Thirty Flights Of Loving relies on economy more than excess, and it races you breathlessly to its conclusion rather than herding you through an awkward gauntlet of false choices and bottlenecks.

Borderlands 2 might not develop extensively on its forebear, but it has even greater power to hold you for hours on end, deftly weaving RPG stat development with skill-based play. It's enough to make every decision you make meaningful and fun, and lend the realisation that Gearbox knows more about the fundamentals of the shooter than almost any other developer.

It’s a game designed to exhaust the world’s supply of adjectives. It’s a world littered with riches - tiny details sewn into a vast, varied and utterly spectacular canvas. [Sept 2005, p.90]

The core Titanfall moveset is a joy, and it has been thoughtfully expanded with a delightful grappling hook. [Jan 2017, p.112]

A coup de theatre that leaves us bowled over. One for gaming's history books? That's something upon which Pentiment's players can surely agree. [Issue#379, p.108]

Playdead's debut title is a rare thing – a wholly realised place as well as a successfully realised game, and both Limbo and the Limbo inside it are one-of-a-kind places to be stuck in.

It's a sensitively told story that's brought in to land with a thunderous final chapter, delivering suspense, spectacle, and a deeply moving resolution. [Issue#385, p.112]

This is a game of rare thematic consistency and mechanical brilliance. [Issue#347, p.102]

This is one of the smartest and most substantial thirdperson action games you'll play. [Issue#378, p.100]

In short, Darkest Dungeon II is everything you could hope for. [Issue#385, p.114]

For all its cinematic aspirations and borrowings, though, it's clear the Swedish studio's heart firmly belongs to videogames. [Issue#398, p.104]

Awakening offers an excellent game of strategy, but it’s the relationship system that makes it.

At the beginning of the game, and every morning since, Colt wakes up with a single objective: break the loop. But we're increasingly starting to sympathize with Juliana. Why would you want to do that, when there's still so much to play around with? [Issue#364, p.98]

Your achievements in the game stem from legitimate advancements in your understanding of physics. [July 2015, p.102]

The fascination of those lingering unknowns is part of why Basso's remarkable indie debut takes up residence in your brain when you're not playing it. But on a more fundamental level, it is simply a beautifully constructed, wonderfully characterful adventure, one that marks the blossoming of a major talent. [Issue#398, p.98]

Far Cry 3 asked for the definition of insanity, and its sequel answers it. [Jan 2014, p.100]

Just as in Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, each activity is enlivened by the knowledge that you have chosen to do it right now, out of many alternative options available in every other direction. So when one DOES hold your undivided attention for an extended span, it must be something special indeed. And of those, UFO 50 has more than its fair share. [Issue#402, p.100]

A virtuoso feat of creativity. [July 2015, p.110]

A quiet game within which burns a fierce revolutionary spirit. [July 2015, p.114]

The only real criticism that can be levelled at Knights of the Old Republic is that, particularly towards the end of the game, it all feels fairly easy, but then this is a game that's designed to be experienced rather than conquered, and lightsaber wielding Jedi aren't supposed to find things difficult. [Oct 2003, p.86]

If, as Roger Ebert said, movies are a machine that generates empathy, then Spelunky 2, even more so than the original, is a machine for generating surprise. And, inevitably, its close cousin: delight. [Issue#350, p.]

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

It is an instinctive, ingenious joy to play for every minute, and it sets a new gold standard for game interface design on any platform. [Sept 2007, p.86]

A vast, almost encyclopaedic look at the united nations of rally, Dirt 3 doesn't feel definitive despite America – it wouldn't feel definitive without it.

The Last Guardian doesn't just live up to its forebears' legacy, it goes further. Despite the callbacks to Fumito Ueda's previous works, it is a unique creation. Outside of indie experiments, we don't get to say that about modern videogames often enough.

We may be in hell, but as far as the Roguelike genre goes, this is a glimpse of heaven. [Issue#350, p.92]

The neatness of the solution is all the more satisfying for the mess this once was: as the last piece slots into place, the sense of closure for player and protagonist feels as earned as it is overwhelming. [Issue#399, p.121]

SFXT successfully combines the best of the most popular 2D and 3D fighting games in the world, proves Capcom's most newcomer-friendly fighter, and boasts a combat system of bewildering depth. If any company was going to move the genre forward, it seems fitting that it's the one that invented it.

In a catalogue festooned with gems, this wild heart glitters brightest of all. [Issue#338, p.96]

From its sluggish, restrictive start, Human Revolution opens into a world of scintillating possibility in which your actions' significance reaches far into the future. And with something like that difficult future approaching fast, Human Revolution achieves a rare accolade: it's not just a great game, but a timely one.

It's the game's flexibility that drives its enduring appeal, complemented by its granular UI and difficulty settings that enable you to make it as easy or as hard as you like - whether through developer-prescribed challenges or personal rules imposed as a matter of pride - without ever adjusting a slider. [Jan 2016, p.114]