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]

A strangled idea, and while hard to dismiss it’s difficult to recommend entirely. [Feb 2009, p.94]

Sluggish loading times tend to cause frame-rate hiccups at the outset of a multiplayer game, and such issues are exacerbated in the busier environments with a full complement of players.

Vanguard simply fails to deliver the pomp and bluster or the window dressing so essential in disguising the shortcomings inherent in "Call of Duty's" framework. [May 2007, p.92]

It is so often calamitous that its few charms are either squandered or obscured. [Christmas 2009, p.96]

EDF was never about careful aiming or strategic cover or any of the other things that drive modern shooters, though – it’s about superior firepower earned through RPG grind, but 2025 has made the happy grind gruelling.

Gorgeous and silky smooth it may be, but the level design feels like it was made with in-app Continue purchases specifically in mind, hiding enemies cruelly – and punishingly – behind obstacles, preventing the game from flowing and dazzling as it clearly has the potential to. Accomplished and beautiful, then, but Sonic Dash shows that, for Sega, learning from the competition comes at a price – one it’s passed onto its fans.

An exercise in banality, despite its vibrant landscapes and characters. But then perhaps, given their parallels with Cuban History, even they ultimately make it worse. [Issue#365, p.102]

An extremely unambitious sequel. [Jan 2009, p.92]

One of the most robust online community setups to grace Nintendo’s handheld, enabling users to link the DS game to a web profile, where they can browse and queue tracks for later download. [Dec 2008, p.99]

Fundamentally a little anaemic, lacking the kind of acute design which would either make its stages distinct or its basic operation continually engaging. [Sept 2008, p.94]

Black Sigil's big-picture rewards are too fleeting and familiar to justify the considerable effort. [Sept 2009, p.101]

Omega 6 has value as a curio and as part of Imamura's legacy, but only mildly as entertainment. [Issue#409, p.121]

The flash and gore are toned down, and the henchmen never get any smarter, but that bond with the protagonist – and that investment in his salvation – make the whole game worthwhile. [Apr 2009, p.117]

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

While the arcade version of the game (included here in its entirety) is not without serious flaws, this interpretation exacerbates those that exist and throws in significant new ones. [Jan 2008, p.87]

Alas, a little too often, Recompile only seems to prove we should be careful what we wish for. [Issue#363, p.118]

Star Wars: Galaxies does not offer fans of the franchise any heroics. There is nothing dramatic or cinematic about the MMRPG game model as defined by Everquest, and Galaxies does very little to break that mould. [Oct 2003, p.100]

Despite its lunges for the mainstream, in other words, The Act has forgotten one of the most important things about escapist cinema and cartoons: they generally don't require this much effort.

Well engineered and, while unexceptional in almost every fashion, it does boast a superb level of attention to detail. [June 2003, p.104]

A cynical, if predictable approach to monetisation also sours the experience.

Rather than gradually introduce the many plates you have to spin, it puts them all into action at once, starting with 20 near-identical walkover levels and then spiking brutally when it assumes you've worked everything out. [Dec 2010, p.101]

The Good Life makes for a charmingly eccentric getaway for the 12 hours its story lasts, though you'd hardly want to spend weeks, let along months, there. [Issue#365, p.116]

But content is no substitute for quality, and while Sniper Elite III might have made for an engaging design document, it isn’t much of a game.

It’s the refusal to broaden the series’ horizons, though, which will serve to damage Sony’s oft-forgotten franchise most in the long run. It leaves Confrontation feeling stale and lost among the recent crowd of tac-shooters. [Christmas 2008, p.100]

Sharper humour would have helped make these folk more endearing to us, too. [Issue#397, p.108]

Pleasantly meditative as it can be, it feels worn and ragged in places, that uncomfortable woolly itch coming just too often to ignore. [Issue#366, p.121]

As narrative adventures go, this is like the wonky piece of pottery we find after packing up Tess's things: handsomely rendered but misshapen and disappointingly empty. [Issue#397, p.110]