As often as it threatens to break the shackles of convention, it's just as content to fall in line with JRPG custom. [Issue#296, p.116]

Even the most dedicated player's are likely to fall out of love with the game more frequently than its promise of unstoppable motion and a world outside slate-grey corridors (which becomes more distant as the game progresses) can entice them back. [May 2005, p.83]

Due to a heavier emphasis on all-out action, however, the gratifying bullet-cam pay-off becomes tiresome even sooner than it did in V2.

An apparently new and improved game engine is anything but, with regular framerate drops on PS4, bizarrely stilted animations, and sound effects cutting out entirely during action sequences further deadening the impact of already sloppily edited fight scenes. [Nov 2016, p.121]

For a studio of this size, this is a game of impressive scale, but for all it offers in scope, it lacks in depth. [Issue#376, p.112]

Rogue Agent is the result of design by committee: a safe, reasonably accomplished but uninspiring offering which neither excels nor progresses its genre in any way. [Christmas 2004, p.82]

Its faults are many, but they're magnified by the obvious comparison: this isn't an alternative to COD, but a game in thrall to it. [Apr 2011, p.84]

We'd suggest it might be time to lay the "Dead by Daylight" formula to rest, but you know how these things go in horror movies: it'd only rise again as soon as our backs were turned. [Issue#373, p.112]

This is a big game, clocking in at about the 40-hour mark, but the lack of challenge in combat combined with the formulaic missions and frequent cutscenes too often make it feel like a sticky trudge.

No hack job, then, but rather soulless. [Issue#376, p.114]

Where it goes wrong is the finale. Almost every major choice is proven irrelevant, and barely any plot threads resolve. [Jan 2016, p.118]

Once you’ve wiped away the layer of gore, you’re left with an experience that, expectedly, offers limited entertainment. [March 2005, p.85]

The guns and costumes you'll be buying make Random Heroes a little more appealing, perhaps, but they're poor compensation for a wider lack of imagination.

Somewhere, Animal Crossing has mislaid its soul. [Issue#314, p.116]

And herein lies Immortals' most fundamental problem: Aveum's skies might crackle with occult energy, but the game beneath them is distinctly lacking in REAL magic. [Issue#389, p.112]

The Power Of Two may have fewer technical issues than its predecessor, but it's a less adventurous, less courageous, and overall less interesting game. It struggles to make you care about its world, and as a result its one big idea – that of the Wasteland reacting to your choices – feels decidedly flaccid.

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

If its creators can dig out the rot in its foundations, there is at least plenty to build upon here. [Issue#389, p.116]

There's enough warmth and wit here to make Middle Manager Of Justice one of the more palatable exercises in building a game around waiting and offering micro-transactions to skip the wait, but sadly all our spider-senses detect is a missed opportunity.

The fifth Tony Hawk's title doesn't just suffer because of its embarrassing attempts to be edgy and urban, it's poorer because it lacks the verve and imagination so prevalent in previous iterations. [Christmas 2003, p.122]

Once you've become fluent in the new pattern of motion the platforming becomes very satisfying, marrying timing and action more intimately than the usual moving platform/timed-jump challenges. However, things become rather unstuck when enemies are introduced. [Feb 2005, p.81]

IGI2 straddles the same uneasy middle ground between (pseudo) realism and playability as its predecessor, and consequently strays from the realm of the enjoyable to that of the tedious far more often than is desirable. [March 2003, p.96]

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]

Hotel Barcelona's horror-film pastiche amounts to little more than references, and without the unifying sensibility that defines Swery's best work, the game is a series of mismatched parts, idea in want of a whole. [Issue#416, p.116]

It's a shame to see what could have been. [Dec 2009, p.99]

We'd be lying if we pretended we didn't have some fun with it. But it only works in the same way a McDonald's occasionally hits the spot: this is cheap, junk-food gaming that comes with a side-order of regret. [Issue#331, p.110]

Netherrealm has taken a number of welcome steps forward with Mortal Kombat X, but no momentum is gathered, because it's stopped in its tracks by an avalanche of needless distractions, some miserable netcode and - oddly, for a game so obsessed with death in all its grisly forms - poor execution of decent ideas. [June 2015, p.106]

The joy of Pirates of the Caribbean is to be found in the variety of the elements delivered - sword fights and canon battles happily sit alongside contraband trade route management. But ultimately none offer a tremendous amount of depth. [Nov 2003, p.107]