This is ballsy, brash, confident gaming at its best - a lesson in how games don't have to be perfect to be brilliant. [Christmas 2003, p.102]

It reinvents a gaming classic, and proves that the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of yesteryear can still captivate. It’s engrossing, a stiff challenge and a fine addition to a venerable history. [Apr 2008, p.97]

If not quite a giant leap for the 3D platformer, Big Hops is an accurate title after all. [Issue#420, p.106]

This focus on creativity over flowcharts perfectly suits the most charismatic, expressive construction and management sim yet. [Jan 2017, p.116]

In the end, we gain more from it than we imagined. [Issue#347, p.100]

A fizzing treat that refuses to ever dissolve away entirely, Alien Zombie Death is pacy, mean-spirited, and delightful.

Irritations never last long in Smash 3DS, sandblasted away by the winningly varied combat and the sheer torrent of ways to enjoy it. [Dec 2014, p.122]

The Splatters ultimately feels as much like the heir to Trials HD as to Rovio's feathery world-beater. Maybe it belongs on XBLA after all.

Plagued by imbalance, the Round 3 career can serve up over 50 bouts before one goes the distance. The new stun punch – a thunderclap of a haymaker – helps to ensure first to third round knockouts for the vast majority of fights. [Apr 2006, p.82]

What emerges from the emotional wreckage is a paean to human resilience in the face of catastrophe, one that amply rewards your own perseverance. [Issue#382, p.113]

At its best, to play Hotel Infinity is to draw out a magic circle (or square) in the middle of familiar space, and the last thing you want is for external reality to intrude on that, whether it's the fear of ridicule or the sharp corner of a sofa you didn't move quite far enough. [Issue#419, p.116]

The inclusion of a food journal, detailing the ingredients you've used and those that haven't yet been found, will be manna for completists in another sparky, generous and amusing offering from Adult Swim.

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

It demands your full attention at every moment, something that was equally true of Mimimi's previous two games. [Issue#388, p.108]

BioWare hasn't cast itself as a guerrilla movement trying to subvert the MMOG with The Old Republic. Instead it's been the Empire, working to produce a slick, gigantic experience that, in the time of free-to-play, feels polished enough to demand monthly fees. How long this empire – vast and imposing, but archaic in structure – will last in the face of newer MMOGs and their rebellious payment models isn't easy to discern. This isn't the first of a new order of MMORPG, but it may well be the last of the old.

This disquieting, disorienting place leaves us as properly rattled as we've been by a videogame since Immortality. [Issue#378, p.114]

The result, Llamasoft's best game since Polybius, is dazzling in every sense of the word. [Issue#382, p.114]

It's not so much a game with depth as one with width, a fat pool of possible ways to idle away your time between quests, allowing you to craft what feels like an unprecedented sense of social personality, in terms of colour and grandeur if not actual complexity. [Nov 2004, p.94]

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

Ferociously compulsive.

[CD Projekt's] reputation as a studio of remarkable technical prowess has been tarnished a little, however noble its intentions. [July 2015, p.98]

Deftly capturing both the low-key horror of loneliness and the ways we might attempt to deal with it, Birth is a quiet triumph for this compassionate creator. [Issue#382, p.114]

Earned In Blood might not seem like a radical departure from the original but the gloriously cascading AI and open maps have effectively transformed it into a very special WWII experience. The fact that there's nothing quite like it in such a crowded genre speaks volumes. [Dec 2005, p.103]

The biggest difference between Automata and its director's previous work is that those weird ideas finally have a robust mechanical shell to house them - one flecked with patches of rust, perhaps, but a fine piece of engineering all the same. [May 2017, p.102]

The town-building arc new to 0 resonates because you're renovating an idyllic town you see being reduced to ash and rubble in the game's opening hour. [Issue#419, p.121]

It's difficult to shake the sensation that Killer 7 is an important production, as paving for future creative leeway if nothing else. But its likely love/hate status is testament to just how adamant it has attempted to be in its flair for extraordinary presentation. [Aug 2005, p.84]

It's an irresistible way to spend two minutes. [Issue#379, p.122]

The most comprehensive and involving driving simulator we've seen on consoles in years. [July 2015, p.106]