It promotes a message of kindness and understanding that's never felt more vital. [Jan 2017, p.121]

Sins is undoubtedly a unique achievement, unifying realtime battle and empirical strategy where others have only managed to offer them as separate components. [Apr 2008, p.94]

Heavy Rain pulls off its branching narrative by donning blinkers and sprinting down the chosen routes. Countless permutations of each scene are allowed, safe in the knowledge that they will never be addressed again.

It arrives fully formed, with a challenge and aesthetic that's beautifully intertwined and finely crafted. Joyous.

Perhaps the biggest compliment we can pay to Sega is that even if you stripped away the IP and our memories of Musashi's prior missions, we would still have an exquisite action-platform game on our hands. [Issue#415, p.94]

Even more than in Returnal, the Roguelike elements here seem to exist more for flavour than systematic depth. And in that they complement the unmatched action, and the incredible visual, audio, haptic experience. It will be hard for Housemarque to come back stronger than this. [Issue#424, p.92]

Chaos Theory is the game that the original Splinter Cell was meant to deliver: a tight play experience within a trusty framework, one more of enjoyment than irritation, and a game that’s no longer exclusively for fans of repeated reloading. [Apr 2005, p.97]

The real surprise is that Pikmin 4 is mostly content to coast on its strengths. As sequels go, it could have used more dandori. [Issue#388, p.104]

The creative aims are clear and well-met: to create a Final Fantasy game with a more serious and grounded story, a more fashionable battle system and more mature world in which magic and monsters exist, and their effects on human ambitions and systems of power. On these counts, Final Fantasy XVI's gamble is a success. But whether this is a game to inspire passion among a new generation, in the way the high points of the series did, is debatable. [Issue#387, p.106]

Half-Life’s narrative does nothing altogether new, and nothing to upturn the quite reasonable condescension of Roger Ebert and his peers in more mature media. But in an interactive genre bound to the traditions of the pop-up gun and invisible hero, it simply doesn’t get more sophisticated than this. [Aug 2006, p.80]

Beyond its technical excellence, then, Gran Turismo 7 feels deeply, idiosyncratically personal in ways firstparty games rarely do. [Issue#370, p.100]

The frenetic, bite-sized missions are perfect for PSP, bursting with combat and highly detailed. Not before time, Sony has proved that PSP can run and gun with the big boys. [May 2006, p.96]

A fine effort, then, but a new Chrono Trigger it is not - and directly inviting such a comparison only highlights the areas in which it falls short. [Issue#390, p.133]

All in all, the setting is perfect for a puzzle game built around existential despair...Its clever, creepy and macabre.

One of the most distinctive, exciting and fully realised puzzle games we've played in years. [Issue#332, p.122]

Despite the criticisms, though, The Great Circle isn't so much defective as in tension with itself. [Issue#406, p.102]

As we wait for the first of the promised updates, then, there's plenty of reason to hope that this is the beginning, after all –the beginning of something rather special.

A brilliant fighting game for newcomers, and a wonderful one for genre fans, that somehow still manages to feel like a disappointment for so comprehensively failing to bring its two demographics together. [Apr 2018, p.112]

Its biggest adventure to date isn't flawless, but the Dark Knight is far from one to underestimate. [Aug 2015, p.106]

Despite what Naughty Dog's crack programmers might think, you can't encode fun-ness into a videogame. Yes, there's lots of 'fun' to be had here, but is it really more fun than the original? Probably not. [Nov 2003, p.96]

The game starts slow, a feeling exacerbated - or perhaps caused - by the easiness of the battles. But you'll play it and play it. Every time you try to stop you're just one battle away from mastering that skill, for earning that new job. [Dec 2003, p.105]

For all the delicious brain food it serves up, this astonishing game - a new high bar for creator and genre - never stops reminding you of the human beings at the heart of the moviemaking process, and the very real cost of their art. [Issue#375, p.106]

It is at its core a forgettably designed, cookie-cutter open-world game, that is elevated by its traversal, its combat and stealth, by the eventually irresistible pull of its story. It may not have legs, but while it lasts it is delightful. The Amazing Spider-Man? Not quite. But it is frequently spectacular, and given Parker's rather chequered videogame past, that feels like some achievement. [Issue#324, p.104]

Despite the lack of ingenuity on display, NSMB Wii's thrash of four players does bring uproarious anarchy to the sofa for short periods of time. [Dec 2009, p.86]

It promotes a message of kindness and understanding that's never felt more vital. [Jan 2017, p.121]

It's the music that's important here, and Elite Beat Agents delivers. [Jan 2007, p.86]

It's an 'experience' as much as a game, meaning that it will leave as many people cold as it grabs by the right half of the brain. Beyond good, then, but not quite excellent. [Christmas 2003, p.104]

The strength of the Mario RPG series has always been the convincing lunacy with which it depicts the 'ordinary' life of the mushroom kingdom. You may have steered Mario through some strange odd-jobs in your time, but Paper Mario 2 is your best chance to actually be him. [Christmas 2004, p.86]