Clash Of The Titans' many failings are all the more surprising given that the movie is just one of many CGI-heavy offerings accused of feeling more like a game than a movie.

Vengeance feels like a small-minded attempt to corner the Remote-controlled shooter market at the earliest opportunity. "Red Steel" may have failed in a similar bid, but at least it had the excuse of being a new franchise, not one already established. [Feb 2007, p.78]

Facebreaker is vacuous, its interface without flair and its novelties without purpose beyond littering the boards at Gamefaqs. [Oct 2008, p.95]

The poor relation of its canceled 360 and PS3 brothers. This is a stripped-down version of a game that never was, offering only fleeting glimpses of a magnificent concept through a console and engine that could never, even with four more years to work at it, have handled it. [Aug 2009, p.98]

It purports to be a cross between pinball and puzzle game, but lacks the bells and whistles or tactile joy of the former, while the conundrums are nothing more than busywork.

Even when you disregard the charmless character, ignore the relentless music and eventually manage to tame the handling, something comes along to spoil the party - an odiously placed bump on the road that causes an unnecessary spin, the sudden inability to respawn even when off the track, resulting in a lost race... the list goes on. [Jan 2010, p.90]

This is a series that probably needs to be retired, because the joke isn’t funny anymore. [Feb 2009, p.89]

Where we once observed burgers grilled with the power of rap, we now meet a policeman who doesn't like littering. All very toothless. [June 2009, p.93]

It resembles nothing more than a Skinner box, eventually rewarding your endless hours of button pressing with a short, amusing skit or a familiar face from the Star Wars universe. While some will no doubt be snared by its insidious little feedback loops, we can only reiterate Ackbar’s grave warning: it’s a trap.

Vane is unfinished, its few ideas undermined by its shoddy foundations. If it really were a painting, you'd get Banksy to frame it. [March 2019, p.108]

An experience lacking flavour, with a transparent design, the game shares many qualities with its elemental subject matter. It is entering a super-competitive environment, and its premium DLC will need to be something special to turn things around.

There are just 20 team leaders in the game; the 500 subs available from the gacha can only bring so much variety, and pale in comparison to the almost 6,000 available in Puzzle & Dragons itself. We've been playing that game for seven years, and it still finds new ways to excite us. That this barren, boring work should share its name is an outrage. [Issue#343, p.122]

Extinction is mindless, soulless stuff, and a huge disappointment from a reputable studio. [June 2018, p.116]

While the likes of Call Of Duty 4 and Halo have made console joypads feel snappy and responsive enough to challenge the PC mouse and keyboard, Turning Point has sloppily regressed the cause by a few years. [May 2008, p.93]

It's astonishing that Shiver couldn't conjure up a decent party game from such great source material. [June 2018, p.118]

Partial blame can be laid on the less-than-stellar CG film Astro Boy adapts, but considering High Voltage so vocally invoked Omega Factor during development, it is not unfair to hold the game to a higher standard. It doesn't come close. [Jan 2010, p.96]

The Run doesn't have the structure or production values to carry off its concept. Even if it did, its successes would be smothered by a procession of awful technical flaws. Lacking charm and polish, only the Need For Speed name will sell the game – which will no doubt mean that it fares well enough. But in a year that has seen gaming's biggest franchises one-upping each 
other and demanding players' attention like never before, The Run simply doesn't cut it.

Where COD maintains a smooth 60fps, Warfighter gets a nosebleed trying to put out 30fps. Modern Warfare boasts near-instant restarts after death; here, lengthy loading times merely add to the frustration.

By any standards that have existed during the last ten, Without Warning is a work of stultifying incompetence that seems to hate its own players. [Dec 2005, p.108]

We’ve a right to enjoy this kind of brainless, murderous throwback, but we’ve also a right to expect it to be made to the standards of videogames of five years ago, never mind those of today. [July 2005, p.91]

This stylishly rendered open world displays little sense of fun or character. It's a series of beautifully drawn cardboard boxes populated by unthinking automata, one that commits its genre's gravest crime: inviting no curiosity to explore it. [Issue#418, p.118]

Sorrows is a hollow experience, misinterpreting the original as a sheer numbers game rather than one of constant risk and reward. It's an issue made more glaring by an unsatisfying combat system, paying lip service to counters, juggles and combo strikes even though endlessly repeating the same moves is just as effective. [Feb 2006, p.88]

With juddering 3D that loses all of Altair's beautiful and intuitive movement, and inflicting a multitude of cheap deaths, this crude chapter neither comes close to emulating original's successes nor utilises the hardware's specific capabilities. [June 2008, p.95]

So sparse is the experience that it takes about four or five bewildered hours for the reality to sink in that yes, this is all there is. [Issue#332, p.114]

European Assault is one of the ugliest current-gen games we’ve seen. Boring textures, a weak palette and a flimsy design ethic all round make it appear like slightly dressed up PSone data. The animation seems inspired by amateur puppetry and even the menus look like they were knocked up in the last day before submission. [Aug 2005, p.94]

None of this is very entertaining at all. The game offers some of the most slender, inconsequential, and ultimately, boring distractions to be found on the GameCube. [Sept 2003]

Scourge: Outbreak may seek to mimic the thrills and achievements of its blockbuster inspiration, but it serves merely to underline their superiority. Tragnarion has clearly put effort into polishing the game, but it’s fatally neglected to work on the underlying basics that were crooked three years ago.

Itagaki has brought a knife to a gunfight, and the result is a bloody mess. [Oct 2015, p.116]