A whole lot better on phones than it is on 3DS. [July 2015, p.115]

Its heart is in the right place, but its feet are not - and when you're walking a new path, that's always going to be a problem. [Issue#341, p.112]

As a whole, it is undeniably well meaning and generous, and the individual pieces work well enough, but somehow we find ourselves wishing there was a little less game in this reserve. [Issue#402, p.118]

Many titles are likened to "Devil May Cry," but Van Helsing appropriates that game's structure with such brazen thoroughness that it might be seen as this generation's Great Giana Sisters. [July 2004, p.108]

Astro Boy is a light cartoon romp sure to please young admirers of the character, but it fails to offer the depth required to engage a broader demographic. [May 2004, p.105]

Nearly all enemy behaviour consists of direct charges, calling on the butt of your gun as frequently as its barrel. While it’s undeniably intense, it soon becomes apparent that this intensity is the only string on the designers’ banjo, plucked with increasingly feverish rapidity instead of ever-changing chords. [Nov 2005, p.105]

Rarely does dying feel like the player's fault and, in typical "Sonic Adventure" fashion, the best bits are when you find that the majority of control has been taken away from you, and you're flung around the world at escape velocity. [Mar 2004, p.105]

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]

Nearly all enemy behaviour consists of direct charges, calling on the butt of your gun as frequently as its barrel. While it's undeniably intense, it soon becomes apparent that this intensity is the only string on the designers' banjo, plucked with increasingly feverish rapidity instead of ever-changing chords. [Nov 2005, p.105]

By trying to do too much too soon elsewhere, however, Rivals reduces many of its heroes to sidekicks. [Issue#406, p.110]

Free-to-play works when you earn the trust of your players over time, but RedLynx instead prods you at every opportunity to remind you that you haven’t paid for your game yet. Even so, once dredged from beneath the cloying mass of microtransactions that suffocate it, Trials Frontier isn’t a bad game as such. It is, however, a very bad Trials game.

For all the very human flaws in its script, it ends up somewhere in the uncanny valley of narrative games: it looks the part, but behind that glistening exterior, something vital is undeniably missing [Aug 2018, p.96]

It's often unclear whether or not your shots are hitting, which inclines you to blunder out from your cover and head for close quarters - which in turn destroys the developer's intention of forcing a tactical, cautious approach. [Nov 2003, p.105]

Yes, you really do feel in chargeof steering, but when the amount of speed put into a tight bend is dictated by the game, not the player, that feeling only delivers so much. [Christmas 2010, p.98]

In-app purchases, however, are handled with more nuance and kept pleasingly out of sight.

Even when its style doesn't get in the way, like its diaphanous hero it's lacking in substance. [Issue#399, p.123]

So despite the winner podiums and big sponsorship contracts and – yes – even the hours you'll spend in this askew universe, Grand Prix Story feels more like deja vu than entertainment. The formula is rapidly palling.

The dozens of pre-prepared puzzles can be fiendish enough in themselves, but the option of dragging modifier icons on to tiles, changing the pattern with which they flip, enables high scores just as surely as it does enormous headaches. [June 2007, p.92]

A hastily assembled three-in-one anachronism which proves just one thing: that terrifying and terrible are not mutually exclusive. [Apr 2010, p.93]

There's plenty to like here - the script almost justifies a playthrough by itself - but it's a little overlong, a little padded out, it's obvious charms soon obscured by busywork, reputation and irritation. [Christmas 2017, p.122]

As interesting as exploring the island can be, it's painfully hard to get anywhere without being forced to repeat chores that are just plain boring. [May 2007, p.93]

As it stands, High On Life 2 makes a good case for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, then bleaching the tub. [Issue#422, p.114]

A few hairy moments in, and any attempt to get back under your skin is redundant. Mostly this is because the game's resident evil is largely incapable of harming you, and any sense of jeopardy is lost. [Apr 2010, p.97]

It’s not necessarily badly constructed, but in many ways it is badly intentioned, failing not just because of its conga-line of racial and sexual clichés, but because of the way it makes it a little bit easier to criticise videogaming as a hollow and sadistic pursuit. [Dec 2008, p.91]

As with Sony’s other long-awaited exclusives, Lair and Heavenly Sword, Folklore pulls its punches, and the romance of its vision ultimately all but vanishes in a puff of fairy dust. [Dec 2007, p.88]

There's a prevalent fashion at the moment for games to contain a multitude of games styles, a presumption that suggests consumers have become bored of single genre games. But Rogue Squadron III exposes the lie. It's a game that tries too hard to do many things, but only manages to do a few of them well. [Dec 2003, p.92]

It can be hard to separate what is ironically bad and what is just, well, bad. [Issue#381, p.100]

Overland sadly feels much like out late friend Vernon: stuck in the rear-view mirror, lost in the fumes. [Issue#338, p.108]