We can only guess that Possessor(s) needed more time than Heart Machine had left to give. Hopefully it hasn't run out altogether. [Issue#418, p.120]

As Ellis crushes his umpteenth fistful of twigs, you're merely reminded of a far superior, far more disturbing journey through the woods near Burkittsville. [Issue#338, p.110]

The meat of the game remains enjoyable yet underwhelming. [Dec 2007, p.96]

The sad fact is that this combat mostly fails to ignite interest, and combined with its cruel difficulty spikes, occasional glitches and a severe differential in graphical quality between 360 and PS3 versions (the latter losing out), Turok's strong contextualisation and smattering of brave ideas get buried. [Mar 2008, p.92]

It's an attractive game, too, its painterly art style and creative enemy design sullied only by the occasional drop in performance and that persistently unhelpful camera. If wrestling with the right analogue stick is no one's idea of a good time, such frustrations are worth enduring for a daring and sometimes exhilarating boss rush.

It is its maker's most successful free-to-play endeavour to date, even if that is to damn it with faint praise. [Sept 2015, p.118]

Throw in a few low-level technical glitches - occasional stuttering, the rare enemy frozen in a T-pose in a doorway - and it's hard not to feel underwhelmed. [Issue#414, p.108]

There's practically no aspect that doesn't appear half-hearted. Black Isle's drawn-out death has undoubtedly poisoned Brotherhood, but it's hard to tell if there was ever a good game here to begin with. [May 2004, p.109]

Unaided solo players at the moment will either have to grind through normal to upgrade specials and stances to overcome the higher difficulties, or just take their chances alone. That aside, this is a smart, funny and faithful update to a game that hasn't aged well, and another feather in WayForward's retro cap.

Here's hoping we have bigger and deeper globe-trotting adventures with them in the future (provided we live to see it). [Issue#371, p.118]

The Precinct may boil policing down to a numbers game, but they never add up to much. [Issue#412, p.116]

It is especially abhorrent that this should happen in a game with almost unrivalled massmarket appeal...No doubt EA and its trio of development studios will fix this mess eventually, but the fact they deemed it fit for purpose in the first place is unavoidable, and damning in the extreme. Whatever happens next, we're afraid we don't patch review scores. [Issue#314, p.104]

The revelatory finale will leave you winded, but also heartened by Krillbite’s assertion that firstperson horror needn’t be confined by crumbling walls and straitjackets.

Where the game really succeeds, however, beyond providing a robust and solid, if unassuming model of explorative stealth and attack, is in fulfilling that old and oft-forgotten criterion - putting the gamer inside the movie. [Aug 2005, p.95]

Unfortunately, no sooner does Geist suggest it can blossom into something fresh and exciting that it's undermined at every turn by a frustrating insistence on being nothing more than a mundane firstperson shooter. [Oct 2005, p.88]

Every now and then, there's a flash of ingenuity. [Issue#373, p.122]

For anyone who hasn’t played a thirdperson platforming adventure game in the last five years, this might well serve as perfectly engaging and adequate entertainment. To everyone else, it serves as a very clear reference point for just how many evolutions the rest of the genre has undergone since the PS1’s heyday. [Oct 2005, p.96]

When The Cosmic Abyss plays more like a walking sim or a first-person horror, it's excellent story really shines through, but its overdesigned systems tend to get in the way of its otherworldly ambitions. [Issue#424, p.119]

Lego finally has creative expression in videogame form. [June 2017, p.104]

A spinoff that works unexpectedly hard to win you over. [Nov 2015, p.122]

Shadowrun has too many cooks: it’s a heady broth initially, and the possibilities might seem unmatched, but ultimately it turns out to be limited fun. [Aug 2007, p.88]

There's enough here to compel us to move the app to a prominent position on our home screen for easy access - close to the bottom, of course. [Issue#392, p.123]

There’s no sense of strength or weight to your actions despite how extravagant the carnage becomes.

While the basic mechanic shows promise, the game itself is purely mechanical, and predictably joyless as a result. [July 2006, p.92]

The moments that make Biomutant worth playing, intermittent as they can be, exist not in spite of the game's muddled identity but because of it, sitting right at the junction between its janky mechanics and outright bonkers fiction. [Issue#360, p.108]

For JRPG unbelievers the battle system changes don’t address the common complaints leveled at the genre. For fans, the emphasis and pacing of its unique selling point overwhelms everything else, stripping the game of its poetry and balance. [Jan 2009, p.5]

Were it not for its creative direction's admirable job of filling in its patchy mechanics' gaps it would be entirely skippable. With those gaps filled it's a charming, if flawed, achievement. [June 2006, p.96]

Mildly charming but fiercely superficial, Kinect Sports remains undermined by the lingering inconsequentiality that tends to gather around all but the very best compilation titles.