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]