It’s a game that makes you desperately want to feel like a Jedi, arcing your lightsaber across the screen, ducking under attacks, parrying counters and going in for the kill, but the subtlety just isn’t there. [July 2005, p.94]

It's in need of plenty more flair, not so much that it strains against what its buttoned-down framework is trying to achieve, but just to inject some feeling of variety into its skirmishes and sorties. [Sept 2006, p.88]

What it didn't factor into the design is that kleptomaniacs rarely bother collecting items without emotional gravitas, and this oversight becomes immediately obvious when you compare Rumble to its source material. [Jan 2010, p.98]

Soldier of Fortune’s damage model is probably its major selling point and, lamentably, the only thing that makes its combat entertaining. [Feb 2008, p.96]

For a title trying hard to inject personality into the genre, the experience feels irreparably mechanical. There's plenty of variety in terms of racing categories and machinery, but the overall lack of involvement is inexcusable. [Feb 2004, p.102]

A dismally paced and hugely frustrating expansion of a fine core mechanic, and a badly missed opportunity. [Tested with Vive; June 2016, p.120]

Moops isn't a bad idea for a iOS title, then, but it's extremely poorly implemented. For a game about bug hunting, it's failed to catch enough of its own.

Yes, Beat Down revives the warped charisma of Capcom’s beat’em up heyday, but that’s the only area where it actually triumphs. [Oct 2005, p.90]

Playing it instils a completely neutral response, as though it were no more than a means of absorbing time. [Jan 2008, p.91]

Even with just an additional pair of buttons for camera movement, a broad switch of irritations could have been avoided, but as it is, Death Jr is recommended only for forgiving platformer enthusiasts. [Nov 2005, p.113]

Cheap bosses and stingy save points ensure that it's a drag as well as a bore, while a handful of crash bugs do very little to improve proceedings. My Little Hero's greatest charm is its air of sweet innocence, perhaps, but in truth this adventure is primitive rather than childlike.

Bad Day LA is the game people often say they want and then ignore when it arrives; it prizes ambition over execution and flair over finesse and both pays the price and reaps the rewards for daring to do so. [Sept 2006, p.82]

The last thing on Glory Days’ mind is fun: it instead angrily stomps forward to the beat of the ‘war is hell’ drum. [Oct 2007, p.99]

You can see things worth admiring here. The promise of sandbox combat emerging from the interplay between environment and gun-modes never comes good, instead devolving into a repetitive, gruelling bedlam - but that promise alone is more than many shooters offer. To make anything of it, however, Hard Reset would need to go right back to the drawing board.

Blacksite is a thoroughly unexceptional title for which unrealistic promises were made, and one that is further let down by a wide assortment of bugs and design issues. [Jan 2008, p.83]

Voyeurs will be disappointed, since the sex portrayed is the very model of conventionality. The really shocking thing is how close Singles gets to being wholesome. [June 2004, p.111]

Alien worlds scarcely come more mundane than this. [Issue#424, p.102]

For such a costly flagship title to provide neither the promised statement of mainstream grown-up appeal nor even polished, lesser disposable thrills is a landmark failure. [May 2006, p.92]

Something of a departure, sure, but it's nothing new. Falling awkwardly between action and strategy, it's unlikely to satisfy anyone other than rabidly obsessive fans of the character.

Nasty, brutish and short - and that's once you've got past the interface problems. Temple of Elemental Evil is a huge disappointment by any measure. [Christmas 2003, p.124]

Much as it saddens us, given the promise of seeing a 3D Ghost Trick, we pronounce this dead on arrival.

The game is also lumbered with a tragic split personality. On one hand, there’s a lot to do, and if you like the look of one of the initial five heroes you can do all of it for free with a little grinding. On the other hand, Marvel Heroes is so eager for you to spend – and so keen to extract the most out of your wallet when you do – that the price tag of the game in real-world terms can soon become astonishingly disproportionate to its quality.

This miserable wallow in the psyche of a traumatised young woman isn't so much horrifying, then, as simply unpleasant. [Issue#370, p.112]

It's a pity, since there is the kernel of an engaging hack-and-slash here, but its best ideas are squandered, and eventually bludgeoned into submission by the relentless monotony of the action. With a campaign that barely stretches beyond six hours and minimal replay value here, there's only one person being robbed here, and it's not the Sheriff. [Issue#393, p.114]

With the episodic development cycle all but demanding that structure and form be locked down in the first instalment, with content added thereafter, the series' future looks precarious at best. [June 2008, p.90]

With that, a largely flat Metroid is further degraded, from disappointing to a little bit embarrassing. Nintendo games have tested our patience before, but rarely in so many ways at once, and not without a core brilliance that makes such transgressions forgivable. Whatever ideas swirled in your mind back in 2017, you can't have been dreaming of this. [Issue#419, p.100]

Instant deaths, glitchy combat, uninspiring boss encounters and twitchy controls conspire to make this a below-par experience. If it wasn't for the occasional flashes of imagination and the familiarity and richness conveyed through the license then The Emperor's Tomb would be utterly forgettable. [May 2003, p.99]

What Level-5 has created is a Frankenstein's monster. It's half singleplayer and half multiplayer, and both of them are half good: a compromise that leaves much of this game feeling soulless. To give WKC2 its due, it certainly improves on the original. But in trying to fix a poor template rather than start anew, it was probably doomed from the beginning.