A masterclass in imaginative flair and precision-engineered game mechanics. The GBA is beginning to feel all grown up. [Feb 2004, p.107]

It's a puzzle game and a strategy game as much as an action game, then, and like Rockstar's Manhunt, it will sicken you even as it provides its murky thrills.

Perhaps its greatest achievement is defying comparisons to Rock Band and emerging as its own game. GHWT might be a little rough around the edges, but it’s a good stab at reinvigorating the franchise. [Christmas 2008, p.96]

As smooth and exhilarating a ride as it ever was… MotoGP 3 remains a strong, solid outing for those who enjoy a thoroughly analogue play experience as well as fans of motorbike racing. [Oct 2005, p.98]

If Rocket League often feels like a sports game for people who don't really like sports games, that's no criticism. [Oct 2015, p.123]

With it’s limited range of costumes (broadened with lazy palette swaps) and unambitious Tag and Team battles, DOA4 remains as familiar as the mild disappointment it delivers. [Feb 2006, p.84]

It’s one of the happiest pieces of software ever released, constantly throwing tunes, trinkets and new tricks at the player simply to amuse them. [Jan 2009, p.93]

It's a tale of swords and souls in which everyone keeps their dignity until you knock off their cuirass and make them fight in their bra. [Sept 2008, p.84]

In exploring the past so thoughtfully, it has established itself as a name to watch in the future. [Issue#363, p.121]

Where Frostpunk was painfully intimate, the sequel takes a bird's-eye view, but this distance serves it just as well. [Issue#403, p.100]

Yes, in places, it's a little too familiar, sometimes ungainly and unsure of itself. Yet it's also big-hearted and likeable, with a hero that, even at the peak of his powers, remains endearingly human. By the time the credits roll, you might be convinced that Parker should extend his vacation. [Issue#353, p.104]

[An] endearingly odd, memorable little game. [Issue#314, p.122]

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]

Previous Forza entries showed glimmers of personality, hinting at a broader approach to accessibility, but were too shy and reserved to truly let loose. Horizon boldly goes there. It's a magpie game, assembled from pieces of other series, but it delivers a driving game precision engineered to offer all levels of player the best possible experience.

The knowledge that there's always another unlock just around the corner - and the tanalising locked-off areas you pass en rouge - ensures Shadow retains the fourth, invisible thing that held the Arkham series' other pillars together: the sense of forward momentum. [Issue#405, p.116]

This is an incredible achievement, the closest a simulator has come to entertainment; the nearest videogaming has come to the real experience of driving. Forget play. Just drive. [March 2005, p.84]

As efficiently and proficiently designed as Logan’s Shadow is, it’s unavoidably tied to the problems associated with action games of this type on PSP. [Feb 2008, p.96]

This is a game that requires serious commitment. [Issue#395, p.116]

As enveloping a puzzle space as any (outside of wells and hotels) we've encountered this year. [Issue#399, p.120]

It’s a great shame, because with tighter controls Frogmind’s charismatic debut would be a memorable one, but as it is it lacks the power to draw you back into its world.

Over-levelling all too easily threatens to undermine Fire Emblem's unique place in the genre. It's a problem easily side-stepped by both choosing an appropriate difficulty level and tempering your levelling, but nevertheless the option is unwelcome. [Aug 2005, p.90]

Pragmata has an original combat system, some smart toys and tight engineering, yet its rhythm and structure are a touch too singular. This is no mere 3D printout, but an exercise in the pristine and clinical nonetheless. [Issue#424, p.96]

As an experiment in making a genuine retro game, and as a tribute to a forgotten title of yore, Forget-Me-Not is brilliant. But as a 2011 release, even with rose-tinted spectacles firmly applied, it's much harder to recommend.

When Tunic gestures towards Zelda games of old, something it does with all the subtlety of an air traffic controller, it's indicating an attempt to chip away the intervening decades and get back to the feeling of playing those games for the first time, when they still held what seemed like bottomless mystery. [Issue#370, p.104]

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]

Treyarch has taken just enough from COD4 to make World At War a broad success, but it remains firmly in its shadow. [Christmas 2008, p.90]

Levels feel more segmented and less regimented, and the better for it. There’s no cheap, wholesale reduction of difficulty, just what feels like a more balanced play experience. [Jan 2005, p.84]

The fifth Tony Hawk's title doesn't just suffer because of its embarrassing attempts to be edgy and urban, it's poorer because it lacks the verve and imagination so prevalent in previous iterations. [Christmas 2003, p.122]