Advanced Warfare is still Call of Duty, but it's more playful, knowing and refreshing than COD's been in years. [Christmas 2014, p.112]

BF2142 fails to stimulate to the same levels as previous titles in the series, all of which have benefited from a more solid grounding in real-world settings and situations. [Dec 2006, p.87]

This is a game that takes its fantasy as seriously as it needs to be, which is to say both lightly and with rigour in homage to the communal games that make up videogames’ heritage. But it’s also a real original.

Relic has spent four years honing a distracting interface, revitalising a less-than-perfect control system and, above all, recreating anew the sense of majesty and scale that originally distinguished this deep-space strategy title. [Nov 2003, p.103]

For all that it celebrates tight spaces, Skin Deep is anything but claustrophobic. [Issue#411, p.112]

Few games are as initially opaque as Starseed Pilgrim, and few offer as rich a dawning sense of discovery in return.

This is the finest alternative sports game since Windjammers 2. [Issue#381, p.105]

Motorstorm has a special relationship with chaos, and if you can keep your head when all about you are throwing their controllers, you're just as likely to lose. Less battle than survival racing, it's happy to let fairness be a stain on the tarmac. [Apr 2011, p.95]

A genre piece with rare ambition, a mobile game that feels at once tailored to the format yet unusually expansive in its scope. [Issue#338, p.112]

It's delightful stuff in full flow, and while there's not much to it - just ten levels are available at launch , each lasting only a few minutes - there's significant replay value in committing level and spawn layouts to memory. [Issue#341, p.122]

On its own terms, Tales from the Borderlands is one of Telltale's best works yet. [Christmas 2015, p.116]

Gameplay purists may scowl, but Read Dead Revolver is a triumph for beautifully observed atmospherics, characterisation and slapstick set-pieces you cannot fail to enjoy. [June 2004, p.100]

Deliverance II demands unwavering fealty from its players, and the punishment for being lax in your duties can be severe. But if you're willing to go along with its more peculiar quirks, it offers a rare amount of freedom for a modern roleplaying game. Indeed, it's arguably a truer RPG than Bethesda's recent efforts, certainly a closer companion to Oblivion than Starfield is. And while its writing or characterisation aren't up there with those of The Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 3, its quest design is every bit as ingenious. [Issue #408, p.100]

Game designers talk of emphasising character through dialogue or animation, but his may be the first incidence of a game emphasising it through a control method. Its immediacy means you'll share every inch of his swaggering, gleeful, unstoppable violence. [Feb 2005, p.78]

The majority of SMB is a finely executed tightrope act of death and rebirth, as funny as it is fun and as precise as it is inventive. [Christmas 2010, p.103]

It's a resourceful little game, then, mining laudable variety from an economy of ideas. It's amusing, too, littering its backgrounds with visual gags, including a sly reference to Angry Birds - even if one cake-related joke proves a meme too far. And it saves the best for last, with a final level that offers some thrillingly silly catharsis, managing to one-up its most obvious inspiration in the process.

While PixelJunk Shooter 2 may seem more like an expansion than a standalone game, there's no shortage of new ingredients to enrich what was already a lively concoction. [Apr 2011, p.97]

Tempest Rising doesn't revolutionize the genre, but nor does it depend on nostalgia. And if there's a gap waiting for the Veti to arrive, it's immensely gratifying to fill it with a gratuitous quantity of tanks. [Issue#411, p.116]

While the game remains focused on atmosphere and aesthetics, concessions have been made to a more dynamic style of play. [Sept 2008, p.86]

Who's quibbling about the originality of any given bone when there are so many of them just waiting to be broken, and in so many stylish ways? [Issue#404, p.121]

Learn its quirks, however, and Prison Architect's sandbox permits a dizzying breadth of options for establishing for-profit penal facilities. [Christmas 2015, p.120]

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]

Some may argue over what the series should have become, but what’s important is that it has made that tough decision for itself, and established a rock solid foundation for inevitable, now justified successors. [May 2006, p.86]

Gameplay purists may scowl, but Read Dead Revolver is a triumph for beautifully observed atmospherics, characterisation and slapstick set-pieces you cannot fail to enjoy. [June 2004, p.100]

One of the smartest dumb games since Super Time Force. [Christmas 2015, p.121]

What keeps you playing, though, are two aspects of Minter's games that can always be relied upon: his enthusiasm for spinning ideas in hundreds of different ways, and his essential good taste. [Issue#411, p.120]

There's still no one else making games quite like this, and whether you've got a headset or not, it's a joy to be transported once again so completely to the Minter dimension. [Issue#350, p.105]

It takes more than caffeine, luck and a nosebleed to truly become master of these streets, and this is Revenge's greatest achievement over its predecessor. The eight locations, split as usual into varied circuits, are arcade racing dreams given form. [Nov 2005, p.98]