Best of all is how the storytelling bleeds into the battles. [Issue#362, p.114]

Then it interrupts the action for a bit of brazen padding, inviting you to trudge back through earlier floors to track the spectral pawprints of an elusive cat, and you wonder if you were right first time. [Issue#339, p.96]

Despite the twitchy combat and compulsive collecting, it all comes back to those creaking mansions. Highly polished under their grime and cobwebs, the treats awaiting in their dark rooms prove Luigi’s subversive series still has the capacity to thrill.

It's a system that very naturally sets up some excellent multiplayer modes, and this is one of an elite few that can truly even the odds between players at different difficulty levels.

It isn’t any kind of reinvention, but a revitalisation, with a style so rich that it becomes an integral part of the game’s substance; Psychonauts breathes imagination and individuality as effortlessly as most games steal from one another. [July 2005, p.84]

The game's greatest triumph is in delivering a truly singular vision. This is not the work of a team in thrall to trend or fashion, its designers given the opportunity to build from their own imagining instead. At a time when many rival studios are guided by the whims of focus testing and audience pandering, it has resulted in a game with one elusive quality. Dragon's Dogma 2 is, more than anything else, unforgettable. [Issue#397, p.98]

Certainly, it provides exhilarating depths for those willing and sufficiently talented to reach them, but the game's narrow and unforgiving constraints will repel far more than it entices. [Issue#389, p.102]

One supposedly shocking reveal is so transparent a five-year-old could guess it. [Nov 2018, p.112]

It's hard not to think how much more memorable and rewarding it would have been had the writers made the effort to intertwine these stories from the outset, instead of making its characters spend so much of their journey walking in parallel. [Issue#383, p.108]

It uses preexisting flaws as the foundations for something that is better in just about every single way: bigger, more coherent and, best of all, immeasurably more generous. With that comes, appropriately, a puzzle for Bungie to solve. How do you continue to build on a game that has so few chinks in its lustrous, gleaming exotic armour? [Dec 2015, p.106]

Heroes of the Storm's great success is that it works harder than any other game to date to open up the strengths of this genre. [Aug 2015, p.114]

Returnal is by turns a gloriously dynamic action game and a dark slice of psychological horror. [Issue#259, p.106]

Those expecting a tale on par with Atlus’ remarkable RPG may be disappointed, then, but Persona 4 Arena’s thoughtfully designed combat system has been well worth the wait.

Its keen sense of drama is as authentic as it is exhilarating: arcing a 40-yard free-kick around the wall and into the top corner in the last-minute of a cup final is as thrilling a moment as you'll witness in any FIFA match. It's hardly the beautiful game – its visuals are perfunctory at best – but Simon Read's creation smartly captures the capitalism, the artistry and the sheer, glorious unpredictability of its subject.

As a sequel, it's not so much an extension as a remix, but one so capable and confident that 'remix' could very well be one of Clover Studio's own personal VFX powers.

Amid those undeniable influences, this emerges as a bona fide original: one that fully merits a place alongside the other gems in Enhance's gold-tier catalogue. [Issue#385, p.110]

V isn't the only one with two souls wrestling for one body. Cyberpunk 2077 ends up being a sometimes-unnecessary exercise in building a better merc, and a propulsive open-world tale about building a better life. If you can ignore the inconsistencies of the former and enjoy the latter, there's a lot to love in Night City. But if Johnny Silverhand teaches us anything, it's that two heads aren't always better than one. [Issue#354, p.98]

Even completing a stage in the relatively tame classic Mini Cooper S will leave you feeling bothered and fatigued. [Feb 2016, p.114]

A short, budget shot of old-school gaming. [Sept 2010, p.100]

This convincing comeback has been designed for the die-hards - and they haven't been this well served by a Sonic game for ages. [Issue#311, p.118]

It gets far more laughs than it should, and special mention to its credits song: perhaps the finest ending on the App Store. Original, funny, and intense: for a game based on Snake, not bad at all.

Quarrel DX is the funniest and most stylish word game around, with layers of strategy that go down so deep it sometimes feels you're just scratching the surface. Even without multiplayer this is an essential purchase. With multiplayer, it could take over the world – or, at the very least, be the thinking person's Angry Birds.

This charming, eccentric mash-up is well worth a spin. [Issue#335, p.112]

Monster Hunter still offers some of the most exciting and handsomely staged third-person combat you'll find in any game - and, if only by a small amount, Generations has raised the bar again. [Issue#296, p.112]

Full of bravado, packed with features and brimming with invention, this 20-year-old veteran is as vital and relevant as ever. [Jan 2007, p.84]

Were Inscription half as long, it would probably be twice the game. [Issue#365, p.114]

Its flaws stand out in the short singleplayer campaign, and its tail end relies too much on the gunplay that the game otherwise relegates to a begrudging last resort. But when it hits its stride, the environments unlock the player’s tactical ambitions in away that is truly empowering, launching you between shadow and light, discretion and aggression.

It turns out that Mario+ Rabbids still has the capacity to surprise us after all. [Issue#378, p.96]