While most shooters handle the genre's design tradition like fragile cargo, careful to ensure that its arrangement of pieces doesn't fall into disarray, Prey cranks it like a Rubik's cube, cocking its world delightfully askew. [Sept 2006, p.76]

Even in this compromised form, Virtua Fighter 5’s depth and beauty are unrivalled, and it can finally take its rightful place as the only game in town. [Apr 2007, p.76]

‘Splosion Man lives up to his name, providing a burst of exciting, arresting fresh IP that significantly changes the landscape around.

When two Sims lovingly clasp each other as they sleep, even the coldest gaming hearts will begin to melt. [Oct 2004, p.102]

While the script spills plenty of ink on questions of fantasy, sci-fi and prose fiction, Split Fiction's most compelling statements are made without a word, in the shape of the game itself. [Issue#409, p.100]

Aside from a very few niggling discrepancies, it’s an almost flawless experience – one which, having demanded a heavy investment of both time and thought, richly pays off. [Christmas 2006, p.83]

A perfect organism? Not quite, but in its finest stretches Dread has a momentum that can mesmerise for hours at a time. It's hard to look away from the screen - even when, in moments that reach towards full horror, you might want to. [Issue#365, p.98]

Let's Tap isn't merely innovative, it's an original concept applied over five distinct types of game that works extremely well. [Mar 2009, p.90]

Backed by Activision's fantastic investment and support, Treyarch has succeeded, and made a sort of ultimate current-gen Call Of Duty. Not a reinvention – that, hopefully, comes next year, on box-fresh hardware and a new engine – but a refinement of the most successful series of its generation. Black Ops II is an excellent Call Of Duty game, then, but it's only a Call Of Duty game, with all that implies.

Criterion's ability to make the technology and design of games seem harmonious is a significant strength in an industry where few can pull it off... Black is a fiery example of what can result. [Mar 2006, p.82]

For the most part the game's worldview is surprisingly progressive. [Issue#409, p.108]

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]

Zuma's simple ingredients have once again brewed up a surprisingly powerful brand of magic. [Nov 2009, p.104]

While this elegant underwater world may be a little too twee for some players, then, there are still plenty of reasons to dip into Bit Blot's inventive genre piece. Aquaria's as personable on the iPad as it was on the PC and Mac, and now you can cross the oceans on your morning commute.

A revitalisation of the very spirit that made the franchise a success. Finally, it’s time to stop asking where next for the series, and to start savouring where Project 8 has taken it. [Christmas 2006, p.78]

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]

What begins with a potential murder, then, may end with the deconstruction of a way of seeing the world. [Issue#409, p.114]

This isn't a game about saving the world, but rather achieving some peace within it. [Issue#391, p.114]

The surprise that Meteos brings is the satisfaction of its physics. There’s real weight in the way an underpowered meteor chunk sinks down to earth, and a sense of dynamic propulsion as you flick together a cluster of gravity-defying rockets. [May 2005, p.91]

Long before this smart, sweet story has come to a satisfying close, it has taught us to treasure others for their flaws as well as their strengths. "We all deserve a second chance," one character says. Schafer and company have grasped theirs. [Issue#363, p.102]

Certainly, Ubisoft Montreal has succeeded in welding a game to what once felt like a proof of concept, and without overshadowing its many strengths. Much devolves into mere stuff – one sword is much like another; a painting’s easily bought and just fills a hole in the wall – and once the story is over there’s little reason to replay it. At the end of it all, though, you’re left with that setting, those cities, and Ezio, and they lend the experience a substance that endures.

The story's the star, of course. [March 2016, p.114]

The fact that it’s just mental arithmetic simply doesn’t matter: all it makes you realise is that most games are mental arithmetic one way or another. [May 2006, p.95]

Last Light’s pacing – switching as it does between tight tunnels and wide-open abandoned spaces, explosive gunfights and creeping horror, stealth and socialising – could have felt disconnected in the hands of a less-talented developer. Instead it lends its world uncommon depth. The trade-off for a distinctive personality, of course, is that Last Light is occasionally unyielding, but the desire to see what waits in its next tunnel remains a powerful draw throughout.

Ruby/Sapphire is probably the most intricate and detailed console RPG available. Staring into it will make many players woozy. [Sept 2003]

Offering the quiet contemplation of a puzzle mode, the soothing time-wasting of a marathon session, or the frenetic rivalry of multiplayer: this has it all. [July 2007, p.95]

A large number of possibilities awaits the ambitious tactician. From tunnelling assaults to flying barrage defences, Perimeter relies on the imagination of players to become genuinely interesting. [Aug 2004, p.105]

This dazzling, determinedly populist experience was not made according to the standards other games are made by, and when judged – or even just described – by those standards, it might seem slender to the point of frailty. [Christmas 2005, p.101]