Though its essential concept is well worn, Ninjatown is sturdily designed and offers a commendably flexible set of strategies for survival against the hordes. [Christmas 2008, p.97]

There are nice touches – cockroaches that scatter under your flashlight, the occasional puzzle, effective cutscenes – but there is little that you won’t have found implemented in a vastly more satisfactory form elsewhere. [May 2008, p.99]

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]

It's not so much that less could have been more here, but rather that it fails to replicate what made those classic JRPGs so beloved. [Issue#362, p.118]

It's perhaps because the title benefits from such a high production spend, in fact, that the average design and execution becomes more pronounced. [Mar 2004]

Once the novelty of the new setting and storylines has worn off - there's little genuine inovation to hold your interest. [July 2004, p.104]

Did a purse-holder at Activision one day grapple fruitlessly with the last game's control system and scrawl in their subsequent notes "Make the next one so that I can play it"? Speculation aside, someone sure messed-up Spider-Man. [Dec 2005, p.108]

While Neversoft's course design holds up, its objectives sadly don't; setting high scores is as thrilling and rewarding as ever, but we're less forgiving of being asked to collect five objects dotted around a level without a right-stick camera than we were at the turn of the millennium.

This is more than just a cynical cash-in conversion, but in pitching itself as a kind of '1.5' iteration it's never clear if the game is a necessity or a distraction for devotees of the Kingdom Hearts universe. For all but the most ardent follower, its off-target execution will imply the latter. [Feb 2005, p.80]

As for a return trip to hell to see how alternative choices might have played out? It would have to freeze over first. [Issue#139, p.116]

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

On retreading the levels enemy attacks become predictable puppet shows, with mad-eyed soldiers lining up to get killed exactly where they did many times before. It's the kind of repetition more commonly associated with lightgun games these days. [Christmas 2003, p.109]

It's a great deal of fun for the first 20 minutes, but once you've mastered your ships and applied your favourite skull decals, there's little to keep you hooked. [Tested with Oculus Rift; June 2016, p.110]

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]

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

It's an amusingly quirky notion, but it wears thin as you empty bullets into pile after pile of stationary stationery. [Issue#413, p.114]

By the second of third level you’ll feel that Get Even has shown you everything it has. The odd moment of redemption comes with an excellent boss here, a Taito in-joke there, and the invaders. [Feb 2009, p.95]

The laser-like focus on the personal side of management is to the exclusion of all else – the lack of a match engine is one thing, but there's no detail whatsoever to the football your team is playing.

The net result is a product that can't be faulted on its accessibility, but has less subtlety than ever with which to hide the inherently, and sometimes unrelentingly, mechanical process that caring for your sims represents. [Mar 2007, p.85]

Enormous potential. However, those moments where you feel justice being done are few, and a brave mess is still, after all, a mess. [Apr 2004, p.104]

It’s during its harder moments that Crimson Dragon pushes you away. A combination of heavy handling and poor communication make you feel hoodwinked rather than outmatched, and the ability to buy continues with Gems you’ve purchased with real money sullies the challenge. It’s a good job that the Zen gardens of those easier levels are always there to return to.

For the promising set-up, it collapses in the heat of battle. Nearly a full third of the PSP’s screen is filled by a clumsy status display, clipping the peripheral vision that would have been so useful in the chaos of a Dynasty scrum. [Feb 2005, p.79]

It's competent but insufficient and disparate, full of ideas that haven't been fleshed out or meaningfully linked, as if it's all stripped back from a broader original vision. [Issue#139, 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]

In borrowing from stories that are so often about one kind of ambiguity, Empire of Sin creates another: the ambiguity of too many numbers and systems for any to feel significant. [Issue#354, p.114]

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]

Aeterna Noctis retains enough of the best parts of its inspiration that it should satisfy undemanding players with time on their hands. [Issue#368, p.122]

The game is its own worst enemy, as its fully featured hands-on action never quite sits comfortably with roleplaying combat. [July 2010, p.99]